Manga / Wedding Peach

"...for that, I cannot forgive you! The Love Angel Wedding Peach is extremely displeased!"

— Wedding Peach's speech

Wedding Peach is a Magical Girl story centered around a wedding motif. A mixed-media project from 1994, it was overseen by Sukehiro Tomita, known for being a major writer on the Sailor Moon series and a key figure in codifying the Magical Girl Warrior genre. The manga, written and illustrated by Nao Yazawa, ran in Ciao between 1994 and 1996, while the 51-episode anime from 1995 was produced by KSS and OLM Incorporated and directed by Kunihiko Yuyama. Partially due to their shared writer and character designer, the story is often compared to Sailor Moon more than any other Magical Girl series.

Ordinary High-School Student Momoko Hanasaki dreams of getting married in a beautiful wedding dress someday, but in the meantime has to deal with getting bad grades, supporting her single father Soichiro and working at the school paper with her two best friends, Yuri Tanima and Hinagiku Tamano.

One day, Momoko is awakened as the "Love Angel" Wedding Peach, a warrior in the ancient battle against devils and their queen Rain Devila, who hopes to rid the world of love and spread hatred among humanity. Accompanied by Yuri and Hinagiku as fellow Love Angels Lily and Daisy and occasionally aided by high-ranking angel Sir Limone, she wields The Power of Love granted to her by the goddess Aphrodite.

To ensure the triumph of good versus evil, they need to find the mythical Saint Something Four – while working out their own relationship dramas. Like their rivalry for the affection of the oblivious captain of the soccer team, Kazuya Yanagiba, Momoko's complicated relationship with soccer team member Yousuke Fuuma, or protecting a ring left behind by her late mother Sakura that the devils seem to have an interest in.

Although the fight initially centers around solving love-related problems around town caused by devils, the ongoing war between the Angel and Devil Worlds turns out to have a lot more to do with Momoko than she thinks.

The anime was OLM's first work; its resulting popularity in the industry led it to create the Pokémon anime with most of the same staff. The manga was licensed in full by VIZ Media, though it's now currently out of print, while the anime was licensed and dubbed by ADV Films and is similarly out of print. In addition to the main manga, spinoffs by Mami Tachibana and Fuji Midori ran in separate magazines.

A Spiritual Sequel Web Serial Novel headed by Tomita and a group of junior writers, Wedding Apple, launched on the TapNovel service in 2021; according to Tomita, the project serves as a way of revisiting the original series' concept of "exploring romance and marriage" to reflect how societal views of it had changed since the mid-nineties, such as LGBTQ+ romance.

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This show provides examples of:

• Aborted Arc:
  • The manga ran out of pages before it could tell Raindevila's story.
  • After Igneous' death, Takuro drops his crush on Momoko.
• Absurdly Powerful School Jurisdiction: In the anime, a Sadist Teacher named Iwamoto (actually a devil in disguise) comes to power in the heroines' school and sets up strict rules. Not only is student behavior controlled inside school but outside school as well. In fact, he even follows Momoko, Yuri, Hinagiku and their male friends to a ski resort to enforce his edict about boys and girls not meeting or talking with each other.
• Action Mom: Celestia, Momoko's mom. While she took a break from demon busting to raise her kid, she proves a 15 year retirement did not make her rusty.
• After-School Cleaning Duty: Yousuke has to stay behind to clean the school's pool as punishment for being late. In the first of many Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other, Momoko stays behind to help and their relationship takes a step forward.
• All for Nothing: Petora spends several episodes regaining his strength to fight the Love Angels, only to be dragged into the Vortex of Destruction by Limone.
• Alternate Character Reading: The name "Hiromi Kawanami" was originally written 川浪ひろみ in the manga, but the 浪 was changed to 波 for the anime (both are read nami and mean "wave"). This was because the first kanji was not in the Japanese Ministry of Education's elementary school curriculum guidelines, and thus would be an unfamiliar kanji for the elementary school audience.
• Alternate Continuity:
  • The manga had a number of younger-demographic versions that were abridged retellings of the story, often with significant differences. The "Third Grader" variant was published in volume form as "Young Love" or "Volume 7" in certain countries outside Japan.
  • Also technically counts for the manga and the anime themselves, as they diverge in different directions after the first few plot beats and, aside from some subplots that vaguely resemble each other, are ultimately different stories.
• Always Chaotic Evil / Always Lawful Good: Devils and Angels respectively; the former are all portrayed as evil and the latter as all good. There are exceptions latter on, with many demonic Heel Face Turns and Salvia being more of an Anti-Hero than a straight up love-love hero. It's later implied that the Always Chaotic Evil part is actively enforced by Rain Devila, since she monitors the amount of devil spirit lurking around her minions, executes anyone who isn't up to her standards, and, in the manga, is implied to have forcibly turned Uragano back to evil after Amnesiac Dissonance started turning him good.
• Always Need What You Gave Up: The beginning of the DX OVA reveals that the Love Angels chose to have their memories wiped of the ordeal of the battles in the TV series. It then proceeds to show them that it wasn't such a good idea.
• Amnesiac Dissonance: Yousuke's mother found his father passed out with a bad case of amnesia. After helping him recover they fell in love, with Yousuke being the result. In fact, he was originally Uragano, a powerful general among the Devils, but being cast down into the human world and wiped of his memories got him to turn over a new leaf. In the manga, it's implied that this would have been his true nature if Rain Devila hadn't forcibly reawakened his devil spirit, dragged him back through the Heel–Face Revolving Door, and gotten him to abandon his family, and in the anime, he stays good even after regaining his memories and stages a revolt.
• Art Evolution: Within the manga the art grows more detailed over time, but it's also worth comparing the manga's art to a drawing Yazawa did for the series' 20th anniversary.
• Artistic License – Religion: Judeo-Christian angels are serving a Greek goddess of love.
• As Long as There Is Evil: Inverted. "As long as love exists in this world, those of us with hateful hearts will never know peace." It's the villains who know that something intrinsic to the human heart will always be around. The solution, naturally, is to wipe out everyone who can love.
• Audience Shift: The original anime and manga were aimed at young girls, while DX was aimed at male fans and had more fanservice.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: In the anime, the girls get this during transformations.
• Bat Out of Hell: Blackie, Ignis's Jama demon, is a bat.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • "Salvia’s Love…We’ll Fight, Even On a Luxury Liner": Clark Oasis and his World Domination plot is stopped but Salvia was forced to kill him, leaving her heartbroken.
  • '"The False Love Angels-We’ll Fight, Even On Valentine’s Day'": Momoko, Yuri and Hinagiku get their bodies back, the stolen chocolate is returned and the Love Angels give their chocolate gifts to their boyfriends. The only downside is that Dr. Belphegor got away.
• Breast Expansion: In the anime a body swap that turns the Love Angels into cat girls also makes their chests grow slightly.
• Bridal Carry: In episode 40, Yousuke carries the exhausted Momoko after they stop running due to a punishment ordered by Petora/Gozuboro Iwamoto.
• Broken Bird: Nocturne of the Night, who was bitter because she was betrayed by a friend.
• Busman's Holiday: In the first DX OVA episode, the Love Angels spend their time at a local beach. Later on, they regain their powers and fight one of the devils.
• Canon Immigrant: Donner's design was used for Jama-P in the anime, and Cloud, Blitz, and Noise were both seen in the Young Love manga spinoff and eventually seen in the anime as minions of Ignis.
• Casting Gag: A lot of voice actors who played good guys on Sailor Moon played villains here. Kotono Mitsuishi, Sailor Moon herself, voiced Potamos, Rika Fukami, Sailor Venus, played Aquelda, and Mika Doi, the voice of Queen Serenity, voiced the main villain, Queen Rain Devila.
• Catchphrase Interruptus: Potamos to Momoko's catchphrase in the third OVA. It's especially funny, since Kotono Mitsuishi voiced Potamos, but is most famous for playing the titular Sailor Moon whose catchphrase is very wellknown amongst Magical Girl series fans.
• Cat Girl: In DX, the girls get body swapped with cats, and their human bodies change to reflect that.
• Central Theme: While love and marriage can be fulfilling if things work out, a mere Relationship Upgrade won't ensure future happiness by itself, and a proper relationship still requires both parties to put in the effort and communicate.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The first part of the anime is a fairly standard Monster of the Week show. The later episodes, while certainly not extremely psychological (especially for a shoujo anime), takes on somewhat darker undertones as the love/hatred war's connections to Momoko and her friends are revealed. Not so much the case for the manga, which maintains a constant tone throughout.
• Chainsaw Good: A string of yarn is imbued with The Power of Love, and not even a chainsaw can cut it. Interestingly enough, the way it's actually played in-series is more of The Power of Friendship.
• Chekhov's Boomerang: When Momoko first knits a muffler, it's for Yanagiba and later in the episode it's unraveled to save some classmates in a magic maze. One and a half story arcs later Momoko is re-knitting it, but this time it's for Yousuke.
• Company Cameo: In the first episode of DX, Momoko's cup includes the credits for producers Shogakukan, KSS and OLM.
• Coy, Girlish Flirt Pose: The girls are prone to this around guys they like, as is Potamos.
• Demoted to Satellite Love Interest: After Igneous is killed, Takuro's only role is being Hinagiku's Love Interest.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Rainedevila became evil because she developed a crush on an angel, only to find out he already had someone.
• Drowning Pit: Potamos forms a barrier of water around the Love Angels in volume 5. They nearly drown before Yousuke saves them.
• Everything's Better with Sparkles: The Angel World sparkles for extra awe.
• Evil Counterpart: Noise, Cloud, and Blitz in the Young Love spinoff to Peach, Lily, and Daisy respectively. Noise is a klutz like Peach, Cloud is a graceful lady like Lily, and Blitz is a tomboy like Daisy.
• Evil Plan: Rain Devila's plan appears to consist of killing people and ruining relationships because she's Allergic to Love. In the anime, it's revealed that she's a Broken Bird (her first crush had an angel girlfriend) and believes she's acting out of self-defense. The manga has no explanation for her evil.
• Facial Markings: In the anime, it's an easy way to tell that a character's a devil or being possessed by one (the latter is usually coupled with Mind-Control Eyes).
• Fairytale Wedding Dress: Not just the angels' first transformations, but so many other dresses show up that it makes the show border on Costume Porn.
• Fashion Show: Yuri's mother has one for her dress line.
• Filler Villain: Tornade, minor Jama demons, and Rampo in the manga. Many demons in the anime.
• Fist Pump: Limone in the toku parody video, as he announces the events.
• Fluffy Fashion Feathers: The OVA outfits have these on the shoulders, that can grow into full wings. In the third OVA episode, Scarlett wears a feather boa.
• Foreshadowing: The anime's reveal that Yanagiba is Limone is given very few, if at all, hints beforehand, mainly because Yanagiba himself doesn't even know, but the manga is very thick on the hints, particularly in the form of multiple panels that show Yanagiba looking on in concern, sometimes even at times you shouldn't expect him to know things he does.
• Forgotten Anniversary: This is the central theme of one of the anime episodes. As it turns out, Hinagiku's dad actually remembered - he was just so busy he couldn't bring it up in a suitably romantic context, thus prompting her mom to rage at him for forgetting.
• Giant Poofy Sleeves: They often show up in the Fairytale Wedding Dress examples.
• Grand Theft Me: In one episode of the OVA, demon-possessed cats switch bodies with the girls, and while in the girls' bodies, they become Cat Girls.
• Green-Eyed Epiphany: Momoko spends earlier episodes feeling annoyed by Yousuke's habit of teasing her. She finally comes to realize her feelings when Potamos hits on Yousuke. Despite Momoko initially denied her feelings, she can't help but feeling jealous everytime she sees Potamos chases after him (not knowing that Yousuke is actually annoyed by Potamos).
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: In an anime episode, one of the monsters gets the school stuck in one by stealing people's "time", with Hinagiku as the only one immune to it (thanks to her Transformation Trinket being a magical watch). After the day is saved, she uses her knowledge of future events to prevent an impending disaster.
• Happy Ending: The anime ends with Rainedevila purified, the Saint Something Four restored, Wedding Peach and Viento revived and the world saved.
• Happily Married:
  • Yuri and Hinagiku's parents; the Forgotten Anniversary example for the former ends with the three angels awwing.
  • Momoko's parents including after her mother came back. They're so lovey-dovey that even a love angel tells them to get a room.
  • All four main couples (Momoko/Yousuke, Yuri/Yanagiba, Hinagiku/Takurou, Scarlett/Dean) at the end of the manga.
• Harmless Freezing: Potamos freezes the Love Angels solid in Volume 5 so they can't fight back while she kills them. Salvia arrives just in time to save them.
• Heel–Face Turn: Several villains give up evil, but generally only in the anime.
• Hypnotize the Captive: In the third OVA episode, Salvia is romanced by the villain and then mind-controlled via a jewelry gift.
• Instant Awesome: Just Add Mecha!: The omake spoofs involve mecha, with one being an outright spoof of giant mecha shows.
• In the Name of the Moon: "...for that, I cannot forgive you! The Love Angel Wedding Peach is extremely displeased!" (Wedding Peach's speech)
• Lap Pillow: In episode 14, when Momoko accidentally hits Yousuke on the head with her school bag until he is knocked unconscious, she treats him and lets him rests his head on her lap until he gets better.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Pray that you never run into the last two VHS covers before learning about Viento.
• Loving a Shadow: All three of the main girls are ostensibly in love with Yanagiba, but they're only superficially into him because he's The Ace, and Momoko in particular is obviously more In Love with Love than she actually is that infatuated with him. Because of this, the three girls' "rivalry" over him is a mere Friendly Rivalry, especially since Yuri and Hinagiku can tell from a mile away that Momoko's actually developing more legitimate interest in Yousuke. Of the three, Yuri is the only one who had been pursuing him since before the series began and is the closest to serious, but that's suggested to be a possible byproduct of unconscious Past-Life Memories from her Reincarnation Romance with Limone.
• Master of Illusion: Nocturne and Cloud have this as their special power instead of beam weaponry.
• Merchandise-Driven: Part of the reason for the wedding motif was to sell dolls wearing the dresses, and the wedding dress forms were shown often in the anime (despite their impracticality in fighting) to make them recognizable to the children who would buy them.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: The manga switched the Love Angels' fighter outfits halfway through, with Limone calling them "Super Love Angels". The anime goes with the second outfit from the get-go, meaning it never occurs there.
• Mutual Pining: Momoko and Yousuke are trapped in a Belligerent Sexual Tension stasis for the majority of the series despite how obvious it is to everyone else. Notably, neither are depicted as particularly insecure about potentially confessing, but it's implied they're mostly in denial out of sheer unpreparedness for the heavy emotional burden that comes with dating. Unfortunately for them, that can't stop them from constantly being really worried about each other far beyond the point of the usual Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other level.
• Monster of the Week: Anime-only. Special mention must go to the one whose power was to make rice fattening with the intent of causing teenage girls to become chubby so their boyfriends would break up with them.
• No Indoor Voice: Noise is aptly named.
• No Loves Intersect: In the anime, Yuri hooking up with Yanagiba/Limone is the final push that gets Momoko and Yousuke and Hinagiku and Takuro to stop beating around the bush and start pursuing the relationships that the girls had put on hold because of their shallow belief in their crush on Yanagiba. In the manga, it's the opposite; said two couples cause the girls to start drifting away from Yanagiba as they develop, and Yuri, the only one left, ultimately hooks up with him for an entirely different reason.
• Oddly Small Organization: Momoko, Yuri and Hinagiku appear to be the only members of the Newspaper Club.
• Old, New, Borrowed and Blue: Each of the love angels represent this. Wedding Peach is Something Old, Angel Salvia is Something New, Angel Daisy is Something Borrowed and Angel Lily is Something Blue.
• Plot Coupons and Mid-Season Upgrades. (The series was being made during a time when Western-style weddings and wedding traditions were becoming more popular in Japan.) The four in the plot are:
  • The wedding ring that Momoko's mother Sakura was given ("something old").
  • A pair of hand-crafted blue earrings that emerges from a grave; in the manga, it's specifically the grave of Yuri's grandmother, as her grandfather had made them for their marriage ("something blue").
  • A pendant; in the manga, it's a pendant that Hinagiku's mother received from her father that Hinagiku herself is given by her mother, while in the anime a friend who'd owned it since childhood lets her "borrow it forever" ("something borrowed").
  • A tiara; in the manga, it belonged to Scarlett's mother, and Scarlett had borrowed it for a play ("something new"). Although the object is in the anime, its origin is not explained.
• Omake: Two bonus anime omakes were produced for the original Japanese releases and were released on the two respective box set editions of the American DVDs.
  • The first short bonus episode was a parody of mecha anime featuring the girls piloting giant mecha that resembled their transformed wedding dress appearances.
  • The second short bonus episode was a pastiche of Toku shows (in particular the Super Sentai shows).
  • Other extras include interviews with the Japanese seiyuu.
  • Another bonus is a music video of the three angels as Idol Singers, singing the second ending song, "Virgin Love".
• One-Winged Angel: Jama-P does this in the manga, though he's still beaten easily. The villain of the second OVA does this too.
• "On the Next Episode of..." Catch-Phrase: "I will devote the love wave to you."
• OVA: Wedding Peach DX
• Pair the Spares:
  • Humorously averted in the Young Love spinoff with the other girls chasing Sir Limone.
  • Somewhat done in the anime; Takuro develops a crush on Momoko, and Hinagiku has a crush on Yanagiba; as those two get paired off with Yousuke and Yuri respectively the two end up with each other. It is established beforehand that the two were Childhood Friends, so it would be more along the lines that they were set up to be paired before they became spares.
  • Averted in the manga; Takuro's crush on Momoko is absent and it's implied that part of the reason he accepted the Deal with the Devil in the first place was jealousy over Hinagiku liking someone else, and during his first appearance her reaction towards him borders on Tsundere.
• Pimped-Out Dress: The love angels' wedding dresses, and several other dresses that show up, bridal or otherwise.
• Pink Means Feminine: Pink shows up a lot, like in the weapons and transformations, because this is a show about love angels.
• Plot Coupon: The Saint Something Four.
• The Power of Friendship: Although the series is primarily about love, the topic of the girls' friendship and how they deal with disputes between them comes up every so often.
• The Power of Love: The theme of the show, usually used to cause enemies to make a Heel–Face Turn or disappear. Including the Big Bad herself.
• Prehensile Hair: Nocturne uses this, as does Cloud in the Young Love spinoff.
• Pretty in Mink: On the cover of a soundtrack album, Momoko wears a green mini dress with white fur trim, and a white fur headband◊.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: A lot of the manga's plot, despite ultimately being distinct from the anime, was written around its ability to tie into the anime; concepts like the "love wave" were only fully defined after they were formulated for the anime, and right after the first arc the angels' outfits change to reflect their anime designs. Nao Yazawa herself states that had the anime never been approved, the manga would have been a short one that ended with the Pluie arc and the reveals of Yousuke as Viento and Yanagiba as Limone would have happened much earlier, hence why the foreshadowing for those is thick and there are traces of the story leading to a more final climax in that particular arc.
• Red String of Fate:
  • Played with. In the anime, Momoko knits a muffler as a present to Yanagiba and Imagine Spots them wearing it together. In the next frame a thread leads offscreen, and reveals that Yosuke somehow invaded the Imagine Spot and is also wearing it, much to her displeasure. Ironically, later in the series, a muffler that Momoko makes for Yosuke - this time with more legitimate intentions - becomes a plot point.
  • In an anime episode, a piece of yarn ends up representing the bond between the girls, except in a friendship manner.
• Roofhopping Monster fighting occasionally involves this.
• Sexy Santa Dress: Momoko wears one in an Omake picture, and Potamos wears one for a festival, even though it's not explicitly for Christmas.
• Shōjo: The show stars three (later four) love angels that fight monsters while doing school issues and looking for a boyfriend.
• Shout-Out:
  • In the third OVA episode the character of Golden Mask could very well be in refernce to Tuxedo Mask from Sailor Moon. This could be all the more probable considering Sailor Moon's seiyuu, Kotono Mitsuishi, was in the episode playing Potamos.
  • Scarlett Ohara's name references Scarlett O'Hara from Gone with the Wind (though in this case her surname is written in Japanese kanji). For extra points, her lover in the manga, Dean Butler, is named after Rhett; reportedly Yazawa wanted to go full force and name him Rhett, but she felt that as their names when rendered in Japanese would both end in -retto, it would be too repetitive.
  • Scarlett's Love Interest in the second OVA was named Clark Oasis, most likely a reference to Clark Gable who played Rhett Butler.
• So Last Season: The Wave of Love is powerful enough to deflect Pluie's Demon Breeze and seriously wound him, but to Igneous, Potamos, and Rain Devila it's a minor annoyance. Potamos also easily shrugs off Peach's Sacred Crystal Love For You and Daisy's Sacred Tornado Dreams.
• Spell My Name With An S:
  • The usual o/ou Japanese romanization issues.
  • There's never consensus on how to spell "Rain Devila", as "Reine" (as in the French word for "queen") is used on Yazawa's site, but it's also officially stated to be Theme Naming with names like "Pluie", and "Rain Devila" is the romanization used in the official subtitles.
  • A similar issue occurs with Scarlet or Scarlett, as the former is used officially but the latter preserves the Gone with the Wind reference.
  • Yazawa's site also romanizes Dean Butler's name as "Dean Battler".
  • How to translate akuma is a point of contention; "demons" would make a better angels/demons dichotomy, but "devils" is favored by the official dub.
• Spoiler Opening: The second opening of the anime.
  • It technically spoils one of the character revelations not because of the animation but because of the song. At one point the singer sings "angel" on Momoko's face and then "devil" on Yousuke's, promptly followed by him being kidnapped by Rain Devila, thereby giving away his identity when few clues about had been given beforehand.
  • Said opening also presents the endgame couples right to your face (Momoko and Yousuke, Yuri and Yanagiba, and Hinagiku and Takuro). The first one had been blatantly obvious since the first season, but it's technically a spoiler for the second and third ones because this is before the revelation of Yanagiba's identity and Limone's past with Lily. Up until that point Yanagiba had just been a very distant senior, and when the opening debuted Takuro hadn't had much interaction with Hinagiku as he'd mostly been crushing on Momoko. You might be able to have picked up the signs for the last pairing only if you were simultaneously following the manga.
• Stealth Parody: Both the anime and manga were created by the lead writer of the Sailor Moon TV series, so although it may not have been a parody it may have been a venting space.
• Suck Out the Poison: Limone to Lily in their anime backstory. When he attempts it the second time, the fact Lily says the exact same thing her past incarnation did reveals her identity as his past savior to him.
• Temporary Bulk Change: The episode with the rice that caused any girl who ate it to become fat and addicted to eating more of it. Once the demon causing it was dealt with, their weight returned to normal.
• Tentacle Rope: With vines in episode 16.
• This Is Unforgivable!: "...for that, I cannot forgive you! The Love Angel Wedding Peach is extremely displeased!" (Wedding Peach's In the Name of the Moon speech)
• Trouser Space: One of the devils pulls a carnival strong man test from his pants.
• Umbrella of Togetherness: The love angels think Yanagiba has a girlfriend because of this trope. Later when they try to stage it themselves, Yousuke comes (with an umbrella) to pick him up instead.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Played with in the first piano episode. Yuri's plan consists of invoking the ghost of a friend's dead sister with piano music so she will encourage the friend to resume practicing piano. Both Momoko and Hinagiku think this plan is ridiculous. Played straight in that their real plan, having Momoko pretend to be said dead sister, is interrupted by a devil attack, but ultimately inverted as the plan never goes into motion because the real ghost actually shows up and encourages the girl, just as in the original conception.
• Victory-Guided Amnesia: This only happens in the anime, and not even in the main series, but in the first OVA episode, as a Plot Device. Then the OVA goes and undoes it in the space of the first episode, but only for the four main heroines.
• Woman Scorned: The villains make some women act like this when they are Brainwashed and Crazy. In the anime Rain Devila becomes the villain due to this trope.

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