Ah! My Goddess: DIVE! LIVE! LOVE!
ああっ女神さまっ DIVE！LIVE！LOVE！
Ah! My Goddess OAD 03 Review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis: 

The goddesses Eir and Saga get their first job, but due to its difficulty, they consult Belldandy, who takes the case for them. She pays a visit to SHIMANO Yuuki’s home, where he tells his mom Belldandy’s his English tutor. After hearing his story of falling in love with a senpai in a band named Mariko, Belldandy submits his wish and says it is accepted. With that, she encourages him to write a letter to Mariko. He does and Belldandy approves of the letter, but Yuuki can’t get near her to give her the letter the following day. That night, Belldandy has Keiichi come over who suggests Yuuki write a song. The next day, he goes into the band’s club room and performs his song for Mariko in front of the club, but he flubs it up and leaves.

That night, Keiichi decides they need to go heavy metal since that’s what Mariko likes, so Skuld and Urd are enlisted to play drums and guitar respectively. Yuuki takes lead, Keiichi takes bass, and Belldandy takes keyboard. After a successful practice, they decide to use an empty space at a local street festival. The next day, Yuuki goes to invite Mariko hear them play, but another guy asks her out instead. Depressed, Yuuki goes off to think by himself on the river bank. Belldandy finds him and manages to encourage him enough to not give up on confessing his feelings to Mariko. Returning to the temple home of Belldandy and Keiichi, he finds the others waiting for him so they can practice again.

The next day, Belldandy wakes Yuuki and gets him to race to the train station where Mariko is waiting for her date to arrive. Though separated by the railroad tracks, Mariko agrees to listen to his song, so Belldandy and the others set up in front of a shop. A cop arrives to break this up, but the small crowd that gathered as well as Mariko ask the cop to let Yuuki and band play one song. The cop gives in, so the band gets ready to start. Mariko’s date arrives, but she shushes him to listen to his heavy metal love song. The train comes as the song ends, but Yuuki is in luck as Mariko stayed and the date left. With Yuuki and Mariko on a date, Mariko’s old date has a wish of Eir and Saga to date Belldandy.

Thoughts/Review:

Meh. Now I remember why I let this gather dust on the shelf so long. The Ah! My Goddess anime franchise hasn’t been good for a while.

What is it with these OVAs and OADs where characters wear the same clothing day in and day out? I mean, if you can actually bother to get Yuuki into a school uniform for a scene, you can get him into different home clothing. Ditto Belldandy, Keiichi, Skuld, and Urd. But hey, why bother with that? After all, giving folks different clothing every day might be realistic, but it probably adds to the production costs, so “up yours!”

As to the story, I didn’t really care about Yuuki, nor his unrequited love for Mariko. I wanted to, but I just never could care.  Maybe I’m just too old or something.

The story played out pretty much by the numbers, thus making it pretty darn boring.  I knew Yuuki would fail at winning Mariko’s heart until the end. About half way through, I started thinking, “Isn’t it about time for Skuld and Urd to be roped into this mess?” Sure enough, here they come, easily talked into joining this heavy metal band adventure.

As to the end, well it was predictable, but since I didn’t care, it didn’t matter. “Yay, Yuuki wins Mariko’s heart in the end as she ditches her date for him. Hurray!  Isn’t life grand? Heavy metal forever!” OK, maybe not.

I will say that I did laugh out loud at Keiichi and Urd head banging with Yuuki.  I don’t think this was supposed to be a funny scene which is probably why it was so funny.

Maybe I’m being too harsh, but the Ah! My Goddess anime franchise hasn’t excited me in a while, and this OAD episode comes off more as a thirty minute advertisement to sell the “This Love” music CD.  As such, I can say that I really didn’t care for this OAD episode.