Way back in the early 90s when Sailor Moon was released it created a stir in the anime world. That stir was the reinvigoration of the magical girl genre that had lain dormant for some time. It also helped popularize the shōjo anime concept and soon there were many copycat series running amuck. I suppose you could say that plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery, but the market became saturated with these "magical girl saving the day" adventures. One such series was Wedding Peach.

Despite having a ridiculous name and cracked-out premise, Wedding Peach has the power to not only make you laugh, but cause your peers to laugh at you. Before ripping the show too much though, you do have to take into consideration that it is shōjo anime. That means it's geared towards younger girls and doesn't really deviate from that target audience. Despite this, the show actually proved itself to be popular in Japan with a manga and a total animation run of 51 episodes that were broadcast between 1995 and 1996.

After watching the show, I do have to say I'm kind of surprised that Wedding Peach went as far as it did. It wasn't the most creative series in the world and quite frankly at times it felt like a blatant attempt to ride a wave of success created by Sailor Moon. Of course we're talking about a show that is ten years old here so I suppose you have to take age into consideration. The show also didn't bring a lot to the table in terms of interesting and impressionable stories. In fact I'd say that for most of the series I found myself bored out of my skull.

The story focuses on three school girls who are just about as average as you can get. Momoko, Yuri, and Hinagiku are really as plain toast as it comes when you're looking at a magical girl anime. They all have a-typical backgrounds and there really is nothing unique about either of them. They fawn over boys all day, talk about their future wedding, and eat crepes. At least, that's how things were until Momoko went outside of the house with her late mother's ruby ring on her finger one particular day.

A magical evil lunatic appeared out of thin air and attempted to snatch the ring away from Momoko, blathering on about the Saint Something Four. Naturally she had no clue what's going on but things only got weirder when an angel appeared named Limone and her two friends were possessed by devils. Out of the blue Limone dropped a magical charm into her hands, which looked more like a tacky compact case for make-up than anything else. With some direction from Aphrodite (the Goddess of Love) Momoko used the compact to transform into Wedding Peach and save the day.

If you're thinking to yourself, "what the?" then you're about at the point where I was when I saw that. In the episodes that follow we see Momoko's friends gain special powers as well. Yuri becomes Angel Lily and Hinagiku turns into Angel Daisy. Together they form a trio of warriors out to fight for the power of love and put an end to hate. Of course balancing all of the saving the world stuff with trying to find the right guy becomes a bit of a challenge. The series plays off of the fact that the girls lead two lives and often dabbles with the troubles that stem from that.

Fortunately the show never takes itself too seriously, which is something that helps the concept from being even more ridiculous than it already is. The bad guys are over the top and seeing their antics as they inspire hate across the globe is kind of funny. There is a definite sense of humor to everything and at times it's almost like the creators realized how silly their own series was. This set contains the complete first season which is 27 episodes when you get right down to it. Without the rest of the series it feels very incomplete by the time the last disc leaves the DVD player. Even so, the episodes that are in this collection get progressively better as the show forges ahead and there is a decent amount of continuity between each of them. That's kind of important for a series of this nature.

Fans of magical girl anime will get the most out of Wedding Peach, but even then they'll probably feel like they've "been there and done that". The characters and overall show just don't bring enough unique material to the table to warrant a recommendation. As it stands I'm going to give the series the suggestion of a weak rental because there are probably some out there that will find it appealing. For my money though, there just isn't enough substance to Wedding Peach.

Originally broadcast in Japan back in 1995, Wedding Peach is presented with a 1.33:1 full frame aspect ratio. The video is clean for the most part though there is quite a bit of speckle in the print and points where the image seems a little grainy. The colors are vibrant for the most part but there are areas where they seem a little washed out. Overall the video quality is decent enough for a show that has grown past the decade mark, but it's nothing all that amazing.

As is usual with a show of this age the audio for Wedding Peach is presented with 2.0 Dolby Digital Stereo tracks for both English and Japanese. Both offer roughly the same sound quality with very little directionality and no real diversity to the audio level. The English dubbing is decent enough with some fine voiceovers though I felt that for this show it was better served by the Japanese track. Naturally there are optional English subtitles as well to accompany the original language.

As is the case with just about every other ADV thinpak collection on the market, Wedding Peach contains absolutely no extras. The individual volumes for the show included clean opening and closing animations, but those are AWOL here. There are a few trailers on the first disc for some other ADV releases if you're interested though.

As far as magical girl anime goes Wedding Peach has just about all of the standards that fans have come to know and love. That's probably its biggest asset, but also its largest flaw. The problem that I found with the show (apart from the fact that it's not very interesting) was that it felt like it had "me too" stamped all over it. Sure the atmosphere is upbeat and the show itself offers a few laughs, but I can't help shake the feeling that I've seen it all before. Once all 51 episodes are released my opinion may change towards the series, but as it stands I'm going to suggest a rental to anyone that loves the shōjo genre.

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