Manga Review: Peach Girl: Sae's Story, Volume 1, by Miwa Ueda

Rating (Out of 5): ~2.5-3

Publisher: Tokyopop

Release Date: 2006

Volumes: 3

Spoilers?: No.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Powells. RightStuf.

Volume: 2. 3.

Goodreads Synopsis:

The long-awaited spin-off to the bestselling Peach Girl series has finally arrived. Kairi and Momo are attending university, but Sae has been left behind after failing her last year of high school. Follow Sae's adventures as she reunites with a childhood love and deals with high school life once again. Rated for teens 13+.

Review:

I don’t really know what to think of this.

I’ve never been a fan of Sae. She’s kind of a horrible person, even if she got a little better by the end of Peach Girl. Especially since she doesn’t seem all that better in this book. I still kind of hate her. And I think my biggest problem with growing out of that, growing to even like her a little, is that there isn’t enough development. Her story, her background and reasons, have to be extremely believable for me to get into it, and it just isn’t.

I mean, so far we’ve got that her home life as a kid wasn’t good, and she got close to this boy, but then he moved and now he’s back in town, but she doesn’t want that back in her life. And I was ready, and hopeful, to buy her back-story and reason for how she turned out this way. But I just don’t buy it. There just isn’t enough depth for me.

I did like seeing Momo and Kiley again, as they’re great. I also did like the boy from Sae’s past, even though I have a hard time believing that Sae is worthy of him or that he can actually help her be better.

I just don’t buy Sae’s reasons or that she actually will ever want to be a better person. 

So I don’t know if I’m going to pick up the other books in this series. There are only two, but I just might dislike Sae too much to be interested, especially since I don’t think there will be enough development by the end of the series. But I might, since there are only two books. I don’t know yet.