Peach Girl

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I remember the first time I read this manga, I was about 10 years old. I thought it was brilliant and hilarious, and loved every panel of it. But after reading it now, I can see so many flaws in not only the storyline, but also the characters.

The story itself is a unique idea, but is poorly executed. Most of the chapters consist of Momo complaining about how people view her as a slut and isolate her because of her tan skin. Not only is this highly unrealistic, but brought to the utmost extreme. Let me explain what I mean.

Most people might think of her ... that way at first glance, but they most likely wouldn't isolate her as much as the characters in this manga did. It was as if every single character in this manga was a complete idiot. Not to mention, all of the characters always fell for Sae's tricks. Who is Sae? Sae is the conniving little bitch who makes it her top priority to make Momo's life a living hell. Basically the plot consists of her doing everything possible to Momo. Even going as far as to have someone rape her.

Which brings me back to the plot being unrealistic, with millions of plot holes. Not only is the extent that Sae goes to unrealistic, but how the characters react to it are unrealistic too. The whole entire time Momo acts like a complete idiot. She continues to do nothing about what Sae, even when Sae was blackmailing her. The whole entire time, she could have reported Sae. Yeah, it wouldn't be as "exciting", but it would be the smarter thing to do. But no, instead, Momo continues to complain about how much her life sucks.

They also never explain why Sae would go such extremes just to ruin Momo's life. What does she have against Momo? Instead of answering these questions, the writer decides to just throw more unrealistic dilemmas at us to keep the story going.

Then there's Kairi. The only interesting character in this show, who shows the most character development. Not to mention, he gives the manga some comedy. The comedy is probably the manga's best point. You can't help but laugh at many of the scenes.

While all of the characters in this manga seem to be idiots who lack common sense, by far the most boring and painful character to see....is Kazuya. He has absolutely no personality. It was honestly just plain painful reading his dialogue. He makes everything needlessly dramatic, instead of taking the smart way out.

To be honest, it is an interesting read, I admit that I somewhat enjoyed it for some of the chapters. But the whole series of basically just Momo switching back and forth from Kazuya and Kairi. Sae going to ridiculous lengths to ruin Momo's social life. It not only lacks common sense, but also any real development.

As for the art, it was nothing special. Wasn't bad, but wasn't really good either.

Story: 5/10
Art:5/10
Character: 6/10
Enjoyment: 5/10
Overall: 5/10

I apologize for any misspellings or grammar errors in my review.

To be honest, I wanted to drop it after vol 15. I thoroughly read from the first volume, but I JUST CAN'T UNDERSTAND WHY. JUST WHY. Augh.
Anyway, it's your typical shoujo manga at first and all like that, but it got so dragging and I got so upset with the character development that I lost my fondness of it. I was hoping it could turn for the best but I just got disappointed near end (I even sacrificed sleep for this).
But the good side for this manga would be are the tidbits lessons about love. But it still got overboard and the characters got ... so irrational, that I can't even. Whatever.

Man, this series was an emotional roller coaster.

The story was bearable. It wasn't special at all but I enjoyed it. Sometimes parts of it was disappointing. The art was pretty but can be improved upon. The panels are a bit all over the place.

I gave the characters a low score because they weren't believable. Some characters did not change while some did. ( To be honest, Kairi was the most delusional character.)

I gave Enjoyment a higher score because I actually liked it. I read this at the time when I was very lonely, and I could relate to some events.

Overall, ... I actually liked it but it isn't the best manga I've read.

Peach Girl is a nostalgic series for me, it is one of the first shojo series that I really got hooked onto. I loved the bold art style and the characters, the romance, the drama. I really related a lot to Momo, an outgoing but insecure girl that worries about her tanned skin and struggles with a manipulative and jealous friend, Sae.

This manga struck a chord with me particularly because of the duality between Momo and Sae. I knew a girl that was a lot like her when I was growing up, she always seemed to be changing to fit around other people. Every girl ... in our friend group came to resent her because she always found a way to get her hooks into other people’s crushes, boyfriends, and later in life a husband, and usually threw all of those boys away after causing a break-up. I never understood that girl, what motivated her, and what she really got out of these things. This was what made Peach Girl so memorable to me, it perfectly encapsulated a part of my life and it reminded me so much of that time.

Going back to this series as an adult, however, I found myself feeling really conflicted about this series. The story starts off strong, it’s so easy to cheer for Momo with an antagonist like Sae. The romance was believable and sincere, and despite some ups and downs everything felt contained. By the fifth volume, however, things started to go downhill and fast. The drama spirals so drastically out of control, and sexual assault is used as a plot point, and again as a scheme for revenge. It was never treated with any real care and it is gut-wrenching that it was used flippantly for a dramatic story arc. There are other very huge problems later on in the series with plot points that are hideously inappropriate. It left a bad taste in my mouth, but I tried to look past this as being a story of its time.

Even putting that all aside, characters seemed to change their minds so quickly and everything always felt so melodramatic and blown out of proportion. Momo finds herself in a love triangle with two equally wonderful and toxic boys and was hurt over and over again. After eighteen volumes, it frankly became exhausting. The indecisiveness of the characters becomes so frustrating, and I stopped caring about any of the characters.

It is the type of pop drama that was popular when I was a teenager, and it’s amazing that there is both a spin-off and a sequel because it all feels like a never-ending empty trashy drama. I wanted so much to love this series, and for it to be one of my all-time favorites, but I just can’t get past the problematic content to love this series, it just carried on for far too long and went way too far.

I first saw Peach Girl when I was 13 with one of my cousins and I absolutely loved it. There's a lot of anime/manga I saw/read when I was 13 that I absolutely loved, and after rewatching some of them as an older teen/young adult, I realized how shit some of them are. Given that there's been a bunch of series that I loved as a kid and then reintroduced myself to later in life and hated, I knew the same thing would happen if I ever rewatched the Peach Girl anime. So I didn't rewatch it. I read it. I've been on a nostalgia ... kick recently & I couldn't help myself. And the verdict is: I hated reading it.

Is it the worst thing I've read? No, by no means. Is it exhausting? Very. All the characters are so much more annoying than I remember them being. Especially Momo. I normally really like characters like Momo, and I did at first. But as the manga went on she just became extremely insufferable. As well as Kairi. I remember loving Kairi but jesus christ is he annoying as hell during the last couple volumes. And it's not like it's the last couple chapters no it's the last couple VOLUMES that are so obnoxious and exhausting to read. The story is very much high school drama, but it feels like the mangaka said "hey, let's throw shit on the wall and see what sticks". There's so much bullshit, it's so exhausting.

In case you couldn't tell, I find this manga exhausting

I love cheesy melodrama and I have a huge thing for nostalgia so I can't entirely hate it, but god is it worse than I remember (And I read the sequel manga, it's not any better. If you don't like Peach Girl in itself, you're not gonna like the sequel you can live without reading either.)

TLDR: It's not horrible, but it's not lifechanging