Oh My Goddess!, Volume 17: Traveler

Kosuke Fujishima's "Oh, My Goddess!" series has ranked among the very best graphic novel series in the world for at least the past decade. His story-telling techniques have continued to evolve, and while I have some personal nitpicks with where his art style is heading, they are just nitpicks. The latest volume in the series shows that this series will be going strong for years to come. The art is gorgeous, the stories are funny and touching, and the characters are as charming as ever.In "Traveler," the threats faced by mechanic and college student Keiichi and the three goddesses (Belldandy, Skuld, and Urd) that have taken up residence with him in an abandoned temple are not of the reality-shattering variety--they prevented all of time from being unraveled in the previous volume, "Mystery Child"--but instead are on a smaller, more personal scale.The first half of the book introduces a new continuing cast member--a sentient robot built by Skuld as a companion to Banpei, Skuld's first self-aware robotic creation. Unfortunately, the new robot hates Banpei with a passion. The second half of the book opens with Belldandy losing her divine powers at a very inopportune moment. The timing becomes even worse when she and Keiichi become stranded at the center of an infinite space generated by another of Skuld's inventions. To make matters worse something is in the space with them....This second half of "Traveler" is Fujishima's finest effort so far. Keiichi is firmly at center stage, shining like he never has before even while dealing with yet another weird creature that's ended up in his life due to the presence of the goddesses. The flow of the story is perfectly paced and the ending is very satisfying. I'm looking forward to the next volume to see if Fujishima can top himself.

This installment of "Oh My Goddess" from Dark Horse covers the original "Aa Megami-sama" volume 17 chapter 102 through volume 18 chapter 109. We have only two stories in this book. The first story has Banpei requesting Skuld turn the automoton girl into a real girl. Skuld makes the automoton into a fully functional android. Sadly, the new android has no interest in Banpei and fights him to keep him at bay but worships Skuld.In the second story, Belldandy loses her power when she fails to renew her license. Meanwhile Otaki, Tamiya, and the boys dump all of their stuff on Keiichi for storage while their dorm is being worked on. Skuld comes up with a device to expand the space of the Tea Room which allows them to store the stuff easily. It accidently expands space to infinity and this space is visited by the giant creature known as Schrödinger's Whale. Before this visit, these creatures were thought to be extinct.Fujishima-sensei continues with the same excellent artwork and a couple of pretty interesting tales. His character designs are starting to slip when the characters are shown face-front. They are starting to look a bit odd. From the side, the characters look fine. That's the only complaint on the Japanese side of this.On the American side, Dark Horse & Proteus do the standard flip for most the art and no-flip for other panels. They continue their above-average level of domestication of the stories from the original Japanese, neither of which is surprising. However, what had me dissappointed is one change from the Japanese. In the original, Keiichi listens to The Carpenters song "Sing" and other Carpenters songs. Instead, we are given "Missing Time" by Matthew Sweet. Who's that? I checked and he's done several CD's but was unknown to me. Unfortunately, the Carpenter's management wanted WAY to much money to reprint the lyrics which is why the change was made. It is disappointing, but I now understand why Toren Smith had to make that change, and since he got Fujishima-san's permission, that's all that matters. Many people like the new lyrics better.Bottom line: More OMG fun and worth adding to your collection.