Wedding Peach Review

It's the Sunday of summer vacation and I thought I'd celebrate by having a mahou shoujo marathon of one particular anime in particular. I chose to watch Wedding Peach amongst the mass collections of anime on the internet. I'm beginning to think perhaps I should have chosen something a little more... interesting.

Wedding Peach was another one of those animes that I had overlooked during the time Sailor Moon came out. I hadn't heard to much about it and I used to see the manga on the same shelves as Magic Knight Rayearth and Peach Girl. Yet, when I heard it was a magical girl anime, I thought I'd give it a shot.

In Wedding Peach (or Ai Tenshi Densetsu Wedingu Pīchi), there are three known worlds--the human world, the angel world, and the devil world. The evil queen Raindevilla yearns to destroy the angel world with help or her many devil minions. The goddess Aphrodite sends an angel to the human world, Limone, to summon three love angels in the form of three school girls, Momoko Hanasaki, Yuri Tanima, and Hinagiku Tamano, who together become Angel Lilly, Angel Daisy, and Wedding Peach. The three girls must fight to overcome the evils of the devils, as well as their own lives, and restore peace to the angel world by gathering all pieces of the Sacred Four Somethings (or Saint Something Four) (Anime News Network).

While most mahou shoujo plots seem pretty superficial upon a simple read of a summary, after watching the first 10-15 episodes, the anime still remained flat and shallow to me. What you see is pretty much what you get. To be honest and as objective as humanly possible, it just seemed like a really bad Sailor Moon rip-off, no to mention the anime art looked incredibly similar. It had an abundance of henshin, which, of course, I liked, yet it was what most people dread and cringe when they think about magical girl anime.
You maybe wondering about in what ways I see this anime to be a Sailor Moon knock-off. Well, for example, Momoko, the main character, is incredibly similar to Usagi in the sense that she's a bit of a crybaby, boy-crazy and a bit irresponsible. I'm sorry, but I think there is only room for one annoying mahou shoujo heroine and Sailor Moon has already filled it (I promise, crybaby and flakiness are not prerequisites for being a mahou shoujo). Also, Wedding Peach's two different forms (her bride form and her fighter form) are quite similar to Sailor Moon's princess form and senshi for, but what makes it even more annoying is that she can do it any time she wants, dulling any kind of symbolic significance either form has (having two different forms, again, is not prerequisite). The need for people's energy and manipulating them is something both anime's villainess' share, but dubbing it Love Energy was a little too corny for me.

I can't say there was very much I liked about it, except for the idea for the Saint Something Four artifacts which comes from the whole wedding-good luck-ritual thing: Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. I thought that was a super cute idea. Jama-P, the Love Angel's official magical pal, is really cute, before and after he's purified. I feel kinda bad how he gets knocked around though.

To be honest, I really don't feel interested enough in it to actually finish the series. It's become extremely predictable (as far as mahou shoujo goes, so that's kinda saying something) and I haven't even read the manga. So, since I'm pretty sure how it's gonna end, I think 15 episodes under my belt is good for now. Who knows, maybe I'll go back to finishing it some time later.

Give me your comments and/or arguments, be nice though (especially if you're a defending fan)! I really wanna hear your thoughts!