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Peach Girl

Also in this series: Peach Girl: Sae’s Story, Peach Girl NEXT
Also by this author: Pre Mari, Loco Moco, Papillon: Flower & Butterfly

Warnings: Violence, Sexual Assault, Kidnapping, Bullying, Statutory Rape, Abuse


My Thoughts

Peach Girl is a nostalgic series for me, it is one of the first shojo series that I really got hooked onto. I loved the bold art style and the characters, the romance, the drama. I really related a lot to Momo, an outgoing but insecure girl that worries about her tanned skin and struggles with a manipulative and jealous friend, Sae.

This manga struck a chord with me particularly because of the duality between Momo and Sae. I knew a girl that was a lot like her when I was growing up, she always seemed to be changing to fit around other people. Every girl in our friend group came to resent her because she always found a way to get her hooks into other people’s crushes, boyfriends, and later in life a husband, and usually threw all of those boys away after causing a break-up. I never understood that girl, what motivated her, and what she really got out of these things. This was what made Peach Girl so memorable to me, it perfectly encapsulated a part of my life and it reminded me so much of that time.

Going back to this series as an adult, however, I found myself feeling really conflicted about this series. The story starts off strong, it’s so easy to cheer for Momo with an antagonist like Sae. The romance was believable and sincere, and despite some ups and downs everything felt contained. By the fifth volume, however, things started to go downhill and fast. The drama spirals so drastically out of control, and sexual assault is used as a plot point, and again as a scheme for revenge. It was never treated with any real care and it is gut-wrenching that it was used flippantly for a dramatic story arc. There are other very huge problems later on in the series with plot points that are hideously inappropriate. It left a bad taste in my mouth, but I tried to look past this as being a story of its time.

Even putting that all aside, characters seemed to change their minds so quickly and everything always felt so melodramatic and blown out of proportion. Momo finds herself in a love triangle with two equally wonderful and toxic boys and was hurt over and over again. After eighteen volumes, it frankly became exhausting. The indecisiveness of the characters becomes so frustrating, and I stopped caring about any of the characters.

It is the type of pop drama that was popular when I was a teenager, and it’s amazing that there is both a spin-off and a sequel because it all feels like a never-ending empty trashy drama. I wanted so much to love this series, and for it to be one of my all-time favorites, but I just can’t get past the problematic content to love this series, it just carried on for far too long and went way too far.

“I can’t hold your heart prisoner. And people’s feelings change with time. If your heart isn’t really with me, I don’t want you to feel guilty about it.”

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Loco Moco

Also by this author: Pre Mari, Peach Girl, Papillon: Flower & Butterfly


My Thoughts

Love confessions are one of those things from my youth that I honestly miss. Confessing to the person that you have a crush on is nerve-wracking, and when looking back there are often so many missed opportunities. I remember the crushing feeling the first time I found out that a high school crush that I had been nursing for months ended up becoming a friend’s boyfriend. This happened a few times, I never felt sour about it but shrugged it off that I was just too slow to act on those feelings.

This feeling of being too slow forms the basis of Loco Moco. Hiroko feels that she has to keep up with her childhood friend, Tomoko, who seems to have a new boyfriend all the time, so she plays along and brags about having boyfriends as well. When Hiroko finally gathers up the courage to confess to her crush, however, she finds out that her crush is her friend’s new boyfriend.

“Roko-chan, have you tried getting confessed to?”

Loco Moco is a short and sweet series about this predicament, about missed opportunities and trying to cope with a crush that has now become unattainable. While Takeru also has a mild interest in Hiroko, it’s understandable that he dates that cute girl that confesses to him. While the drama between Hiroko and Tomoko could at times be petty, it is understandable when they both realize that the other is a romantic rival.

While Roko and Tomo butt heads at times, their friendship remains intact, and they choose to do what’s best for their friend which made me happy to see a good female friendship take precedence over one’s romantic feelings. There are a few character traits that seem to reappear in all of Ueda’s series, namely the protagonist having a complex about being misunderstood for a physical trait and having a jealous best friend.

I’m glad that I didn’t give up on Ueda’s work, I love her art and characters, but I honestly got mad with the last two Ueda works that I had read. Compared to other works by Miwa Ueda, Loco Moco is relatively tame which I feel made it better. It’s an underrated gem that tackles the drama that comes with crushing on a friend’s boyfriend with relative maturity.


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Sweet Poolside

Also by this author: A Trail of Blood, Happiness, The Flowers of Evil


My Thoughts

The premise for this manga was ridiculous enough to pique my interest and I honestly don’t know what I expected. A teenage boy who hasn’t grown any body hair meets a girl with a lot of body hair, and the two band together to shave. There is some good commentary about the way that society judges both men and women about body hair underneath the obvious ecchi scenario of a boy shaving a girl. This little manga would definitely appeal to folks with trichophilia, particularly the ones that find shaving arousing.

Ayako actually has a normal amount of body hair, but like many teen girls is embarrassed by it. I could relate to Ayako in that way because bodily hair can be a source of teasing from other teens. When I was in middle school I didn’t shave my legs or my armpits, my mother had warned me to hold off on shaving as long as I could so that my hair wouldn’t grow hard and thick like hers and she was right, I had soft baby hair. I began shaving in seventh grade, after wearing a shirt vest that had no sleeves and I got ridiculed mercilessly by a boy in my class. I was so embarrassed I went home and took my dad’s razor to shave my armpits.

“Even though our genders are different, Gotou and I might actually be similar…”

Ayako struggles with shaving, cutting herself left and right. It sounds ridiculous but when you first start, especially when nervous and ashamed, it’s understandable. I too used to get tons of nicks and cuts because I was clumsy and would push too hard, so in a way the manga is not entirely unbelievable. Like many slice of life manga, the story does not really go anywhere beyond the strange shaving friendship shared between the two main characters. However, I liked the message that body hair is natural and beautiful, it is a message of body positivity that I didn’t expect to find in a silly ecchi manga but here we are.


Warnings: sexually explicit content


two-stars