Oh, My Goddess volumes 17 and 18

Volume 17

Come Walk With Me: Banpei wants Skuld to make the girl robot able to walk. Skuld manages to get the robot girl to do that and even gives her an emotion circuit. The relationship with Banpei is not smooth, to say the least.

Getting to Know You: The robot girl malfunctions. Later she has a talk with Belldandy. She still wants nothing to do with Banpei. She malfunctions for the second time.

Almost My Hero: She is trapped in a well. Banpei offers to help her, but he would have to self-destruct to do it.

Unlicensed Goddess: Something has gone wrong with Belldandy. It turns out her powers are suspended for a week. She didn't renew her license on time. A friend of Keiichi's needs his stuff stored and Skuld makes a device to increase the amount of space.

Wide, Wider, Widest: Keiichi tries to use the machine and creates what amounts to an infinite amount of space, leaving him and Belldandy with no way to find the exit to normal space.

As Long As You're With Me: Keiichi and Belldandy get to talk to each other alone and manage to return to normal space.

Traveler: Keiichi has left his German book in the room that was changed. He finds it and then something huge appears in the room. It's a type of intergalactic traveling whale that was supposedly extinct. It captures Belldandy and Keiichi.

Missing Time: Keiichi and the traveler end up becoming good friends and he introduces the whale to some music. Eventually it has to leave, but it does manage to find others of its kind.

Volume 18

The Phantom Racer is the collective title of the stories in this volume. This particular version is the larger size one and is done in the normal American style of stories, front to back, unlike the more normal Oh, My Goddess volumes which are done in the Japanese style, reading from back to front covers.

Belldandy gets asked for help by a girl that saw a ghost motorcycle. Other bikers verify the story of a ghost on a particular part of the road. Megumi decides she has to race it, having just obtained a very fast motorcycle. The ghost cycle proves faster than hers, although it almost leads her to her death.

Keiichi and Belldandy arrive on the new motorcycle. As they race the spirit bike, the spirit bike is thinking to itself. They end up finding out just what the spirit is and who it belongs to. It's a very nice, very touching story.

The next part of the volume deals with Dr. Moreau. Belldandy and Keiichi end up helping a mad scientist-type guy. His machine fails totally.

The professor ends up at Keiichi's and sees Bandai. The professor runs into an android child and lifts up her skirt, and then later lifts up Urd's skirt to study their hips, supposedly. He finds out Skuld built the android and he ends up really angry. The mad scientist is determined to take the girl android apart.

Banpei arrives, and the scientist is determined to take him apart, also, but it takes Belldandy to finally show him he is on the wrong path.

A good story and a good example of how many scientists so interested in taking things apart that they have no respect for the fact that the thing might be a living creature.