Lind (Oh My Goddess!)
Rind (rhyming with 'wind')is the fifth goddess to appear in the popular manga Oh My Goddess! by Kosuke Fujishima. Rind is a Valkyrie, a member of the battle division and is responsible for fighting in the Market Share Battle between heaven and hell. Like the goddesses Belldandy and Peorth, Rind carries a First Class Licence. However, unlike the other two, Rind's licence is classified as 'Special Duty, Unlimited,' which denotes her position as a Valkyrie.
Rind's visit to the mortal realm of Keiichi Morisato and his friends is her pursuit of the Angel Eater, a supernatural beast that feeds upon the angels that goddesses support. After sealing the area against any intrusion, she set about finding where the Angel Eater was hiding. However, she didn't realise that the Angel Eater was a parasite in her own body and that she'd been used by the Demon Hild as part of a nefarious scheme to replace the angels inside the goddesses with devils.
Ultimately, Hild's plans were foiled by Rind and the other goddesses. In the process Rind's entire viewpoint on herself was challenged.
When Rind had first acquired an angel, she discovered to her dismay that it only had one wing. Due to this 'deformity' she was teased by her fellow goddesses and was known throughout heaven - and it appears from Hild's comments hell also - as 'One Winged Rind.' However, she later found out that she had not just acquired one angel, but two. The egg that she'd ingested had hatched and produced twins - but she could only call upon one of them, Spear Mint.
Frustrated by her 'weakness' and resulting inability to call forth her second angel, Rind threw herself into Valkyrie training with incredible ferocity. Not once did she give up, refusing to give way even when it was obvious that things were against her. She was determined to become stronger, thus enabling her to call out her second angel.
However, during the fight with the Angel Eater Rind discovered that it was not strength that she lacked, but trust. She didn't believe enough in herself, nor did she believe in her comrades. It was this realisation that allowed her to call out her second angel, Cool Mint.
To date, Rind is the only goddess who supports twin angels. This marks her as somewhat unique in heaven as a goddess of incredible inner strength. However, her vigorous training had buried her true personality beneath an almost impenetrable network of shields and walls. After the Angel Eater incident, she smiled for the first time in a long while, resulting in a small sliver of her true personality to shine through the walls of her long-running, seemingly indifferent business-like demeanour.
Rind also makes a brief cameo appearance in episode 22 of the Oh My Goddess! TV anime adaptation.
Further information can be found at:
- http://gateway.cjb.net/ - Gateway to the Goddesses, an Oh My Goddess fansite