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The artwork currently reflects the most current of Fujishima-sensei's ever-changing styles, which is both good and bad. I kind of liked reading the manga from the beginning because of how the characters not only mature emotionally, but also physically in appearance and style. The good thing is that they reverted Keiichi's hair to be all shaggy instead of well-cut (that's the only hair-change I know of that was actually involved in the storyline). The only other thing is that Marller is seem in her most recent physical incarnation, but when she first appeared in the manga she was mistaken for a man. Doesn't seem like much luck with that this time, though. The animation for the first episode is very well done at this point.
One other nitpick I really wish any of the anime adaptions would try to incorporate is Belldandy's original hair color, which is black and white instead of brown. Her brown hair is the result of Belldandy trying to take on an appearance more acceptable by Earth standards, and in the manga whenever she reverts back to her goddess form her hair returns to being black and white.
The episode ends with Belldandy entering Keiichi's room through the mirror as a cliffhanger. It's surprising how slow it was to get things started, because the OVA was really fast-paced, especially for the first episode (well, to fit a good amount of things into only five episodes would warrant that...). Also, the manga begins with Belldandy entering Keiichi's dorm room from the mirror on the second page of the first chapter. If the first run is only scheduled to be twenty six episodes, I would think they would attempt to get moving a little quicker so a few more of the more popular characters would get introduced, thus warranting the popularity of the series to the heights they need to continue on.
The only problem with that is that Mr. Gohda, the director of the series, stated that he wished to be able to animate the entire manga series. If that's to be done, he'll need to get through a lot of one-shot stories of the beginning before he can get to the more popular middle and current volumes of manga, which could more easily be condensed (I mean, c'mon... most of the new volumes hold only one, two, or very rarely three major continuities). At the current rate, getting to a twenty-six episode set demanding a continuation seems... out of their reach, even if simply relying on the popularity of the manga.
A few changes from manga-to-anime was that there's a narration by Touma Yumi (the seiyuu for Urd, although it's unclear whether or not it's intended to be Urd) in the beginning, which wasn't present in the manga or OVA. I'm assuming it's just filler, or they could use it for some major developments later on when the series reaches it's climax. Also, Keiichi is mentioned to be a sophomore at Nekomi Tech, although I always assumed he was a freshman (Megumi, his sister, is one year younger than him and applies to Nekomi Tech eventually as well. Wouldn't that happen while he's still a freshman so she could take the entrance exams?). Sora is introduced early on, which is strange to me since she's supposed to be at least one or two years under Keiichi and doesn't appear until later.
Another thing that may cause problems later on, depending on how they handle it, is how Keiichi is now currently taking a German class. If I'm not mistaken, in the manga he had to take another semester of college in order to fulfill a second foreign language requirement (English doesn't count). That is why he's able to take only one class as well as work full-time.
Also, they visit a few other places in the manga, such as with the minibike introduced with Chihiro's introduction into the storyline. Keiichi's unsuccessful attempt at wooing Miss Sayoko was displayed in this episode, which was originally mentioned in Chapter 005 of the manga.
Overall, this episode seemed to be more of a huge filler to introduce more of the social and school-related aspects of Ah! My Goddess rather than simply diving into the series introducing the goddesses one after the other.