That was a MISTAKE. Comparing both of them at the same(ish) time only made the anime’s flaws WORSE.
The original manga has its problems (which I’ll discuss when I write my manga review), but the anime’s far surpasses those!
Almost nothing about the anime is worth:
– not the animation;
Which is ugly, broken, lazy, not at all like Miwa Ueda’s cute art style. Many animations from the early/mid 2000’s were kind of like that, but this just looks waaaay worse than what you’d usually see. The result of this animation looks like a bunch of college kids who just learned how to animate took a dive into their very first official job.
I don’t know any other anime made by Studio Comet – I think I’ve never watched anything by this studio – but I sure hope that they have improved. Otherwise, I won’t be watching any more of their stuff.
– not the music;
Boring and forgettable, neither the opening nor the ending were entertaining enough. I just skipped to the episode all the time.
– not the adaptation changes;
Yes, there ARE adaptation changes. Tons of it!!! They try to tame the story a lot, but how do you tame a story that was originally intended to be a bit risqué? Sex is a big part of this story (there are no sex scenes per say, but it's still important for the development of some characters/some relationships/the story itself), if you try to censor that because there might be kids watching, it will feel like a botched up version of the original work.
I felt that those changes were pointless and all they did was make me dislike this anime adaptation more and more.
Now, I may be sounding way too harsh so I will say two of the things that I actually liked about it:
– The VAs;
Everyone did a great job to portray these characters. Even though I read the manga in portuguese (and later in english), I could definitely match the anime’s voice actors with the voices I had given them myself. Sae sounded very sae-ish, Kairi was super kairi-ish, Momo sounded very fine and Toji was… well, Toji. I’m not a big fan of Toji lol
– The fact that this is a COMPLETE adaptation:
This caught me completely off guard, seeing as most anime adapted from a source (be it manga, light novel, visual novel, etc) have no “proper” ending or they make their own ending. In Peach Girl’s case, while the adaptation was poorly made, it was indeed a complete adaptation. With many changes, but the ending (and most of the important parts) were still the same!!
Even so, I still think watching this anime was a huge waste of time. If you want to experience Peach Girl, I strongly recommend for you to only read the manga.
