...well, that was it. That episode officially stamped the word "COOL" onto Peach for me. And no, I won't tell you what happened in that episode -- you should be as shocked and thrilled as I was.

LD Box set #2 specifics:

The cover on the box itself boasts a nice piece of artwork by the character designer, Kazuko Tadano. The composition describes the shape of a heart, plus it shows off the four "fighter angels" -- Peach, Lily, Daisy, and Salvia. Good color, too.

On the back of the box, in English: "Three girls will become the magnificent 'Love Angels' in order to save love from the Devil."

Inside the box:

• A 28"x20" poster with the English words "Illustrated by Kazuko Tadano" and "NOT FOR SALE." It has the ai tenshi in their wedding dresses. Peach looms large in the foreground, geeking out over her pretty wedding dress. Lily and Daisy, counterparts, face each other in the background. Salvia, the last angel to join the team, is present, but not part of the immediate situation (she's drawn larger than Peach, but is tucked behind Lily and Daisy). The background is beautiful, but abstract -- hinting at wedding veils, heaven, and flower petals.
• An 11.5"x11.5" white postcard with a 2"x2" line art drawing of Jama-Pi in the center. Surrounding him are a ton of autographs...in Japanese. I'm guessing that these are the signatures of the voice actors, because I see the kana for the character's names next to each signature. I'll confess, I had hoped to get a cel but this is just as good. The voice actor for Yousuke/Biento (they were voiced by the same guy, weren't they..?) was a total bad-ass -- I don't mind having his autograph. :-) Salvia's voice rocked, too.
• An 11.5"x11.5" booklet 12-page booklet with a full-color cover. Some of the pages inside are in color, too. It shows thumbnail-sized images of Wedding Peach posters, as well as model sheets for "Love Angel Battlers Wedding Peach" (more on that in a minute) and the TV series. Also has transcriptions of interviews with the creators of the show, and character bios in the last two pages. On the back it shows stills from high emotional points in the show, along with the episode number of each point.
• Seven laserdiscs, each with a gorgeous cover drawn by Sayuri Ichiishi. The first six contain episodes 27-50 in CLV format; the last contains episode 51 on CAV on one side, and extras on the other side.

That "other side" contains:

• A six-minute short that the booklet calls "Love Angel Battlers Wedding Peach," but I'm not sure which anime this short is spoofing. I caught the word "sentai" in the dialogue, so maybe it's a spoof of sentai shows in general. You get (among other things): motorcycles, mecha, and Limone-sama yelling into a microphone. Plus, every "devil-of-the-week" puts in a cameo here. I liked it, but anyone unfamiliar with Peach will get a distorted view of the Peach TV series. :-) I suspect that either the fans or the animators or both must have really liked Potamos, because she gets to be an ai tenshi in this short.
:-)
• Interviews with "New Furil," and interviews with "the staff and cast." I don't speak Japanese, so I can't tell you what they said. :-)
• The second season opening/closing animations, without any text overlays.
• The TV commercials for Wedding Peach posters(?), videos, LD's, and CD's.
• Information on Wedding Peach merchandise.

My 18" TV is a +15-year old hand-me-down, so I can't tell you how good these discs might look on a modern TV. They're better than my Star Wars non-special-edition LD's, though -- the Peach LD's have no noise or distortion that I could see on my hand-me-down TV.

My sofa lies at a right angle to my TV/stereo setup, so I sit to the left of both speakers. Thus, I cannot tell you much about the stereo on the LD's (though I did notice Momoko's scream traveling from one speaker to the other as she slid down the ski slope). The audio sounded clear to me, though.

Overall, a nice box set, and a purchase that I do not regret. The TV show offers plenty of good art, great characters (Biento is a *total* bad-ass!!!), and a cool storyline.

This series is also available on VHS, but with the LD's, I have a higher-res version that (barring laser rot) will not wear out.

(Plus, the cover for LD #8 features a darned sexy illustration of Takurou...)

(...yup, I have my priorities...)

^_^

Jennifer Hachigian

At the time, though, I thought of animation in general. I've seen animations with far more drawings-per-minute than Peach -- the wonderful Iron Giant, for example. In retrospect, it was unfair to pit the overall frame rate of a 51-episode TV series (over 1200 minutes altogether) against that of a $40 million film (about 80 minutes). In the future, I'll try to keep my comparisons more realistic.

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