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Apr 20 2006

Categories: anime, belldandy, episodic review
Tagged: belldandy

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What Belldandy Wants Most wrapped up in 24 minutes.

The blastphemy of Belldandy and K1 working at AM PM continues. I still can’t believe what they’re doing with the series… bagpipes… sigh. Here she is foiling a robbery attempt because no one can point a gun at Bell. Not possible. I’m kidding. About the robbery attempt.

Predictably, everyone at the store is really there just to interact with Bell. Poor K1.

In both meanings. He realizes that Christmas is fast approaching, and he doesn’t know what to get Bell… after all, she made for him a sweater, and he never returned the favor. So he asks the little girl whom he helped back in season one (note that the girl is carrying a balloon), and she says someting like, “Diamond ring. Big, fat rock.” Of course, K1 is so poor since he’s working at AM PM, he can’t afford the ~$1,800 ring that Belldandy is beaming over. Of course, Belldandy beams over everything, including the predictable response to, “What do you want, Bell?”

“Soy sauce!”

I expect no less from an Iron Chef.

Still, soy sauce isn’t exactly the way to a girl’s heart, so he asks Skuld for her answer, and, well, let’s just say no additional wisdom was gleamed. K1 still has the ring on his mind, and Urd urges him to go for it and get the ring… for Urd. Aren’t the goddesses able to materialize whatever they want? Yet… diamonds.

K1 knows that a job at AM PM isn’t enough to earn the ring, so he decides to take up some extra part time jobs. Yet, he wants to surprise Bell so he tells her that he’ll be late home for a while and not to worry about him. To trust him. I mean, what else could he be doing? Homework? Sayoko? It’s K1, not Matsumaru.

(Yep, this was always one of the weaker stories in the manga. At least in the OVA, they tossed in the angsty yet confusing tree story to add some spice. Here, they’re doing it straight up making it seem more nothingburgerish than an episode of REC. Only at least with REC, there’s a chance we might get to see Aka in her underwear. I disgress.)

Urd manages to help K1 score some work. She’s no Monster.com. Hell, she’s not even Yahoo! Classifieds.

Meanwhile, Belldandy is pining for K1 to get home and waits for him like an overprotective father waiting for his 16 year old daughter to come back from a date with a guy named, “Rufus.”

Skuld is so left out of this episode, she even begs Bell to let her help out. Completely underutilized goddess… if I were writing the script, I would spice it up by having Skuld interfere with K1’s work by making inventions that are supposed to make it easier only they completely backfire and explode. Can’t miss.

A montage of various jobs that K1 takes up…

… including contruction worker, waiter at The Blue Oyster Bar, and a fill-in for David Hodo of Village People.

(I bet all the French, Malaysian, and Japanese readers are scratching their heads right now, whereas anyone who has watched Police Academy are probably nodding…)

Belldandy has an anxious heart wondering where K1 is. I mean… has it even been a week yet? They toss out “trust” a lot, but where’s the temptation? Sayoko? Tamiya? Otaki?

(This is why I say this is a weak story… in order to properly push this “trust” angle, there must be some temptation or conflict for K1. There isn’t. The story’s just too staightforward… it’s like if School Rumble had a story where Harima confesses to Tenma, and she understands him perfectly… what’s the fun in that?)

Of course, Bell suspects that Urd is involved, and she is. She’s K1’s job finding agent/pimp and tells Bell to trust K1. I’m at the point if I hear, “shinji te” one more time, I’m just going to hit “stop” and go to bed.

Of course, he earns ~$2k doing meanial, minimum wage labor in a week. No plot hole or contrivance here… keep looking! Wen he goes to pick up the ring, Sayoko has snatched it first. Ho-ho-ho!

(Notice how Sayoko is wearing the same red outfit as the previous episode. I can understand why K1 never changes, but Sayoko? Isn’t she supposed to be super rich and showed off that awesome closest full of sweaters of hers last episode? BTW, Urd seems to change outfits every episode at least.)

Her hawtness, Santa-Urd.

(Even if she looks hung over, I’d still sit in her lap.)

K1 begs Sayoko to sell him the ring, and seeing how desperate K1 is, Sayoko takes advantage of the situation and parades Urd and K1 around in Christmas-ish costumes. Damn. Is it too late for me to Fed-Ex her Haruhi’s bunny costume? Urd would probably like it. ^^

The little girl from earlier loses her balloon… I mean… don’t the writers know that time has passed? If it’s the same balloon, wouldn’t it have deflated by now? If it’s a new balloon, why would the girl throw a tantrum that she wants _that_ balloon and doesn’t want mommy to buy a new one? I haven’t seen this sloppy of script proofing since the gas cloud observation equipment mysteriously teleported from the Excelsior to the Enterprise in Undiscovered Country. (Ha! You thought I would toss in an Otome reference instead? Though, I commend people who have waded through this post thus far, despite my nerdy Star Trek reference and my haardo gay Village People joke.)

Predictable… K1 climbs to rescue the balloon, both because he’s a nice guy and he wants that ring. He gets close… and falls.

Of course, Bell just happens to wander over here (she’s been waiting for K1 for a date where he was supposed to give her th ring) and saves him. Yeah… that looks like a ram she’s tossing out… I really hope the 16:9 version looks better and/or have better animation. The animation quality for ああっ女神さまっ is just so dated compared to the top tier shows now.

K1 asks Bell to marry him, and a pack of rabid fanboys tear him to shreds.

Happy end. Like always.