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lunelis 's review for:
Peach Girl, Vol. 1
by Miwa Ueda
As always, this is an overview of all 18 volumes and will contain spoilers, since I want to discuss the story, characters, plot, themes, etc. in depth.
Before I ever read the manga, I saw the live-action drama adaptation and the anime series for Peach Girl. I became a fan through the adaptations, but eventually found myself enjoying the manga the most. A few years ago, Peach Girl got a live action Japanese film and even a continuation series that’s still ongoing as of this review being written, following the cast 10 years after the events of this series' ending (I haven’t read it myself, but for the author’s sake I hope she doesn’t end up destroying the happy ending we got in this series).
Our story focuses on a cheerful, athletic high school girl with tan skin and bleached hair named Momo (which in Japanese means “peach” hence the title ピーチガール pichi garu literally "Peach Girl" phonetically) who is often stereotyped because of her appearance and finds herself at the center of a lot of drama and heartache because of her frenemy, Sae, and two boys, Toji and Kairi, who become entangled with her romantically.
The majority of the story focuses on Momo’s growth and development through her friendships and romances against the backdrop of turn of the millennia Japan with her unusual looks.
The first thing to note is that this series was published in the late 90s to early 2000s and is set in the same time period, so that changes some of the framework of the story from a more liberal current-day mindset. Allow me to explain for context.
Momo’s appearance (bleached hair and tan skin) was, in the late 90s early 2000s, synonymous with alternative youth culture and fashions like ganguro and gyaru. Both these subcultures/fashions were stereotyped; girls who dressed in either style were thought to be garish, bitchy airheads who partied all day and slept around--the view of them was very misogynistic, to say the least. It also doesn’t help that Momo is tall, athletic, and unafraid to be a bit aggressive when she needs to stand up for herself (as seen by her punching Kairi or yelling at the man in the opening scene who was trying to solicit sex from her on the street), which are all qualities that also go against the Japanese ideal for women: very black hair, very pale skin, very petite frame, very delicate constitution, very demure nature.
Now, I do appreciate the author's attempt to convey the message that stereotyping based on appearance is wrong. It's definitely refreshing to see a heroine with unconventional looks be viewed as beautiful and desireable without having to change how she looks. Momo has bleached hair and tan skin the whole series.
However, I also am disappointed that the reason why Momo gets her story told and is the sympathetic main character is because she so completely rejects everything she's stereotyped as being due to her looks.
Like, the story even found a way to give a justification for why she looks the way she does, rather than allowing it to be okay that she chooses to bleach her hair and get a suntan because she likes that look. It's actually presented as being involuntary, of all things: Momo didn't chose to look like a gyaru, it was because she was on the swim team. The chlorine of the pool bleached her hair and all that time in the sun made her skin tan. It kind frames it like so it's not her fault and she shouldn't be lumped in with those Other Girls.
It would have been more subversive if Momo had been a ganguro/gyaru with some of the more stereotypical qualities (liking to date and party, wearing really trendy and bold fashion) and the manga showed how, despite these things, she's still a great person with a kind heart who deserves to be treated with respect.
Still, I will give the story props for how it decided to utilize Momo's appearance as a way to show a different type of adversity teen girls can face and for how it used it to showcase a much more realistic type of bullying: the subtle, hard to prove kind.
Sae is a great example of a truly unsettling bully: she's incredibly manipulative and creates situations where Momo never can win, exploiting people's assumptions of the both of them to her advantage (like how people inherently see Sae as delicate and Momo as aggressive). Most bullies don't want to bully in ways that'll get them caught. The author does a great job at making Sae a really effective villain because her plots can be so insidious and executed in subtle ways that make you think that someone could actually accomplish it without people catching on.
I think the best demonstration of just how deeply insidious Sae is in her pursuit of hurting Momo is when she executes a plot to manipulate her boyfriend, a male model, into faking a scene at a hotel where Momo assumes she's been drugged and raped.
Now, Momo is not actually raped. Sae drugs her, takes her to a hotel, undresses her, fills a condom with shampoo to fake the evidence, and has her boyfriend behave as if they'd had sex together, citing it was what she'd wanted (since Sae fed him the story that Momo was bullying her and idolized him, so if he slept with her, she'd leave Sae alone). But this scenario is so layered in why it works to Sae's advantage that it's... legit diabolical.
So, normally, this ploy would have fallen apart pretty easily if Momo had gone to the hospital and spoken to the police. A pelvic exam would have disprove that anything happened and a police investigation asking involved parties would have revealed what happened. However, Sae banks on the fact that Momo knows that people would victim blame her for the incident, and also react negatively to her accusing a famous celebrity. It all works out in such a way that Momo's going to think that her only choice is to stay quiet and hide it from everyone because no one is going to believe her or, if they do, have any empathy for her.
With it being the 90s/2000s, Momo's at a huge disadvantage because the way she looks and the fact that she went out alone at night as a girl--automatically the reaction will be this is your fault and you were asking for it. Even worse, some people would probably say she ought to be grateful someone so attractive wanted her--framing it like she should see her assault as a compliment. Then, of course, because her assailant is an attractive, popular model, the model's fans are primed to assume the worst of her and the best of him--she'd have to contend with accusations that she's lying to ruin his reputation because he rejected her.
Any attempt at getting justice in the legal system would be a nightmare of a media circus, and anyone in her life finding out about the assault (regardless of whether it goes to trial) would probably harm her social life, making her feelings of shame and self-blame even worse as she feels ever more isolated and like no one is on her side. Girls would probably not want to be around her because they think she's a slut who threw herself at their favorite celebrity and then lied to try ruining her career/blackmail him when he rejected her, and boys would either refuse to interact with her/date her because she's "dirty" and might accuse them of rape or, worse, think that because she's not a virgin anymore that it's fine to use her for sex and discard her.
On top of this, Mom legit thinks that Toji leaves her because of this; she thinks that he blames her for her assault and that because she's not a virgin she's dirty and he doesn't want anything to do with her now, so on top of everything else, the one person she would want to comfort and protect her the most has abandoned her and she's under the impression it's her fault.
Like good lord is this one of the worst things Sae could have done to Momo. It makes for an incredibly visceral villain arc for Sae, and also, in my opinion, is why she shouldn't have gotten any redemption. She should have gone down as a true villain because this ploy is so fucked up that you can't really bounce back from it. Like, yes the rape itself was fake, but the trauma and fear and shame and loss Momo felt? That was all real.
One of the immediate things this story gets right is the emotional punch it packs, which is due to really good characters and development within an interesting plot. Momo is a fantastic heroine who, despite being this talented, beautiful girl, finds herself riddle with insecurities and often in a distressing, sad situation because the people around her don’t understand her, choose to mistreat/use her, or flat out break her heart with their thoughtless actions. It’s easy to feel for her and understand what she’s going through and how she thinks and feels. I love the relationship she has with Kairi and how his joking, upbeat demeanor and his own complexities make a for an interesting contrast to Momo, who handles her emotions a lot differently.
What’s also interesting about this series is its approach to the character of Sae. She is very loathsome and does some horrific things (which, sadly, the author does kind of gloss over and forgive when really, this girl should have gotten arrested for doing some very serious criminal actions; like, you don't just get to plan a date-rape and black mail and the police let you off, intent to do harm is also a crime it's why attempted murder and intent to do bodily harm are both criminal charges) but there is an attempt to humanize and expand her beyond the typical “jealous, petty bitch who wants to steal boyfriends and be popular just because that's what mean girls do” that a lot of high school girl antagonists tend to be. We learn about Sae’s insecurities and problems, the way her personality and beliefs have impacted her ability to interact appropriately with others. We see some changes in her as things go on and she has experiences that make her realize that, for example, she was the only one making Momo into her enemy. Momo never wished her ill or tried to be anything but a friend, it was Sae who let her own internal insecurities make Momo into a someone to hate and attack. She stops being someone who just seems to like being mean to someone who struggles with the reality that their unhappiness can't be fixed just by crushing the happiness of someone else and that they're never going to be happy if they don't make a change in how they view and treat others.
We also find a great antagonist in Ryo because he’s weirdly realistic; it’s not hard to imagine a charismatic guy ending up like Ryo and treating people the way he does with this unapologetically manipulative demeanor and this skewed perception that allows him to manipulate and abuse Sae, but act perfectly charming towards Misao and go to great lengths for Kairi as his little brother but at the same time feel justified in hurting him by seducing away his girlfriends and turning them against him.
I feel like he ends up with better comeuppance than Sae does, which I have a problem with because, again, Sae has her boyfriend kidnap and drug Momo so that Sae can stage what is basically a date rape so that Momo feels violated and Toji becomes disgusted with her, even going as far to fake a used condom with shampoo and take pictures of Momo naked in bed with Jigoro which she uses to blackmail Toji with so that he’ll break up with her, absolutely crushing Momo because she not only is super vulnerable because she was raped but because she feels like he’s breaking up with her because some other guy touched her and took her virginity despite it being against her will. That isn't to say Ryo shouldn't have gotten his comeuppance, he did some really nasty things himself, but that Sae also 10000% needed to have something more happen to her, too.
To be honest, I think trying to redeem Sae was a little farfetched and I think a more satisfying conclusion wouldn't have redeemed her. Like, you can humanize her, sure, but, she's basically Momo's best friend after everything and sees absolutely no consequences for her actions beyond not being idolized at school with a hot famous boyfriend anymore.
Another point of criticism that I have personally is with Toji (first of all, Toji is just not a great name. They should have just called him Kazuya instead of shortening his surname all weirdly. I'm sure in Japanese it sounds fine but it doesn't in English). He’s just… bland and boring. It’s difficult to ever root for him because the serious, stoic thing he has going makes his personality just really bland. He’s basically just a generally nice guy who is ultimately really dense and destroys his relationship by dumbly listening more to another girl than his own girlfriend about matters involving their relationship. It’s hard to like him, even though he has his moments where you can see he cares. Though, the way he acts with Momo on their trip made me kind of hate him because he was acting kind of like a brat by being pissy that Momo wasn’t feeling up to having sex with him—like the girl is trying to process her emotions and deal with a lot she’s not trying to string you along, she’s confused and got a lot of conflicting turmoil ridden thoughts to sort through after dealing with a lot of stuff over the last several months.
But despite these things, I find myself very engaged with the story and ultimately really enjoying it. I’ve read the manga several times throughout my life and still like a lot of the aspects. The art is really nice, the story is well developed, the relationships feel authentic, the conflict and drama is intense but doesn’t step into aggravating territory, the emotional charge is well executed, and it’s overall just a really good manga read for a slightly older teen audience.
Of course, with it being a product of its time, it is important to note that there’s a few mild instances of like homophobia for example (when Kairi’s groupies find out he had CPR given to him by a guy, they’re grossed out) and there’s a good deal of slut shaming with name calling and characters reacting negatively to characters on the basis they’re promiscuous and therefore bad/awful. We have a few instances of sexual assault (Momo is attacked a few times), there’s the fake-out rape Sae crafts that Momo believes is real (so the trauma is the same), and then there’s Sae being tricked into being in a pornographic video and nearly ending up raped by an adult man and filmed.
One thing I would also like to note is that I feel like Momo believing she’d been raped hadn’t been given quite its due, nor that its focus was quite on the root of the issue, because she recovers from it quickly and seems to go on normally, not really afraid of intimacy or really externally affected despite it being a very traumatic thing.
When it’s later revealed that she wasn’t raped, her joy is mostly in the focus of “since I’m still a virgin I can give it to a boy I love that’s so wonderful I’m so glad” which I suppose you can interpret at Momo feeling she regained control and say over her body because now she can make the choice to give her first time to someone and remember it and make it meaningful like she wanted, but it’s framed kind of oddly, as if Momo was more concerned about her virginity being gone so she can’t give it to Kairi or Toji, rather than being concerned about her body being violated and the choice being taken. It’s at least good that the boys don’t hold the situation against her, even if the way Toji acts can make it be implied that he does until more of the story is revealed.
There is also an instance of like a sort of age gap romance with Ryo and Sae and then a fake out with Kairi having feelings for Misao. Ryo is sleeping with an underage girl so he can choke because he’s also abusive towards her and Misao is a champion for not even entertaining the idea of being with Kairi because he's a minor and she's way older (I think Ryo and Misao are in their late twenties).
Ah, what else?
There’s probably more to talk about, but I might have to come back to this review after doing an in-depth reread with notes so I can better target any additional things that happen. Since I’ve read it so much I feel like I know the story pretty well, but some details may elude me.
Before I ever read the manga, I saw the live-action drama adaptation and the anime series for Peach Girl. I became a fan through the adaptations, but eventually found myself enjoying the manga the most. A few years ago, Peach Girl got a live action Japanese film and even a continuation series that’s still ongoing as of this review being written, following the cast 10 years after the events of this series' ending (I haven’t read it myself, but for the author’s sake I hope she doesn’t end up destroying the happy ending we got in this series).
Our story focuses on a cheerful, athletic high school girl with tan skin and bleached hair named Momo (which in Japanese means “peach” hence the title ピーチガール pichi garu literally "Peach Girl" phonetically) who is often stereotyped because of her appearance and finds herself at the center of a lot of drama and heartache because of her frenemy, Sae, and two boys, Toji and Kairi, who become entangled with her romantically.
The majority of the story focuses on Momo’s growth and development through her friendships and romances against the backdrop of turn of the millennia Japan with her unusual looks.
The first thing to note is that this series was published in the late 90s to early 2000s and is set in the same time period, so that changes some of the framework of the story from a more liberal current-day mindset. Allow me to explain for context.
Momo’s appearance (bleached hair and tan skin) was, in the late 90s early 2000s, synonymous with alternative youth culture and fashions like ganguro and gyaru. Both these subcultures/fashions were stereotyped; girls who dressed in either style were thought to be garish, bitchy airheads who partied all day and slept around--the view of them was very misogynistic, to say the least. It also doesn’t help that Momo is tall, athletic, and unafraid to be a bit aggressive when she needs to stand up for herself (as seen by her punching Kairi or yelling at the man in the opening scene who was trying to solicit sex from her on the street), which are all qualities that also go against the Japanese ideal for women: very black hair, very pale skin, very petite frame, very delicate constitution, very demure nature.
Now, I do appreciate the author's attempt to convey the message that stereotyping based on appearance is wrong. It's definitely refreshing to see a heroine with unconventional looks be viewed as beautiful and desireable without having to change how she looks. Momo has bleached hair and tan skin the whole series.
However, I also am disappointed that the reason why Momo gets her story told and is the sympathetic main character is because she so completely rejects everything she's stereotyped as being due to her looks.
Like, the story even found a way to give a justification for why she looks the way she does, rather than allowing it to be okay that she chooses to bleach her hair and get a suntan because she likes that look. It's actually presented as being involuntary, of all things: Momo didn't chose to look like a gyaru, it was because she was on the swim team. The chlorine of the pool bleached her hair and all that time in the sun made her skin tan. It kind frames it like so it's not her fault and she shouldn't be lumped in with those Other Girls.
It would have been more subversive if Momo had been a ganguro/gyaru with some of the more stereotypical qualities (liking to date and party, wearing really trendy and bold fashion) and the manga showed how, despite these things, she's still a great person with a kind heart who deserves to be treated with respect.
Still, I will give the story props for how it decided to utilize Momo's appearance as a way to show a different type of adversity teen girls can face and for how it used it to showcase a much more realistic type of bullying: the subtle, hard to prove kind.
Sae is a great example of a truly unsettling bully: she's incredibly manipulative and creates situations where Momo never can win, exploiting people's assumptions of the both of them to her advantage (like how people inherently see Sae as delicate and Momo as aggressive). Most bullies don't want to bully in ways that'll get them caught. The author does a great job at making Sae a really effective villain because her plots can be so insidious and executed in subtle ways that make you think that someone could actually accomplish it without people catching on.
I think the best demonstration of just how deeply insidious Sae is in her pursuit of hurting Momo is when she executes a plot to manipulate her boyfriend, a male model, into faking a scene at a hotel where Momo assumes she's been drugged and raped.
Now, Momo is not actually raped. Sae drugs her, takes her to a hotel, undresses her, fills a condom with shampoo to fake the evidence, and has her boyfriend behave as if they'd had sex together, citing it was what she'd wanted (since Sae fed him the story that Momo was bullying her and idolized him, so if he slept with her, she'd leave Sae alone). But this scenario is so layered in why it works to Sae's advantage that it's... legit diabolical.
So, normally, this ploy would have fallen apart pretty easily if Momo had gone to the hospital and spoken to the police. A pelvic exam would have disprove that anything happened and a police investigation asking involved parties would have revealed what happened. However, Sae banks on the fact that Momo knows that people would victim blame her for the incident, and also react negatively to her accusing a famous celebrity. It all works out in such a way that Momo's going to think that her only choice is to stay quiet and hide it from everyone because no one is going to believe her or, if they do, have any empathy for her.
With it being the 90s/2000s, Momo's at a huge disadvantage because the way she looks and the fact that she went out alone at night as a girl--automatically the reaction will be this is your fault and you were asking for it. Even worse, some people would probably say she ought to be grateful someone so attractive wanted her--framing it like she should see her assault as a compliment. Then, of course, because her assailant is an attractive, popular model, the model's fans are primed to assume the worst of her and the best of him--she'd have to contend with accusations that she's lying to ruin his reputation because he rejected her.
Any attempt at getting justice in the legal system would be a nightmare of a media circus, and anyone in her life finding out about the assault (regardless of whether it goes to trial) would probably harm her social life, making her feelings of shame and self-blame even worse as she feels ever more isolated and like no one is on her side. Girls would probably not want to be around her because they think she's a slut who threw herself at their favorite celebrity and then lied to try ruining her career/blackmail him when he rejected her, and boys would either refuse to interact with her/date her because she's "dirty" and might accuse them of rape or, worse, think that because she's not a virgin anymore that it's fine to use her for sex and discard her.
On top of this, Mom legit thinks that Toji leaves her because of this; she thinks that he blames her for her assault and that because she's not a virgin she's dirty and he doesn't want anything to do with her now, so on top of everything else, the one person she would want to comfort and protect her the most has abandoned her and she's under the impression it's her fault.
Like good lord is this one of the worst things Sae could have done to Momo. It makes for an incredibly visceral villain arc for Sae, and also, in my opinion, is why she shouldn't have gotten any redemption. She should have gone down as a true villain because this ploy is so fucked up that you can't really bounce back from it. Like, yes the rape itself was fake, but the trauma and fear and shame and loss Momo felt? That was all real.
One of the immediate things this story gets right is the emotional punch it packs, which is due to really good characters and development within an interesting plot. Momo is a fantastic heroine who, despite being this talented, beautiful girl, finds herself riddle with insecurities and often in a distressing, sad situation because the people around her don’t understand her, choose to mistreat/use her, or flat out break her heart with their thoughtless actions. It’s easy to feel for her and understand what she’s going through and how she thinks and feels. I love the relationship she has with Kairi and how his joking, upbeat demeanor and his own complexities make a for an interesting contrast to Momo, who handles her emotions a lot differently.
What’s also interesting about this series is its approach to the character of Sae. She is very loathsome and does some horrific things (which, sadly, the author does kind of gloss over and forgive when really, this girl should have gotten arrested for doing some very serious criminal actions; like, you don't just get to plan a date-rape and black mail and the police let you off, intent to do harm is also a crime it's why attempted murder and intent to do bodily harm are both criminal charges) but there is an attempt to humanize and expand her beyond the typical “jealous, petty bitch who wants to steal boyfriends and be popular just because that's what mean girls do” that a lot of high school girl antagonists tend to be. We learn about Sae’s insecurities and problems, the way her personality and beliefs have impacted her ability to interact appropriately with others. We see some changes in her as things go on and she has experiences that make her realize that, for example, she was the only one making Momo into her enemy. Momo never wished her ill or tried to be anything but a friend, it was Sae who let her own internal insecurities make Momo into a someone to hate and attack. She stops being someone who just seems to like being mean to someone who struggles with the reality that their unhappiness can't be fixed just by crushing the happiness of someone else and that they're never going to be happy if they don't make a change in how they view and treat others.
We also find a great antagonist in Ryo because he’s weirdly realistic; it’s not hard to imagine a charismatic guy ending up like Ryo and treating people the way he does with this unapologetically manipulative demeanor and this skewed perception that allows him to manipulate and abuse Sae, but act perfectly charming towards Misao and go to great lengths for Kairi as his little brother but at the same time feel justified in hurting him by seducing away his girlfriends and turning them against him.
I feel like he ends up with better comeuppance than Sae does, which I have a problem with because, again, Sae has her boyfriend kidnap and drug Momo so that Sae can stage what is basically a date rape so that Momo feels violated and Toji becomes disgusted with her, even going as far to fake a used condom with shampoo and take pictures of Momo naked in bed with Jigoro which she uses to blackmail Toji with so that he’ll break up with her, absolutely crushing Momo because she not only is super vulnerable because she was raped but because she feels like he’s breaking up with her because some other guy touched her and took her virginity despite it being against her will. That isn't to say Ryo shouldn't have gotten his comeuppance, he did some really nasty things himself, but that Sae also 10000% needed to have something more happen to her, too.
To be honest, I think trying to redeem Sae was a little farfetched and I think a more satisfying conclusion wouldn't have redeemed her. Like, you can humanize her, sure, but, she's basically Momo's best friend after everything and sees absolutely no consequences for her actions beyond not being idolized at school with a hot famous boyfriend anymore.
Another point of criticism that I have personally is with Toji (first of all, Toji is just not a great name. They should have just called him Kazuya instead of shortening his surname all weirdly. I'm sure in Japanese it sounds fine but it doesn't in English). He’s just… bland and boring. It’s difficult to ever root for him because the serious, stoic thing he has going makes his personality just really bland. He’s basically just a generally nice guy who is ultimately really dense and destroys his relationship by dumbly listening more to another girl than his own girlfriend about matters involving their relationship. It’s hard to like him, even though he has his moments where you can see he cares. Though, the way he acts with Momo on their trip made me kind of hate him because he was acting kind of like a brat by being pissy that Momo wasn’t feeling up to having sex with him—like the girl is trying to process her emotions and deal with a lot she’s not trying to string you along, she’s confused and got a lot of conflicting turmoil ridden thoughts to sort through after dealing with a lot of stuff over the last several months.
But despite these things, I find myself very engaged with the story and ultimately really enjoying it. I’ve read the manga several times throughout my life and still like a lot of the aspects. The art is really nice, the story is well developed, the relationships feel authentic, the conflict and drama is intense but doesn’t step into aggravating territory, the emotional charge is well executed, and it’s overall just a really good manga read for a slightly older teen audience.
Of course, with it being a product of its time, it is important to note that there’s a few mild instances of like homophobia for example (when Kairi’s groupies find out he had CPR given to him by a guy, they’re grossed out) and there’s a good deal of slut shaming with name calling and characters reacting negatively to characters on the basis they’re promiscuous and therefore bad/awful. We have a few instances of sexual assault (Momo is attacked a few times), there’s the fake-out rape Sae crafts that Momo believes is real (so the trauma is the same), and then there’s Sae being tricked into being in a pornographic video and nearly ending up raped by an adult man and filmed.
One thing I would also like to note is that I feel like Momo believing she’d been raped hadn’t been given quite its due, nor that its focus was quite on the root of the issue, because she recovers from it quickly and seems to go on normally, not really afraid of intimacy or really externally affected despite it being a very traumatic thing.
When it’s later revealed that she wasn’t raped, her joy is mostly in the focus of “since I’m still a virgin I can give it to a boy I love that’s so wonderful I’m so glad” which I suppose you can interpret at Momo feeling she regained control and say over her body because now she can make the choice to give her first time to someone and remember it and make it meaningful like she wanted, but it’s framed kind of oddly, as if Momo was more concerned about her virginity being gone so she can’t give it to Kairi or Toji, rather than being concerned about her body being violated and the choice being taken. It’s at least good that the boys don’t hold the situation against her, even if the way Toji acts can make it be implied that he does until more of the story is revealed.
There is also an instance of like a sort of age gap romance with Ryo and Sae and then a fake out with Kairi having feelings for Misao. Ryo is sleeping with an underage girl so he can choke because he’s also abusive towards her and Misao is a champion for not even entertaining the idea of being with Kairi because he's a minor and she's way older (I think Ryo and Misao are in their late twenties).
Ah, what else?
There’s probably more to talk about, but I might have to come back to this review after doing an in-depth reread with notes so I can better target any additional things that happen. Since I’ve read it so much I feel like I know the story pretty well, but some details may elude me.