The Adventures of the Mini Goddess - The Gan-Chan Files (Vol. 1)

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In these brief cartoons, excessively cute miniature versions of Urd, Skuld, and, occasionally, Belldandy from the Oh My Goddess OAVs get involved in silly misadventures with a walleyed rat named Gan. In the opening episode, Urd misreads Gan's fortune--and marries the hapless rodent to a teakettle (who subsequently elopes with a coffeepot). The cleverest episodes involve "Gabira": Gan turns into a monster-rat in spoofs of the Godzilla movies of the '50s, complete with title sequences. But most of the stories are just inane little comedies that lack the personalities and charm that made the original series a hit. Rated 13 Up, but appropriate for children five years younger; contains minor slapstick violence. --Charles Solomon

Customer Reviews:

Beldandy voice is not original .......2006-05-23

This is the first volume of 4 Mini goddess series along with Beldandy, Urd, and Sculd files. As you may know, this is a kind of parody version of the original "Ah My Goddess" series where the original characters are miniaturized with exaggerated personalities of their own. Gan, the rat living in their house, joins as a hilarious sidekick and sometimes literally as a experimental rat for testing Urd's and Sculd's untrustworthy magic. Like three other volumes, this is super cute, dangerously pretty, and sometimes cheesy funny. Comparing with other volumes, however, this one is a bit focusless. Another pitfall of this volume is the Japanese voice of Beldandy is not the one who acted in other series. Every episode, such as "Ah My Goddess" the TV series, "Oh My Goddess" the OVA version, and "Ah My Goddess" the movie version, the voice of Beldandy was... well I forgot her name... but anyway, always the same person with the whispering and soft tone. But for some reason, in this volume someone else was acting for the Beldandy in Japanese, that makes distracted. But, don't worry too much, in other Mini Goddess series, the original Beldandy voice is back. My guess was they just made this first volume and found that the Beldandy voice must be restored with the original one. The Gabira episode is somewhat needs explanation, especially for viewers who has no exposure to the original Gojira and Ultraman animation. Throughout the Mini Goddess series, they often bring themes from other vary famous Japanese animations. The Gabira episodes are the good example. The original animation where the Gabira theme is from is the Ultraman. The animation is kind of old Japanese animation where a Ultraman is fighting against many monster dinosaurs. Gojira is the king of such monsters. And apparently, transformed rat Gan, Gabira is a joke for the original Gojira. Moreover, when Sculd makes a robot against Gabira, she calls it as Mecha Gabira. Mecha Gojira is also in the original film and here the funny Mecha Gabira reminds that. Also, the background music and many features of the episodes have great similarity with the famous Japanese animation Majinga. So, what I want to say is, if you find some of episodes are off the track and don't make much sense to you, it should because only people who know the original animations can laugh for those episodes, finding stupid funny resemblance between Mini Goddess episodes and the other original animations.

Cuteness Factor at 1000%.......2002-06-21

The adventures of Mini Goddess has got to be the cutest piece of anime out. Basically, the episodes are approx. 5 minutes each allowing our cute little Goddesses to go on all kinds of adventures. The Gan-Chan files is the 1st DVD in the series and contains episodes 1-12. A Better description of this wonderful anime show would probably be it's like the Muppet Babies only 1000 times better. So do yourself a favor and purchase all three, currently available, DVD's of this fantastically cute Anime series. You won't regret it:) You can also be like me and pace back & forth, while waiting patiently for the release of The Adventures of Mini Goddess-The Skuld Files:)

Good clean fun!.......2002-06-12

This DVD will not break in any new social thoughts or change how you think about the world. Rather, it will just simply make you laugh. As previously noted, the characters from the Oh My Goddess! anime series return in a mini form to have short adventures. Most are very humorous and off the wall. The dvd contains 12 of them so you are sure to find one you like. I highly recommend that anyone who is looking for light-hearted fun check this one out!

Cute, but a little off.......2002-06-10

I bought this on a whim, having seen the OAV version of OMG recently and wondering what this was.

And the editorial review is correct. This series is funny, but a bit shallow and lacks the depth of the OAV series. Despite the premise, miniaturized goddesses toying with a morose rat, only a few episodes a genuinely funny.

Most seem to teether between satirizing/ridiculing genres of both movies/books and only succeed partially in doing that.

The funniest ones I found was the 2-part episode about the 'Godzilla'-rat, which (with the longer running time) succeeds
in making fun of the whole 'monster' rampage thing.

I would suggest renting this, before you buy it.

Funny, Fun, & Fantastic.......2002-05-03

This is the funniest little anime bits I've seen in a long time. I really laughed hard. While the animation is good and consistant, it's not amazing as some purists may want it. Being 'shorts' allows for funny genre parodies that would probably have failed if they were any longer. While these bits are part of the Ah! My Goddess universe, there really is no need to know anything about A!MG to watch. If you need some comic relief, pick up a copy of Mini Goddess. You'll find yourself, for the first time, feeling sorry for a rat.

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