With great power comes great responsibility, a lot of bad things happen in the world, are the gods not responsible for them? Are they not being cruel when they allow these things to happen? This is the question proposed by the antagonist in this movie, which chronologically happens basically after all the TV and OVA series. For anyone who's new to the series, protagonist Keiichi is a regular university student who got lucky when he obtained a contract with Belldandy the godess, that she will "be with him forever". At first Keiichi felt guilty he kind of roped Belldandy into this ridiculous obligation, but overtime they develop a genuine relationship and become bounded by love rather than contract.

In this movie Belldandy has her memory reset to essentially the very beginning of the series, forgetting their 3 years of relationship, not the most original premise for a love story. Unforturenatly there also wasn't enough time for this arc to play out its full potential, in the end it just felt like hey the final boss is here, time to remember everything! The movie needed that screen time to flesh out the antagonist Celestine, Belldandy's mentor. This man had the luckiest job in the world because kid Belldandy is the most lovely being in the universe. However when she came of age she had to basically work as some kind of ambassador to do charity work for people on Earth, which means witnessing all the pain and injustice there for the first time.

I think there are some contradictions in this premise, Celestine is basically denying the value of Earth realm because he saw that it was full of suffering. Belldandy would be in the perfect position to argue against his position, if she hadn't lost her memory of life on Earth. There is also a secondary anatagonist Morgan, who supports Celestine's viewpoint, but she's not human. Sure you could say maybe the reality of suffering is the same for her realm just like on Earth, but I think the story would be more focused if she was also from Earth. Or if this was 2-part movie, one about amnesia the other about Celestine and Morgan.

The sakuga is quite strong in this movie, animation is fluid and there isn't that obvious distinction between stuff that move and don't move in the frame. I really like this consistent look even if it's doesn't have the most detail or highest frame rate. I had this one scene burned into my brain years ago when I haven't watched anything else in the series, or rest of the movie:

▶ You can certainly find more detailed/fluid mech combat scenes from other shows but I just love these sidecar action because the choice of this particular motorsport compliments the theme of the story very well. I'm not a sidecar expert but just looking at the scenes and using basic knowledge of how cars work, you can tell: The maximum speed you can take a left and right turn are different, the driver and passenger are also doing significantly different things in the race. The driver needs to account for the passenger when evaluating the maximum speed at which they can take the next corner. I shouldn't have to explain why these things are thematically significant to the story. Unforturnately again, I think I'm owed at least one more sidecar sequence hinted by the stroy but doesn't happen due to time constraints.

Belldandy and Keiichi's ultimate answer to Celestine's question is not gonna shake your worldview like watching AOT might, but it's still a neat bow to tie everything together, including the rest of the series set before the movie. It is must-watch if you liked the TV or OVA series. Should you watch this by itself? They certainly tried to drop hints everywhere to catch you up, together with me having explained Celestine's motive here, I think there's a good chance you'll enjoy it.

Bonus point for extremely cute final battle outfits for the three godesses