Mara's Other Appearances
Oh My Goddess! exists in a variety of forms, including manga, OAV series, television anime, animated movie, video game, and drama and music CDs. Unfortunately, outside of the manga, the Mini-Goddess anime, and the newer TV anime, Mara has not yet truly appeared in any of the various other incarnations of Oh My Goddess! Thus, here is a short (short!) guide to spotting Mara's cameos (to date) outside the manga and the two televised anime series.
Mara in the Mini-Goddess manga
Mara appears in only one of the short Adventures of Mini-Goddess comic strips, in which she judges the singing of a rock contest. Urd wins the contest when her singing causes Mara to dance uncontrollably. The comic strip can be found as an extra in volume 8 of the Japanese manga, or collected in The Adventures of Mini-Goddess book.
There is also one full-color illustration of mini-Mara, included in the bilingual edition of the Mini-Goddess book. It appears on the same page as a short character biography for her. In the same book, there is also another color illustration of mini-Urd and mini-Mara together, and Mara appears to be making a vulgar gesture with her finger.
Mara in the CDs
Mara's first real appearance outside the manga is on the Aa! Megami-sama Tokuten Ou CD, released way back in 1993. The CD is a collection of songs and drama plays, sung and spoken by characters in the manga. Mara sings a song called "Nekomi no Hito," a warning to the women of Nekomi that "a devil has been summoned," and that their loves will soon come to an end. On this CD, Mara's voice is provided by Takano Urara, the voice actress who will later go on to act as Mara in the Mini-Goddess anime, the quiz video game, and the 2005-2006 anime TV series.
A karaoke version of "Nekomi no Hito" was later included in the 4-disc Aa! Megami-sama Kami no Karaoke set, released in 1994. On the fourth disc of the set, each of the seiyuu from the OAV and drama CDs (including Takano Urara) has a track in which they talk about singing and acting, and whatever else they feel like chatting about.
"Nekomi no Hito" was also re-released in the 2-disc Aa! Megami-sama Tokuten Ou Plus Collection, published in the year 2000.
And of course, you can download a copy of "Nekomi no Hito", as well as read the (translated and original) lyrics, here.
Finally, Mara also appears in the drama tracks on the 2006 Ah! My Goddess Sorezore no Tsubasa Drama Album 1, the first drama album related to the second season of the 2005-2006 anime series.
Mara in the OAV
Although Mara never makes an appearance in any of the OAV episodes, she does make two cameo appearances in the opening credits. She is pictured first with Senbei, and then later as part of a larger collage of characters that scrolls across the screen. Oddly enough, in this latter appearance, Mara is drawn surrounded by the six-legged bugs that infest the Yggdrasil system, while her booster demons appear on the opposite end of the scrolling collage. For screenshots, go here.
Mara in the movie
Mara appears in the background of two photographs that Belldandy finds when she stumbles across Keiichi's photo albums. The photographs appear to depict scenes exactly like chapter 60 of the manga, when Mara, Urd, Skuld, and Belldandy hung out together at an onsen resort. I never actually noticed the photographs when I saw the movie, but Timotheus pointed them out to me. For screenshots, go here.
Mara in the video games
There are two console video games produced for the Goddess franchise, and Mara appears in both of them.
Quiz: Aa, Megamisama! Tatakau Tsubasa Totomo ni ("Together with Fighting Wings") is a trivia quiz video game that features Goddesses and demons asking you, well, trivia questions. That's it. No, really, that's pretty much the entire game. Originally an arcade game, but later released for the Sega Dreamcast platform in 1998, the game features some rare and recent characters from the manga - such as Hild and Rind - and Mara, of course. ^^ The game uses 3D polygon animation to render the characters, with results that are (in my opinion) disappointing when compared to the gorgeous still artwork of the manga, or the beautiful animation in the OAVs and movie. Anyway, in the game, Mara is one of the characters who challenges the player with trivia questions. You can see images of Mara in the video game here.
Mara is also a major character in the PS2 Aa, Megami-sama! game developed by Marvelous Interactive, Inc. For lots of information about the game's story, and images of Mara and other characters, please visit Forgotten Song, my shrine to the game.