The Wedding Peach manga series by Yazawa Nao was licensed for North American retail sale in mid-2003 by VIZ Media, with the original announcement made at the company’s ACen panel that year. The first volume hit shelves in July of 2003 before concluding in July 2004 with the release of the Young Love special volume. The manga licensing announcement came before the anime licensing announcement, so for a period during 2003, there was a lot of speculation about whether the anime would be picked up by VIZ Media as well. However, in the end, ADV Films nabbed the anime series for home video release in 2004.
While VIZ Media is known now for having a fairly expansive manga lineup across many genres today, in 2003 it had very few shoujo titles in its catalogue, even fewer of them overtly “magical” in nature. The licensing of Wedding Peach was a little unexpected in this context and the release met with a mixed reception, not dissimilar to the reception the anime would receive in the US six+ months later.
The English-language Wedding Peach manga volumes are not currently in print and there is no current licensee for Yazawa’s manga in English. As such, you can only access VIZ Media‘s volumes through second-hand or previously unsold volumes on places like eBay or through second-hand book stores.
Other Wedding Peach manga serials (such as those by Fujii Midori and Tachibana Mami) remain unlicensed for English-language readers at this time.
Paperback Volume Releases (2003-2004)
The first official English-language release of the Wedding Peach manga series penned by Yazawa Nao and published in paperback format by VIZ Media.
| Cover | Release Details |
|---|---|
 | Wedding Peach Vol. 1 First Published: July 2003 RRP: $9.95USD Pages: 192 ISBN: 9781591160762 |
 | Wedding Peach Vol. 2 First Published: September 2003 RRP: $9.95USD Pages: 192 ISBN: 9781591160779 |
 | Wedding Peach Vol. 3 First Published: November 2003 RRP: $9.95USD Pages: 192 ISBN: 9781591161059 |
 | Wedding Peach Vol. 4 First Published: January 2004 RRP: $9.95USD Pages: 192 ISBN: 9781591161325 |
 | Wedding Peach Vol. 5 First Published: March 2004 RRP: $9.95USD Pages: 200 ISBN: 9781591162575 |
 | Wedding Peach Vol. 6 First Published: May 2004 RRP: $9.95USD Pages: 200 ISBN: 9781591163237 |
 | Wedding Peach 'Young Love' First Published: July 2004 RRP: $9.95USD Pages: 240 ISBN: 9781591164500 |
The Use of Edited German Pages
Although the English-language version of Yazawa’s Wedding Peach has dialogue translated and adapted from the original Japanese script, it was all just added to the print-ready German-language edited pages originally used for the Ehapa (Egmont Manga) release of the title in 2000. So while the dialogue follows fairly closely to the Japanese-language version, the SFX are entirely in German and have not been translated or adjusted for English across any of the volumes. Most of the SFX like “brr” or “pffz” aren’t too far off their English equivalents however some words, such as “wank”, have very different meanings and caused a few giggles online when they were noticed by fans that picked up the VIZ Media volumes.
Covers Not Illustrated by Yazawa-sensei
Volumes 2 and 3 of the VIZ Media Wedding Peach manga volumes do not feature Yazawa’s illustrations from the corresponding Japanese volumes (see above). Yazawa-sensei has stated on her website that these US volume covers do not feature her artwork at all, rather VIZ Media produced these covers based on traced and coloured versions of some of her black & white art. We still do not know why the original artwork for the volumes was not used, but Yazawa-sensei says there was a “good reason” for the change. Years later, these two English-language covers certainly stand out when compared with the originals (per above).
For your comparison, here are the original black & white illustrations by Yazawa-sensei that “inspired” the odd covers used on VIZ Media manga volumes 2 & 3. Note that neither was intended for use as cover artwork. The 1st image above (which inspired English volume #2’s cover) is a page from the manga and can be found in the 1st volume. The 2nd image (3rd English volume cover inspo) can be found in the 5th volume as part of an illustration gallery. The 3rd image above is Yazawa-sensei’s own coloured version of the 1st image which is noticeably different in quality from the colourised artwork presented on the cover of the 2nd English manga volume.
Another potential cover edit is the Young Love cover, which has some colouring and shading differences when compared with Yazawa-sensei’s original artwork (compared above). Whether or not this was edited by VIZ Media or it was provided to them this way is unknown, but it is worth mentioning for those interested in contrasting these illustrations.
The Complex History of ‘Young Love’
The 7th volume (dubbed Young Love in English and Flitterwochen in German) features a story originally serialised in Shougaku San-nensei magazine between 1994-1996. It is not a continuation of the narrative found in volumes 1-6 of the manga, but rather a stand-alone alternate take on the concept by Yazawa-sensei. The chapters found in Young Love are shorter than those published in Ciao Magazine and are designed for younger readers, so some of the themes and character actions are glossed over. As such, the storyline in Young Love proceeds at a breakneck pace giving a very condensed version of the basic series plot.
What makes this book stand out is that the full version was never published in paperback format in Japan. Two chapters were included as side stories in the first two compiled Japanese tankoubon, but this practice didn’t continue with subsequent books. Yazawa-sensei later commented on her website that the original manuscripts were lost by the publisher, which obviously restricted further publication. So the remaining Shougaku San-nensei chapters could only be found in old magazine issues until Yazawa-sensei posted them all for free to her website (Japanese language only).
The German Flitterwochen paperback, released in 2002, marked the first time the entire run of Wedding Peach from Shougaku San-nensei had been published in a compiled format. Because the US release used the material from the German release, producing Young Love as a 7th volume was probably an obvious choice for VIZ Media.
When buying second-hand copies of Young Love in English and Flitterwochen in German you will often find this volume fetches a much higher price on the second-hand market than other volumes. While this may owe to smaller print runs, it is also worth keeping in mind that there has been additional demand for this volume in Japan and South Korea where these chapters were not officially released in collected paperback format.
