Review of Peach Girl: Volume 3

Introduction

This O.C-like High School romance soap continues in the third love and drama packed edition of `Peach Girl`, containing episodes 10 - 13 inclusive. Sae reverts back to type, revealing her true bitchy colours yet again after briefly fooling us into feeling sorry for her last volume.

The wonderfully cute Momo and her emotionally stifled boyfriend Toji are trying to get their relationship back on the straight and narrow though with Sae back on evil form, it`s proving to be more challenging than they`d hoped. Her jealousy of Momi becomes so intense that she decides to try to blackmail Toji into dumping Momi.

Luckily for Momo, her devoted (but slightly nutty) friend Kairi is always there for her, taking her shopping in order to `find herself` for example, though things soon get hot under his collar when an old squeeze from the past comes back to haunt him with some fairly funny results.

From an anime point of view, `average` would be a fair appraisal. Unlike some of the more action packed and innovative anime being produced, `PG` is strictly old school. There`s something almost mannequin like about the cast of characters and you rarely get to see any emotion register on any face (other than stylised anger or frustration and occasionally waterfall tears). This is very much in keeping with the Japanese tradition of Kabuki theatre and is culturally easier to understand there than it is viewing it here. Having said that, it`s a feature of much anime so regular fans of the genre will be well used to the format. Even the action in PG plays out primitively with some very stagy looking fighting.

Video

Full frame 4:3, the picture quality is particularly impressive during the slower sequences where the blocks of solid colour look fantastic. However, occasionally during the faster moving segments (like titles) there is a little artefacting when viewed on my largest set (42"). But you can rest assured that it will be a whole lot better than your fan-sub alternatives - which is not always the case!

Audio

Two Dolby 2.0 language options here; original Japanese with English subs or US English dub. I opted for the fairly satisfying US English which is nicely balanced with good clear dialogue. The music score remains as uninspiring as ever with no attempt at any stage to enhance the mood of a piece by introducing anything other than the main bed. There are no solo piano motifs or violins during the sad bits for example. Oh well…

Features

There are caption free opening and closing sequences, and an interview with the Japanese voice actor for Toji (Duration approx 5 mins) which is quite interesting and thankfully brief.

Conclusion

Unsurprisingly, `Peach Girl Volume 3` picks up from where volume 2 left off with four more episodes of this mildly addictive teen soap. Anyone enjoying anime and shows like the O.C. or One Tree Hill will love `Peach Girl` with its fast moving angst ridden plot-lines and simple but cute animation style. Volume 3 is a welcome return to simple good versus bad with Sae back to her evil ways. So there is plenty to boo and hiss at as well as enough gooey romance to make this especially attractive to teenage girls.

`Peach Girl` has very little of the surreal zaniness of, say, `Love Hina` though it does share many of the same themes. It`s a little more serious than that, touching on many of the great injustices of growing up and as a result could soon have you anxiously awaiting the next instalment. This volume marks the series half-way mark so if you haven`t joined in by now you may well prefer to wait for the inevitable full series box set which will allow you to devour the whole set at intervals to suit yourself.