Wedding Peach Abridged



"Announcer: "We totally swear it's not a Sailor Moon knockoff." Momoko: "So if you don't watch it, in the name of, uh, marriage, I'll punish you!""

The Abridged Series of Wedding Peach by TokuTenshi. Like Yu Yu Hakusho Abridged, this seems to focus a bit more on the characters, with fewer Lampshade Hangings than a typical abridged series.

The key to much of Wedding Peach Abridged's charm and humor is the hostile, ambiguous and unstable relationship of its parts to the whole. The show is very sensitive to the multiple genres and source materials co-existing uneasily alongside one another. The series itself is primarily in the genre of the Abridged Series (a genre that is by definition derivative), but the original Wedding Peach is imputed to be a second rate Sailor Moon knock-off (as opposed to a first rate Sailor Moon knock-off); therefore, the show exists precariously as a knock-off of a knock-off. But instead of being weighed down by the anxiety of influence, it is exactly its derivative nature that Wedding Peach Abridged manages to celebrate through incisive self-parodying, fresh writing, and strong characterization.

""Why can't I get it up, for girls?""
 * Abusive Parents:
 * Momoko's father, a professional photographer, while regretting that he did not abort Momoko, is nevertheless proud of all the money he has saved by forcing Momoko to be his unpaid assistant, a position he has referred to as "camera wench" and "film slave."
 * Yuri's mother is a delusional reality television enthusiast and goes as far as rearranging her whole life and the people in it to play out the fantasy of being a participant on a reality television program.
 * Hinagiku's parents don't give her an allowance.
 * Yosuke's dad is revealed to have "beat the ever loving cream" out of his son in episode 26.
 * Accidental Pervert: Subverted. In the original series this trope is played straight: Yosuke is occasionally put into compromising positions against his will. But in the Abridged series, he is portrayed as being a lovable sexual predator who takes advantage of Momoko when she is unconscious.
 * Affectionate Parody: Equal parts affection and parody.
 * The Alcoholic: The Love Angels. They'll find any excuse to drink. "Here's to lying! Bottoms up!"
 * Alternate Character Interpretation: In-Universe. Pluie is gay (or at least extremely sexually ambiguous), Raindevella is an old Jewish lady from Brooklyn who is high addicted to her cigarettes, and Yuri is, well, yuri for Momoko.
 * Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny: Momoko who . . . shiny!
 * Big Sleep: Masami from the Tea Ceremony Club (oops, still too soon?)
 * Bishie Sparkle: Sparkles, oh so many sparkles tend to accompany Captain Yanagiba.
 * Bishonen: Pluie, and he loves doing Bishonen things.
 * Breaking the Fourth Wall: Often to other shows, especially Sailor Moon.
 * Broken Aesop: The moral of episode 7 is all over the place. Finally, the Love Angels give up and admit that the only moral of the story is that they are all a bunch of hypocrites.
 * Brother-Sister Incest: Akira, Hinagiku's little brother, stalks her and then looks up her insanely short skirt.
 * But Liquor Is Quicker Yuri tries to get Momoko drunk.
 * Butt Monkey: Limone, despite being one of the more competent characters, is the whipping boy of Aphrodite, the Love Angels, and even Toku Tenshi, who jokes about editing out his scenes. While he is seemingly aware of being trapped in an Abridged Series, he is still very sensitive to slights from the others.
 * By the Power of Grayskull: Parodied with, "Bridal Striptease, Go!"
 * The Cameo:
 * The Love Angels' progenitors, the Sailor Senshi, occasionally pop up.
 * Kero from Cardcaptor Sakura appears and commands Momoko to use the Time Card.
 * The cast of Yes! Pretty Cure 5 makes an appearance in episode 20.
 * Captain Obvious: When a possessed Yosuke is strangling Momoko, she pleads for her life with, "No, Yosuke. My windpipe. I need that for breathing, and stuff."
 * Cargo Ship: Spoofed In-Universe. Pluie has a tortured relationship with wedding dresses. He believes that they, "[Mock] [him] with their sequence and their intricate bead work." But he also reveals a deep ambivalence when he says that, "those brides think that they're so hot in their frilly, sequenced, glorious wedding dresses."
 * Catch Phrase: The series tends not to rely on catch phrases, but a few distinctive phrases have been coined:
 * Yuri and Momoko have a penchant for calling out "Gaspzies!" whenever something unexpected and/or plot relevant happens.
 * Yuri, Momoko and Pluie share the less commonly heard catch phrase, "Oh snap!"
 * Momoko uses a number of variations on "what" to express her chronically perplexed state including, "Hubba wha?" "the what whatey what what?" "the what would have what now?" and "Wha wha what?"
 * Momoko's eyes instinctively follow things that are glittery, and she refers to them as "shiny" or "sparkle sparkly."
 * Pluie: "Fabulous" as both an adjective and interjection.
 * Jamma-Pi uses "Pi" as a suffix as in, "I've leveled up-Pi!"
 * Momoko's "Books are for nerds" has a meme-like aura.
 * Celebrity Endorsement: For some reason, a soccer player named Kaji endorses a girl's cereal called, "Mahou Shouj-Os," a balanced part of your sparkly breakfast.
 * Character Exaggeration:
 * Hinagiku, a Tomboy in the original series, is portrayed as wanting to be a boy in one episode.
 * Momoko's ditziness is, somehow, exaggerated.
 * Christmas Special: The Love Angels sing, "Carol of the Bells."
 * Comedic Sociopathy:
 * Queen Raindevilla kills Pluie for not being prompt about picking her up smokes, only she has forgotten about her violent actions by the next episode.
 * When Aquelda of the Water Demons dies professing her love to Pluie, Pluie's only reaction is to be disgusted because a Water Demon loving The Dragon of the series before dying is yet another thing ripped off from Sailor Moon.
 * When the Love Angels defeat Pajama, a Devil who puts people to sleep, a relieved Jamma-Pi says, "Well, Pajama has been killed, or whatever, and Lady Momoko is safe. Everyone who is important is a-okay." There is an immediate cut to a girl, Masami, who did not wake up after Pajama was killed. Masami's mother begs for her life as she stops breathing. There is a cut back to the Love Angels who cavalierly reaffirm Jamma-Pi's statement by nodding their heads in agreement.
 * Cloudcuckoolander: Momoko, to the Nth degree.
 * Coincidental Broadcast: Lampshaded.
 * Covert Pervert: Yuri, even though in reality she is an open pervert, but Hinagiku seems to have mastered subconsciously dismissing Yuri's sexual innuendoes, and Momoko is too oblivious to understand them.
 * Cry Into Chest: Yuri is jealous that Jama-P gets to do that to Momoko.
 * Department of Redundancy Department: Episode 26: "I'm just so sad with sadness."
 * The Ditz: Noise.
 * Double Standard: Lampshaded in episode 26 when Tokodo points out how shallow any girl would have to be to fall into his plan.
 * Eighties Hair: Limone mocks Pluie's devil mullet.
 * Even Evil Has Standards: "Are you running with scissors? We're evil not stupid."
 * Everything's Better with Sparkles: Spoofed in a few episodes and a trailer for the show.
 * Follow the Leader: The series constantly lampoons the source material's imitation of Sailor Moon.
 * Defied in episode 18 when the host of a late night radio love show announces that she will not be sending out any "hideous, energy draining brooches," the plot of one Sailor Moon episode.
 * Momoko actually justifies using Sailor Moon's tiara attack, because Sailor Moon actually taught her that attack. They go to the same Magical Girl support group after all.
 * Fridge Logic: Freely spoofs the head-scratchers in the show In-Universe. As Hinagiku puts it, "We're magical transforming girls who fight devils with Love Waves and take orders from a mirror" so there is much that the viewer is asked to accept as "within the realm of possibility." Even so, some of the original show's logic does test the viewer's willingness to suspend disbelief, and this logical laziness is what Toku Tenshi satirizes.
 * Hinagiku fights Pluie without transforming into a Love Angel first because she could not see through Pluie's Paper-Thin Disguise.
 * Aquelda of the Water Devils wants to make money on Earth even though she would have no use for it in the Devil World.
 * Kaji, a masculine, tanned and handsome soccer player, endorses a cereal marketed to little girls called "Mahou Shouj-Os."
 * In the commercial for Wedding Peach Abridged, the absurdity and arbitrariness of having a Greek goddess in a series that features battles between angels and devils is lampshaded.
 * Later Momoko, to show off her learning as a classicist, argues that the choice of Aphrodite as the guardian of love and marriage is a laughable concept as Hera would have been a more representative exemplar of these qualities.
 * ...why is soccer played at Japanese weddings again?
 * Frothy Mugs of Water: When the Love Angels make a toast they tease the audience with, "We swear these are non-alcoholic . . . or are they?!"
 * Fun with Subtitles: Hinagiku's father, who can only speak German, can activate the English subtitles if he puts a necklace around his wife's neck.
 * GASP: Or "Gaspzies!"
 * Genre Savvy / Genre Blindness: A considerable amount of the humor is generated by any given character having an inexplicable bout of genre blindness or being spontaneously blessed with genre savviness.
 * Giant Poofy Sleeves: Gives the page quote.
 * Gilligan Cut: The unforgiving Gillian Cut presents in rapid succession Yuri's certainty that her kiss has the power to break Pajama's sleep spell over Momoko, and then her despair when it fails.
 * Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: Lampshaded
 * Gratuitous German: Mr. Tamano, Hinagiku's father, can only speak German, save for the first two phrases in his German to English phrase book.
 * Gratuitous Latin
 * Hostile Show Takeover:
 * In episode 16 Limone, irate over being chronically edited out of the abridged series, attempts a hostile show takeover by usurping Momoko's position as the leader of the Love Angels. Angels Lily and Daisy were positively gleeful over Wedding Peach being deprived of her leadership position. How Wedding Peach regained her position by the next episode is not explained, but it may be a logical consequence of Limone being the Butt Monkey of the show.
 * In the first episode, Aphrodite perhaps fears a Hostile Show Takeover when Sailor Venus appears in Momoko's Magical Compact.
 * Hot Mom: Sakura Hanasaki, Momoko's mom. Often, the show plays up how Momoko just can't measure up to her mom's curvalicious hotness.
 * Ho Yay: In-Universe spoofing.

"Yuri: Where did this Glam Rocker come from, The Eighties" Friend: This is Japan. Yuri: Oh, right. Last week, then."
 * Incredibly Lame Pun: After she receives the magical St. Pendule wrist watch from Aphrodite, Hinagiku tells a villain to "watch" his step. The rest of the cast groans in response.
 * Episode 13's infamous "surface tension" pun
 * In the Name of the Moon: "I stand for poofy dresses, flowers, ribbons, and all that is girlie! Monologue attack!"
 * Irony: The monster making people fat can't run away because she's too fat.
 * It Must Be Mine: Those exact words.
 * Jerkass: Pluie, who is more of an asshole and a catty diva than evil.
 * Justified Trope:
 * Subverted. Limone tries to give a reason for the two transformations, but Momoko just stares at him, so he fesses up it was for extra Stock Footage.
 * Lampshaded when Aphrodite explains to Limone that the Friendship Waves shared between the three girls is what keeps them from being recognized by the Devils when the girls are in their civilian form, Limone says, "Sounds like a pretty cheap loophole to me."
 * Kleptomaniac Hero: Anything sparkly is up for grabs in the world of Wedding Peach Abridged.
 * Larynx Dissonance: TokuTenshi's brother did the voice of Hinagiku at first. Then Toku took over, but didn't change the voice, just for Rule of Funny. She writes that when she took over voicing Hinagiku, she had to "try and mimic a guy mimicking a girl".
 * Laser-Guided Amnesia: For some reason, Pluie cannot remember that Queen Raindevilla asks him to pick up her ciggys.
 * Lazy Artist: Lampshaded endlessly, from poorly designed backgrounds, to soccer players who can't move when they are practicing, to stock footage of transformation sequences that is used to pad out a thin script, to a seemingly never-ending mound of potato chips.
 * Subverted when Momoko believes that her Magic Compact has lost its color because of lazy animators. Limone has to explain that her Compact has lost its color because the Love Wave shared between the Love Angels is weak.
 * Les Yay: In-Universe, Yuri starts getting like this around episode 05. Then it turned into outright yuri, just with Momoko being unaware.
 * Love Bubbles: Subverted. Love bubbles lie to Momoko when they accompany Pluie, leading her to believe that he is a good guy.
 * Magical Abortion: Sort of. When Jamma-Pi was still a Demon Pet, Toku Tenshi parodied his demonic possessions as unwanted pregnancies because Momoko's Magical Compact revealed that Jamma-Pi lodged himself in the womb area of his victims' bodies. The radiation from Wedding Peach's Lovely Operation Tempete attack would drive Jamma-Pi from the possessed bodies, thus ending the pregnancies without killing anything.
 * Medium Awareness: Although more that they are in an anime than aware that they are in an abridged series.
 * Merchandise-Driven: Momoko comments on the "Angel Auto Dialer" being just there to sell a toy. Yuri responds: "Momoko, I'm surprised at you. We're not Bandai."
 * Milestone Celebration: In Episode 19, Momoko celebrates Toku reaching 300 subscribers.
 * Missing Mom: Sakura, Momoko's mother, ditched her family in a cloud of sparkles.
 * Monster of the Week: Lampshaded by Jamma-P and Momoko. When a Monster of the Week, Noctreen tries to explain her tragic history, Momoko interrupts her and Jamma-P dismisses her with, "No one's listening to you. We all know that you're just going to die in a couple of minutes anyway."
 * More Than Mind Control: When Noise puts Yosuke under her spell, he seems a little too eager submit to her.
 * Either that or he's just faking it to pretend nothing naughty he does is his fault.
 * Motor Mouth: Blitz
 * MST3K Mantra: Hinagiku tells a distressed Yuri, "Yuri, really, you have to learn to stop questioning things!"
 * Naughty Tentacles: They attacked Yosuke and also briefly entangled Yuri and Hinagiku, but a genre savvy Momoko stopped them "before things become too graphic! Sorry, fanboys!".
 * New Powers as the Plot Demands: Jamma-Pi can do anything once, if the script calls for it. Just don't expect him to ever do it again.
 * No Indoor Voice: Blitz
 * Old, New, Borrowed and Blue: Spoofed, like with Momoko thinking a penny in a shoe is the fourth.
 * Onee-Sama: Saori, a phone sex worker, plays the big sister to Hinagiku in episode 20. She reveals to Hinagiku that her now "smexy" voice was once annoying. This gives hope to Hinagiku that one day her voice will also be less obnoxious and duck-like.
 * Painting the Fourth Wall: Momoko must defend the lazy background design of the animators.
 * When Momoko compares Captain Yanagiba against Yosuke, she comments that while Yosuke never gets a sparkly background like Yanagiba, he still can attain a faded pastel background,which is still pretty good.
 * Panty Thief: St. Hanazono's soccer team.
 * Parental Incest: Mr. Hanasaki, Momoko's father, sees a Panty Shot opportunity when Momoko gives Yosuke a jump kick.
 * Power Perversion Potential: Not sexual. It's instead assuming the love waves are actually radiation.
 * Product Placement: "Make sure to buy / The Angel World Auto-Dialer / Tomy!"
 * Public Service Announcement: Wedding Peach Abridged does occasional public service announcements, usually concerning a holiday. For instance, for Halloween Momoko warned her viewers to beware the monsters disguised as children in poorly made costumes who roam freely on Halloween night. For St. Valentine's Day, Momoko and Yuri discussed the pagan and Christian origins of the holiday.
 * Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The nominal good guys: The Love Angels, Limone and Aphrodite.
 * The members of the Academically Underachieving Magical Girls Support group, or AUMGSP (pronounced "omg-sp").
 * Real Song Theme Tune: The Ear Worm "Boys" by SMiLE.dk
 * Rule of Cool: When Angel Lily questions the safety of Angel Daisy striking a pose on top of one of Aquelda's frozen water dragons, Daisy tell her, "Shut up! It makes me look hardcore!"
 * Running Gag: Momoko dreams that a she is attacked by a gaggle of chocolate geese when she tries to pick off one of the flock for consumption.
 * Running with scissors is only for the irredeemably depraved or the truly stupid.
 * Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Pluie does the bare minimum as a henchman, often running away from a fight even when he has the upper hand.
 * "I don't want to be part of this episode!"
 * Set Right What Once Went Wrong / Groundhog Day Loop: Hinagiku's Saint Pendule allows travel one day into the future, giving her foreknowledge that Captain Yanagiba falls off of the ridiculously tall viewing platform. She is then allowed to (re)live the day but forgets to save Yanagiba.
 * Shout-Out: TokuTenshi apparently has no illusions this show is a Follow the Leader of Sailor Moon.
 * Also, one episode was a load of shout outs to reality shows.
 * In Episode 18, Yuri and Hinagiku give a shout out to Furil, the J-Pop band who sang most of the songs for the original series.
 * Smoking Is Cool: Queen Rain Devilla, who is likely to become homicidal if she goes into even mild nicotine withdrawal.
 * So Bad It's Good: A large part of the series is basing itself on this.
 * Stalking Is Love: Played up more in the earlier episodes where Momoko, Hinagiku and Yuri are portrayed as stalking Captain Yanagiba. They build homemade bombs to blackmail him into dates, watch him in his sleep, and plant hidden cameras in the boy's locker room in order to express their love for him.
 * Stylistic Suck:
 * In the library, Momoko reads Tokyo Mew Mew Doujinshi of questionable quality.
 * During a wedding, when an emcee over-hypes his prosaic slide show, he sounds like the description box of a YouTube AMV.
 * Talk to the Fist: Pluie overwhelms Wedding Peach's Monologue Attack with his Devil Sword.
 * Test of Courage: Ikuko's face.
 * Theme Naming: Spoofed. Yuri becomes a pun for yuri, or Girl Love, and not for the lily, the flower that will bloom and grant love.
 * There Are No Adults: At least at the school. And considering what kind of parents the Love Angels have, that might not be a bad thing. When a teacher finally shows up at school, Momoko suspects that she is a con artist.
 * Toilet Humor: Wedding Peach Abridged conspicuously avoids this. And in a show abounding with (soccer) balls to the face, that is no small feat.
 * True Love's Kiss : Subverted. When Momoko is put into a deep sleep by a Demon Pet, she can only be awaken by a kiss from her true love. Firstly, Yuri kisses her, but it doesn't work. Then Yosuke ends up kissing Momoko, waking her from her deep sleep, but only because he was trying to take advantage of her while she was unconscious.
 * Two Decades Behind: As Pluie points out, that tacky Limone's outfit is so 80s.
 * Umbrella of Togetherness: "UMBRELLA!"
 * "No homo."
 * Valley Girl: Like, Potamos, fer sure.
 * Wake Up, Go to School, Save the World: Subverted. The Love Angels almost never go to school unless something plot relevant is happening there, and in any case they never study.
 * Where Do You Think You Are?:


 * Who Writes This Crap?: Jama-P didn't write the script for episode 7, so don't complain about it to him.
 * You Fail Logic Forever: In episode 20, when Saori gives her tacky costume jewlery necklace to Hinagiku, she tell her, "Here, take my necklace. [...] You can't keep it, but I'll let you borrow it forever." To which Hinagiku replies, "But isn't that keeping it?" Saori snaps back cordially, "Don't question me. Do you want the freaking necklace or not?"