It's amazing what you can find on eBay! I picked this thing up without really knowing what it would be. All I knew was that it had something to do with Oh My Goddess. I figured it was an album of image songs based on the OVA series. Whatever it was, the price was right, so I took a gamble. Fortunately, that gamble paid off very handsomely for me, even if the album isn't quite what I thought it would be.

This is an album of songs, sung by the voice artists who do the voices for Belldandy, Urd, and Skuld in the Oh My Goddess OVAs and movie. Because I am not fluent in Japanese, I can't tell if the song lyrics really have anything to do with the stories in either the anime or the manga. Thus, I can not comment on that aspect of this album. What I can tell you is that the songs seem, from a musical perspective, to be thematically appropriate for the singers. The songs sung by Belldandy (Kikuko Inoue) are generally calm and flowing, those sung by Urd (Yumi Toma) often have a sultry tendency, and Skuld's (Aya Hisakawa) songs tend to be spunky and energetic.

One wonderful thing about this album for fans of the OVA series is that the majority of these songs feature music that also appears in the OVAs. For example, the seventh song on this album has the same music as "Clear Sky" from the OVA soundtrack. Hearing the music in this order is interesting when you realize that this album came out before the OVA series in Japan, so Japanese fans would have heard the music in the OVAs and recognized it as coming from this album, which is the opposite of my experience.

Even taking into account that I can't understand the lyrics to the songs, I find all of the songs on the album to be enjoyable. Even though the tempos of the songs vary a good deal, they all fall on the lighter end of the general J-pop style of the late '80s and early '90s. My favorite tracks on the album are those sung by Skuld and Belldandy, such as tracks two and seven, but every song has its place and the album as a whole flows well. If you like the music and the Japanese voice actresses from the OVA series, then I can confidently assert that you will enjoy this album as well. Fluency in Japanese will add to your enjoyment, but it is by no means necessary. Bottom line, if you enjoy the Oh My Goddess OVAs and their music, then it is worth your time and effort to track down this album.

Packaging note: The album that I got came inside a slipcase with a special mirrored cover. The slipcase also contained a lyrics booklet, which contains a number of color artworks of the goddesses. I do not know if this packaging is only for the first-print or not; I have seen a SonMay copy advertised on the web with a different cover, but I do not know if Pony Canyon ever issued a version with a different cover than the one shown here.