Just because its Japanese Anime doesn't mean it has to be serious and dramatic in nature? Take the case of The Adventures of Mini-Goddess. These 12-minute adventures are strictly about entertainment. There are no major villains, no underlying back-story and no limits to the zaniness that Skuld and Urd get up to with their rat friend, Gan-Chan. The first volume in this new DVD series, The Gan-Chan Files, contains the first 12 episodes. Each one features the goddesses trying to help poor Gan-Chan with the typical zany results viewers would expect.

Being very light in nature, the character designs for Mini-Goddesses is overly cute. Approaching the super-deformed or chibi style are the designs for each of the Goddesses, Belldandy, Urd and Skuld. Colors and backgrounds are bright in nature, without a lot of detail to cloud the picture.

Both the Japanese and English soundtracks are playing for laughs. The casts on both sides are small, due to the limited number of characters running around. Scriptwise, the English track stays fairly close to the Japanese track with substitutions made for mouth flaps and some of the more hard to follow Japanese puns. Overall, the English cast performs well carrying out the overall fun tone of the show.

Extras wise, the disc is rather weak. There's only a color gallery featuring Belldandy. Of course, the lack of extras is made up for by the fact that the disc contains 12 episodes, which would be equivalent to 6 regular time episodes.

For the most part, each of the stories told on this disc are self-contained. They all have the same basic plot line, with Gan-Chan wanting something and Urd and Skuld trying to help him out. Of course, despite their good intentions, something always seems to go wrong and Gan-Chan usually ends up having to be saved by Belldandy. Despite this obvious predictability, each story remains fun in tone and is always worth a few chuckles. At other times, things are laugh out loud funny as Skuld and Urd just cause more trouble for Gan-Chan. There are quite a few Japanese puns and other pop-culture references, but nothing a savvy audience couldn't keep up with.

The Gan-Chan Files provides a nice break from a lot of the heavy thinking Anime that exists. This is the perfect disc to plug in on a rainy afternoon for a few laughs. The animation is nice to look at and the casts do a good job of keeping the pace up as the episodes zip by. With 12 episodes, its also a good value despite the lack of extras.