June 29th, 2014 
AstroNerdBoy Oh My Goddess! Manga/ああっ女神さまっ
Ah! My Goddess chapter 308 Final Chapter
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
Now out of the portal, Peorth notices that Belldandy is in a Type-1 wedding dress. She’s surprised that they passed, though Lind says that she believed Keiichi could do it. Since they’ve not had a wedding ceremony due to the lack of deities, they can have it now since Peorth, Lind, Urd, and Skuld are here. Skuld refuses until she’s talked into it by Urd with the promise of ice cream cake.
They need witnesses, so Chibi-Hild shows up with an unconscious Mara (Marller) and Welsper. Peorth objects to their presence, but since there’s no rule against it, she gives in. Hild has the unconscious Mara stand up and Welsper float. Peorth, Lind, Urd, and Skuld begin the enchantment for the ceremony, after which the mandala they are all on rises into the sky. With Belldandy and Keiichi agreeing to the marriage and no one objecting, the goddesses begin their blessing song, which causes both Mara and Welsper to wake up.
The ceremony done, Belldandy wants Keiichi to repeat the words he spoke to her when they first met, as they are a proposal, something Keiichi didn’t know.
Thoughts/Review:
And so it ends.
For a final chapter, this chapter is rather “meh.” We got to see Belldandy and Keiichi married, but they don’t even get to kiss, which is pap. Seriously, they are married now, so let them kiss, Fujishima-sensei. But alas, we can’t have that much risque business in a seinen manga title.
The final reveal that Keiichi’s “I want a goddess like you to be with me always” is a proposal fits though. I understand what Sensei is trying to do with that being the final line of the manga, but I just didn’t feel it.
I’m glad Mara (and I’m going to call her Mara because that’s what Dark Horse and AnimEigo used years and years ago) and Welsper weren’t forgotten for this final chapter. Sadly, both were unconscious for most of their time, but at least they were around.
In addition to the series needing Keiichi and Belldandy to kiss as husband and wife, it needed one more aftermath chapter. I think back to a title like Ai Yori Aoshi, where after Kaoru and Aoi do the do, we get a look at everyone a few years later, at which point Kaoru and Aoi have been married for a while. I felt that Ah! My Goddess could have used a similar kind of aftermath chapter, where we could have seen what happened to everyone, and show Belldandy and Keiichi in a more romantic moment. In such a chapter, having Keiichi spontaneously say his line to Belldandy would have had more meaning to me.
Oh well.
I’ll write a final thought piece eventually. It is hard to believe that after having followed this manga since 2003, it is finally over.
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i wrote my piece about the series. Overall it was fun whilst reading volume 1-20. it got sour from then on.
I need to read that.
Did my comments go through over there? I wrote a lot, but unless you have moderation set, it looks like Google trashed them. ^_^;
I havent changed any settings so i dunno why it didnt work for you. thats damn annoying. :/
Yeah, I’m disappointed ’cause I wrote a lot. ^_^; I really should get in the habit of copying-pasting it elsewhere in case things like this happen in future.
yeah i type in word then copy paste it in.
That’s a good idea.
Personally I don´t like to let things go… so it´s really complicated to like the end of a manga… Kisses are another matter altogether… they are beautiful, but the author really needs to be a gifted one when doing so (More like the feeling than the talent though)… Oda-sensei in One Piece is a case to be asked…
And sure extra chapters are more than welcome!
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mr. Poneis
Ps.: Excuse me to ask about it… but do you you still have a link to the post with that fandub on To Aru Kagaku no Railgun? That one with a lot of male seiyuus? I tried searching for “railgun” and “videos” and “youtube” but the feedback was like zero… Thanks
I can understand that. ^_^
I do not. Sorry. 🙁
Thanks… this probably confirms that youtube deleted it… well for now I will just deposit a little of my faith on the Internet… and wait and see.
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mr. Poneis
I hate it when YouTube purges things. I really should get in the habit of downloading stuff from there for archival purposes.
Oh well. I guess better it actually ended, than getting a CLAMP ‘ending’ instead.
What’s scary is that I still remember the first time I saw Ah My Goddess in the US. It was back when I was still in high school and I saw it at my comic book store. I remember getting excited seeing it (it was a single issue back then), something from Japan. 🙂 Man, I’m old.
*lol* Touche! ^_^
I probably saw it at a comic book store too when it first came out in 1994, as I was still collecting comic books at that time. However, I had zero interest in any Dark Horse comic as I was chiefly a Marvel Comic guy, with a couple of Superman titles from DC bringing up the rear. It wasn’t until 2002 that I actively sought it out in a comic book store, but then went for the graphic novels instead.
Well there’s another ending coming with the final volume and we already got somebody to give us outline of what it’s going to cover. So, lets keep our fingers crossed that it will be more satisfying then this.
is this the audio ending thats coming or more of the manga?
That’s what I’m wondering.
That’s the audio drama, right?
You know given how underwhelming actual endings turn out I think Ah My Goddess kept it together rather nicely. You had the five goddesses, Hild, Mara, and Velsper and after the super long Hell arc that’s all you really needed. I do agree having some type of epilogue chapter would have been nice but this felt way more like a deserved closure than CLAMPs more recent endings, or Negima.
Also I we already got our “epic” kiss several volumes ago. I remember remarking that that kiss signaled the manga was in end game so I didn’t feel it needed to be repeated here. Kind of like when Inuyasha ended and Kagome and Inuyasha became an official couple and they didn’t kiss (the anime made up for that) but it didn’t mean their relationship was less authentic. (of course Inuyasha also benefited from getting a “few years later” epilogue)
In the end this manga had a good run but I’m willing to bet given it’s popularity we might get a surprise epilogue chapter and/or anime incarnation down the road.
And that is a good, fair point.
Yeah, but a wedding with no kissing of the bride? One more kiss for the road! ^_~
That’s true, but Inuyasha was a shounen magazine, so while I wanted to see them kiss, I understood why there was no kiss. And we did get the epilogue chapter as well, which you mentioned.
That being said, Ah! My Goddess is a seinen manga, and they have kissed before. I wanted one more for the road, and to help compensate for all the missed romantic moments over the past however many years. ^_~
I wonder. Fujishima-sensei never went back to You’re Under Arrest, although repeated anime titles came out over the years. I heard that Fujishima-sensei wanted to end Ah! My Goddess a decade ago, but was forced to continue by Kodansha. I have a feeling that now that he’s free, he’ll just do Paradise Residence and whatever other artwork he does on the side.
I was kind of “bwah?” about this. It would have been fitting for some of the older characters, such as Tamiya, Otaki, Chihiro (if for no other reason than she’s their BOSS!), or Megumi to have shown up for one last bow. It felt more like “Bam, it’s done thank God, now on to the next thing”.
Exactly. If this chapter had the official deity-approved wedding, then have the human wedding and invite everyone for the fun in the next chapter. Akamatsu-sensei did it pretty well in Love Hina.
Oh, and it is good to see you here. ^_^
I’m having a bout of nostalgia. Actually exchanged emails with JGZinv this weekend, been meaning to see what your thoughts about AMG’s finale were…and am highly amused that I had to explain El-Hazard to my daughter’s kinda-sorta boyfriend (who’s helping with lawn chores while I recover from rotator cuff surgery).
Yeah, I’ve talked with JGZinv recently as well. ^_^
Can anyone tell me in which volume/chapter Keiichi is working at Whirlwind, and these extra-dimensional, living robots show up asking for maintenance? And then he gives them minor repairs, and in return they give him dimension-forged, precisely-crafted box-end wrenches that feel good in his grip when he uses them to work?
Thanks.
I’m embarrassed to say, but off the top of my head, I’m not even remembering that story. ^_^; Without rereading the entire series, I’m not sure I could help. 🙁
Oh. Well, I had read it years ago. I think it came back to me b/c of the tool theme of the story. Those wrenches were tools. And what are tools for? They’re made to do something, and accomplish a task. They were well-suited to accomplish the mechanical tasks that had to be done.
I think at the end, a “prime” robot shows up. He’s a flyer, but his wings are broken (I think). It seemed to touch on a type of “Thunderbirds Are Go!” theme. They help him get airborne again.
Thanks.
If you find the chapter in question, let me know. I did look a bit and I was surprised at how I didn’t remember happening, even though I read the series. Well, that comes from not rereading the series much. So I’d be curious to know what chapter this came in.
Thats chapter 174 for you.
Chapter 174
Thanks for the info! That is indeed the chapter!
Over a year later and this issue really upsets me. It doesn’t feel like a proper ending and doesn’t rap up any of the loose ends in anyway. We don’t get an after chapter or anything that really tells us how the lives of these characters are going to be and that really is a bad decision on Fujishima’s part. I really hope that he revisits this series somewhere down the line and we actually get all that was missing form this.
Yeah, I hear ya. I think he was so ready to be done with the series, he couldn’t be bothered. (I believe he wanted to end the series many years ago.)
Yeah, all those characters that we needed to know what happened to. Keiichi’s moral family and friends needed to attend their wedding. All the side stories needed to be wrapped up.
Yes, exactly.
Is he immortal now? because belldandy sure is and that would be a shorlasting happiness.
I don’t believe that it was stated that Keiichi is immortal. Based on the story of the goddess of the lake and the human she fell in love with, the human never became immortal. I kinda suspect that the whole reason for the test was to see if Belldandy and Keiichi could honestly deal with the fact that Belldandy would never age, but Keiichi would age and die.
“Any chapped-ass monkey with a keyboard can poop out a beginning, but endings are impossible” – Chuck(GOD)
I think that it’s always about the journey, and it was a good one, it was a marvelous one actually, Belldandy was a gift, not to Keiichi but to us readers, something from the heart of the author that he shared with us, and i thank him for that…
As a writer myself i can tell you how hard it is to say goodbye to characters you created and loved, i bet he cried, i know i did.
We must not confuse this feeling we get in our hearts this little pain we feel with a bad ending, because they’re all gone now, their time with us ended, this is just us saing goodbye and it hurts and if you’re human it should, because you loved them and they are gone and that’s how things should be…
Hahaha!
Possibly. Though I’m told he wanted to quit the series years earlier, but was forced to keep writing by Kodansha. ?