Ai Tenshi Densetsu Wedding Peach (愛天使伝説ウェディングピーチ) is a mid-90s Japanese media mix (or multimedia franchise) aimed at young girls. Wedding Peach is known mainly for its 51-episode television series and 6-volume Ciao manga series, but it also spawned numerous short manga serials, voice actress concerts, games, and a 4-episode OVA series aimed at  slightly older audiences.

Across all versions of the series, the basic story tells of Hanasaki Momoko’s coming-of-age as a lovestruck teen angel who must learn to shoulder the burden of saving the world from devils with the help of her close friends. Cute, feminine magical powers and an emphasis on heterosexual romantic love are also prominent across all incarnations.

Due to numerous visual and conceptual similarities, Wedding Peach is considered one of the more notable Sailor Moon “rip-offs” or derivative series (of which there were many during the mid to late 90s). While Wedding Peach never achieved the level of success that the Sailor Moon franchise did (like, at all), it had moderate visibility and strong sales in several overseas markets, making it an interesting entry in the history of 1990s magical girl series.

Original Concept

The original concept for Ai Tenshi Densetsu Wedding Peach came from famed anime writer, Tomita Sukehiro (富田 祐弘). The initial scenario was later developed and fully realised with co-creator, Yazawa Nao (谷沢 直) who would serve as the mangaka for the primary printed adaptation of the series. English speaking fans probably best know Tomita for his work writing scripts on series including the Macross franchise, Ideon, L-Gaim, Dunbine, and of course, Sailor Moon.

Due to Tomita’s considerable written contribution to the animated adaptation of Sailor Moon, it is often assumed that this is where he found inspiration for developing the Wedding Peach series. However, according to comments in the Wedding Peach Secret File art book (1996) he had been nurturing the kernel of the idea that would become Wedding Peach as early as 1988.

In this skeletal idea, which Tomita originally conceived as a potential light novel series, there would be a battle between angels and devils, as well as possible Romeo and Juliet-theme. However, the emphasis would be on the devils as corruptions of the natural world (pollutants and toxins) while the angels would be unbridled nature (reflected by their plant motifs). Although some of these elements remain intact in the finished work, a lot wound up being revised and refined over the years as Tomita worked towards his goal of creating an otherworldly love story he could actually sell.

Another concept left by wayside during development was having the human world characters in Wedding Peach in SD (super-deformed) or “chibi” in size most of the time, transforming into normal-sized characters only when they battled. This idea was scrapped, but concept sketches and an outline of this version are available in the Wedding Peach Secret File art book.

Developing a Media Mix

For an extensive, personal background on the development of the Wedding Peach series, I suggest you read Yazawa’s account on her website. The long and the short of it is that while Tomita developed his idea at TENYU with input from original Sailor Moon animation character designer and later Wedding Peach animation character designer, Tadano Kazuko (只野 和子), the sticking point for KSS to greenlight the series for production was the ability to get a toy sponsor.

A media mix series in Japan at this time was developed with a story to tell, but also a product to sell. In order to get a coveted toy company involved, it was customary to outline the anime pitch and include a potential manga adaptation to help present the idea to the company that the concept was real, exciting, and easy to get moving into production. Yazawa Nao, a relative newcomer to Ciao (and previously Pyon Pyon) magazine over at Shogakukan was approached by her chief editor about participating in the development of this new media mix with Tomita’s input as well as editorial assistance from within the magazine.

The series was pitched to her as being extremely feminine with a lot of flowers and frills, things that Yazawa had little experience with illustrating as she had originally set out to become a shounen mangaka and didn’t consider herself particularly feminine. Despite feeling somewhat apprehensive, Yazawa accepted the role and poured all her energy into helping build the foundations of Wedding Peach and its characters.

TBC