Sunday, April 14, 2013
Momo Adachi, a girl whom everyone thinks is a beach bunny / slut because of her tanned skin. The actual reason she is so tanned is because she was on the swim team and tans very easily. She likes a boy, Toji, who she heard only likes non-tanned girls. This causes her to question who she is and have low self esteem. She spends a lot of time trying to remake herself into the girl she believes he wants. However, she has a friend, Sae, who likes to go behind Momo's back and make her life terrible, mostly by trying to take Toji away from her. All the while there's another boy, Kairi, who is in love with Momo.
I don't usually give an anime this low a rating, especially if it's shoujo.
I'll try my best not to rant here. To be honest, Peach Girl was starting to look like a really promising and wonderful anime but after about 15 episodes, I was starting to lose my already-at-the-limit patience at practically all the characters.
Momo is our heroine, a strong-headed swimmer with a tan complex. According to what she has known and heard, her crush likes girls without a tan. She also happens to strongly dislike her orange hair. Fair enough. Next comes our antagonist, Sae, with one of the craziest personalities I've ever seen in an anime.
Period. She's one of the reasons that made me want to drop the anime because I couldn't stand being so angry at something that doesn't actually exist. Following her are our love square finishing pieces, Kairi and Touji. Kairi was undeniably sweet for a male lead, but I don't like how he could continue to love Momo after doubting him and leaving him to go to Touji's side ; repeatedly. As for Touji, I don't have much to say, except I felt sorry for the guy at the end. Come on, who didn't?
Let's talk about the story now.
The beginning, as I mentioned, was very promising. But when we all got to around to the 5th episode ( congratulations to everyone whose patience lasted ), oh, Sae, Sae, SAE was being such a b**** that we all wanted to murder her, or even better, torture her to death. Yes? OK. By the 7th episode, we experience profound relief ( why am I making assumptions for everyone again? ) about this problem being solved. It might as well have been the end of the anime and everyone could have gone about their normal lives.
OH NO.
Have you forgotten Sae, who, with this unfathomable ulterior motive or something like that, will do anything to ruin her "friend", Momo?
And this kickstarts the downfall of the anime.
I generally enjoyed the first few episodes where there was that feeling of "I want that evil woman to suffer" and really, after that problem was solved, I was truly interested in how the story was going to continue. But those episodes didn't really live up to my expectation with Momo switching between Kairi and Touji and hurting both of them in the process. Sae, of course, is still working the wheels in the background with her evil hands. Sometimes. The problem lies in Momo in those episodes, which is why the character rating is so low as well.
The art was really great, I liked how the characters were drawn. They were really pretty but did Momo like her looks? NO. Sorry but if I had hers, I wouldn't have to be worried about anything.
The sound was good, nothing groundbreaking or emotional but just good.
And I have to add, Sae turned out to be my most preferred character in the end.
Yeah, it seems really ridiculous. But I feel that she's the only one with the real character development ( after 24 episodes, yeah sure ) because she became nicer, even by a 0.1% and gave good advice. She also didn't annoy me as much as Momo did in the end. I also noted how Momo's "strong" character decreased at a drastic rate as the episodes went on. Oh no, I'm ranting.
Overall, I'm giving this anime a fair score.
