UPDATE: Ep 17 was amazingly good. Hild is magnificent!

One of the best things about it was watching Mara. Ep commentary, involving at least some spoilers, below the fold:

One of the classic Warner Brothers cartoons involved a sheepdog and a wolf. They meet in the morning, walk to work together while making small talk, and when the whistle blows for the morning shift, the wolf tries to steal sheep that the sheepdog is guarding, with all the classic overwrought violence that WB cartoons are famous for. At one point the sheepdog has caught the wolf and is beating the crap out of him -- and the whistle blows for lunch. They stop, go over and get their lunch pails, have lunch together, and then walk casually back to where they were, and as the whistle blows to begin the afternoon shift the sheepdog goes back to beating up the wolf.

End of the cartoon, the sheepdog is about to cause horrible injury to the wolf when the whistle blows. The sheepdog stops, says to the wolf, "Let's pick it up from there tomorrow, OK?" And they walk home together, once again exchanging smalltalk.

Mara's relationship with the goddesses seems to be like that. They're on opposite teams, but Mara and Urd are good friends, and I think that Beldandy likes Mara too. In ep 16 Mara used a magic item to split Urd into two, her goddess part and her demonic part. The demonic part was in a clone body, but it began to break down. Skuld created a machine to merge them back together but it didn't work perfectly. Afterwards the two sides were back in the original body, but the personalities were still separate.

Mara's plot was already blown, and at the beginning of this episode she's actually working with the goddesses to try to figure out what could be done for her friend, Urd. They conclude that not even a goddess first class (i.e. Beldandy) or a demon first class (Mara) can do anything about it. It'll take a higher power, and of those there are only two choices. Actually only one, because the Almighty wouldn't do it. He'd use the opportunity to cleanse Urd of all her demonic aspects -- and then she'd be a different person. Bel and Skuld don't want that; they want the sister they grew up with and that they love.

And Mara doesn't want that, either, because then Urd wouldn't be her friend any more. So there's just one choice.

So Urd calls Hild. And the entire time Hild was there, Mara was a wreck. Sitting on the ground, hugging herself and shivering and whimpering. At one point she even hides behind Keiichi. I think she was afraid Hild was going to punish her for causing harm to Urd. Mara's not very smart; it's obvious that Hild is behind it all, and planned it precisely to set up a situation where Urd would ask Hild for help.

Another thing that was interesting was to see that Beldandy was not intimidated by Hild. Among other things, she addresses her as "Hild" with no honorific. She speaks bluntly to Hild -- with a smile on her face, but she speaks bluntly. It's very uncharacteristic of Beldandy.

It didn't seem to be bravado, either. I think that it's because Beldandy figured out what Hild really wanted. Hild's price for helping surprised me, though. And indeed it is devious in the extreme, a very small and simple thing that could be extraordinarily significant.

Mara is a bumbler; Hild is not. I do hope she becomes more of a presence in the remainder of the series, but I fear she won't really be. (Though it's likely we'll see her at least once more.)

By the way, another great casting choice. Hild has the same seiyuu as Plakia from "Crest of the Stars", and it's a much more interesting part.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Ah! My Goddess! at 11:41 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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