Watching the 4th DVD now. Ep 14 was about Noble Scarlett, Skuld's angel, and it wasn't at all what I was expecting.

And now, beginning of Ep 15, we get an onsen episode and Mara is in it! And she's in Keiichi's side of the bath!

Things are definitely looking up. I enjoyed every episode of the first series that Mara was featured in. And you know what? She looks good when she's bathing, too. NSFW below the fold.

UPDATE: Halfway through Ep 15. As Mara's harebrained schemes go, this seems to be one of the better ones, assuming that thing works as advertised.

Of course, since she bought it from the demonic equivalent of the Acme Corporation, it's anybody's guess what it's really going to do. My guess: It's actually going to split Mara, not Urd. Considering how incompetent Mara is as a demon, I'm beginning to wonder if she's another half-breed like Urd.

UPDATE: What do you know? It actually did work.

UPDATE: And of course, Mara loses control afterwards.

The definitive Mara sequence is that she hatches a plot, and it doesn't come out the way she wants it to. Mara is a demon first class, but it's obvious that she isn't really all that evil. Being a demon is a job for her, but not really something she's actually fully dedicated to. It's something she does because she'll be fired if she doesn't, and really that's all it is. (And because her parents were demons. It's the family business.)

Fact is, she doesn't want to be truly mean to anyone. Perhaps that's why I like her. And perhaps part of why she's so bad at her job is that she doesn't really want to succeed, deep down.

It does make you wonder how a bumbler like her made Demon First Class, though. Her power is real, and maybe that was the only requirement. It's kind of too bad she can't switch teams. I get the impression she'd be a lot happier on the other side.

Unfortunately, this story (eps 15 and 16) was largely recycled. It didn't really go quite the way the previous one that being the Lord of Terror arc in the first series went, and it doesn't really measure up -- shorter, less exciting, less terrifying. Kind of too bad.

However, it does lay groundwork for Hild to show up. I know she appears in the next DVD, though I'm not sure if it's ep 17 or ep 18. And I won't find out until January, unless I sell my soul and look for fansubs. (I don't want to be told in comments, please.)

Skuld's machine mostly reunited Divine Urd and Demonic Urd, yielding one body, but now she seems to have a split personality. Probably it's because Mara's urn was partially broken. Presumably Hild will show up and fix Urd.

Through the first four DVDs (of six), the only episodes which felt fresh were the 13 and 14, about Skuld. And now that I think about it, ep 13 (Skuld's bicycle) was a partial recycle job on ep 25 of the first season. (Urd's boy friend, that was.)

Before I started watching the second season, I had wondered why they hadn't done any more beyond this. I'm not wondering any more. I think the director and the production house also could see that the series was losing its magic. And in terms of the manga, by the end of this series we'd only have covered about a third of it, if not less.

In comments we had a discussion a couple of days ago about this, about how the mangaka would really like to advance the plot but isn't being permitted to by his publisher.

As to the anime, while there are things later in the manga I wouldn't mind seeing animated, and characters I wouldn't mind getting to know, it really seems as if what little creative fire there was in the beginning is mostly going out. I think two seasons was about the right time to end it.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Ah! My Goddess! at 07:03 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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