Peach Girl: Change of Heart

    (Tokyopop, 2003-2004)
™ and ©2003 Tokyopop
Continues Peach Girl series in right to left reading format.

It’s everything you hated about high school, condensed, dramatized, and bound up in a black and white trade paperback.

Titular protagonist Momo (her name means “peach” in Japanese) has everything a teenage girl could desire: beauty, a loving boyfriend, and a lifestyle that drives her classmates mad with jealousy. But that’s just the problem. Now that Momo is finally getting over the ex-man-of-her-dreams, Toji, and moving on to former bestfriend–turned–boyfriend Kiley, her jealous archenemy Sae—who only wants everything Momo has—schemes again to take it all away: this time using the unofficial, boy–crazy fan–club devoted to Kiley to break up Momo’s good thing.

And as if things were not complicated enough, Momo still has to overcome a painful rep because her tendency to tan has earned her the reputation, and scorn, of being the school slut. Judged on nothing no more than her appearance, naïve Momo has to deal with a bad rep, ruthless schoolmates, and some serious psychological trauma from her abusive ex. To boot, Momo’s now discovering that cheerful boyfriend Kiley hides a darker past behind his smiles, as his increasing demands for physical intimacy push Momo’s willingness to give.

Supposedly based upon the author/artist’s personal experiences, Peach Girl reiterates those awkward high school years with a vengeance—gleefully exploiting the archetypal viciousness of female rivalry for this melodramatic manga soap opera. Peach Girl is filled with frustrating moments of gross misunderstanding, sexual confusion, pressure, and frustration; as well as the obligatory adolescent despair. But the subtext of the implausible agendas against Momo seem to reveal more about the attitudes of a close–minded and repressed Japanese society than serve any real purpose driving the plot.

— Shiaw-Ling Lai
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