~❤️𝓑𝓮𝓵𝓵𝓭𝓪𝓷𝓭𝔂'𝓼 𝓣𝓱𝓮𝓶𝓮❤️~ x「ঌ Ah! My Goddess ঌ」~Bomix~

The theme of Belldandy, Goddess of Love from the 2000s manga/anime series Ah! My Goddess (or Oh! My Goddess, depending on your sources). She is omnipotent as she is kindhearted.

Keiichi Morisato, an unwitting and somewhat down-on-his-luck teenage boy with a passion for motor sports and tinkering, is fortunate enough one day to accidentally summon Belldandy, who happens to be working as an agent for the "Goddess Relief Agency" for unfortunate human souls and, upon being requested for a single wish, somehow manages to blurt out the elephant-in-the-room wish: to have a girl like Belldandy as a girlfriend.

...And so the saga begins.

(Incidentally, Belldandy was partly my inspiration for Kana from my Archetypal Girl Vol.1 project. An angelic girl who is unfailingly kind, innocent and understanding, and is compassionate and helpful to all those around her. This kind of perfect person doesn't exist in real life, of course, but then again, archetypes are meant to be an idealised representation of human characteristics).

Just like in the original theme, I endeavoured to encapsulate innocence, sweetness and vulnerability. The original has a flautist playing the melody, with piano and guitar accompaniment backed by a string ensemble. Not only is it beautiful, it's actually quite an interesting composition, with 3/4 timing and interesting displacement of phrases. There is a triplet feel in my arrangement here too, but it's more compound time (6/8 or 12/8). There are points where I adopt some of the phrase displacements of the original. The original also has that mystical Celtic vibe to it that Japanese composers of this era absolutely nail.

Overall, my rendition is more melancholy and not really as "celtic". Honestly, I'm not sure you can have a pure piano ballad and make it sound celtic, but...maybe you can.

Either way...

I hope you enjoyed this offering. You know what? We all need a Belldandy or someone like her to inspire us with hope and love and pick us up every once in a while when we're feeling down. As long as you can distinguish the real from the fiction, why not have someone like Belldandy in your life, or at least, in your thoughts?

...Or in this case, in your ears.

Thank you for once again for lending me your ears, and I hope you enjoyed!

The image in the thumbnail was illustrated by Hidenori Matsubara and finished by Aiko Matsuyama.

SoundCloud version:   / pdmgz