Mara

From OMGWiki

You may see Mara referred to by a number of other names, such as Marller or Marla. Marller is how Mr. Fujishima romanizes her name whenever her name is written out in roman characters, and Marla is how it sounds like when a Japanese speaker pronounces it (also how Geneon Animation romanized her name in Mini-Goddesses). Mara came to be because her name is written out with the characters ma-ra-, and those people at Dark Horse couldn't possibly know that it was supposed to be Marller. In any case, her name is ambiguous.

Anyway, Mara is a Demon First Class, Unlimited. As a demon, she has a musical weakness (rock in the original Japanese, and disco in Dark Horse's releases) which makes her dance. Also, she's allergic to good luck charms; one incident left her with amnesia in the early manga.

In the early manga, Mara's gender can be easily mistaken. First, because her early designs is not quite revealing and her body is drawn sexless. To confuse the readers a little more, at one point she claims to be Belldandy's fiance, something the goddess denies later, revealing Mara to be a woman as a matter of fact. Her outfits become more showing in the middle manga, and her hair resembles Urd's in that stage. Later, as seen in the picture on the right, Mara's hair becomes more defined and begins to calm down, her face is drawn rounder, as the rest of the AMG characters, and her outfits become less revealing. At this latest stage of the manga, even though she still keeps her signature leather getups and unique metal accesories (such as chains) she becomes more stylized. It is clear Mara's evolution also follows Fujishima's, as the rest of the cast's later designs (especially Belldandy and Urd) are far more developed than in the early manga.

Mara has a past with the sister goddesses, more specifically the older two. Apparently they were childhood friends, and she was particularly close to the half-demon Urd. However, Urd chose to be a goddess, and Mara was left alone. This is a possible motive for her to go and bug the goddesses a lot.

Another motive would be because of her boss, Hild, the ruler of Hell, the counterpart to the Almighty. Hild's a frightening woman; no wonder Mara does her very best to try to overtake the goddesses!

Occasionally, Mara has used the help of other minor demons and creatures to carry her plans. For a while, she had a minor demon named Senbei, the 'God of Poverty and Disaster' as her helper. Later on, Mara would create three tiny ninja lackeys for use in a plan against the Goddesses. In the Mini-Goddesses series, she also recruits the assistance of some talking rats.

Mara is a very complex character, and the nature of the manga does not really allow it to go in depth to explore her character. Consequently, a good amount of the character Mara has to be obtained by observing her, inferring, and digging down. She also wants Belldandy to go back to the sky realm so there would not be so much luck and love around Keiichi.