The early chapters of the Wedding Peach manga that ran in Shougaku Youchien, like so much of the early media mix were, shall we say, a little tentative.
The title, for example, was the preliminary Chou Tenshi Densetsu Wedding Peach and original artist Konomichi Ayumi tried to lend an anime style to designs that would end up not being used in the actual anime at all (given it didn't begin until 1995).
But part of what I find so fascinating about this incarnation of the series is how solidly it presents itself as a story for very small children to enjoy. I say all this because the chapter shown in the July 1994 issue of Shougaku Youchien is just so fundamentally something for a kids' magazine that it made me smile just thinking of how smartly it utilises the medium.
Bound into the magazine is a sheet of "henshin seal(s)" which can be removed and applied to the appropriate pages of the comic included in the issue. These seals are a core part of the story, with young readers invited to use them to help Peach and her friends transform and fight back against the devils, rather than just serving as cute extras for decorating accessories.
If the seals aren't used Momoko doesn't visibly transform into Peach as she normally would and the story doesn't progress as it should. Child readers are being asked to complete the visual storytelling of the narrative here and while Wedding Peach was hardly the first or last child's story to use these techniques to involve readers, I appreciate that it did this and that I now have a copy in my collection.
I love this kind of thing, and I imagine plenty of kids and parents today would enjoy something similar with their favorite series! I am sharing it partly because I wanted to highlight it (I always enjoy when a story draws in its audience through simple and time tested ideas). But also because it underscores just how young the intended audience for Wedding Peach really was. It was not aimed at tweens or teens but at small children, and the older otaku audience the anime later attracted didn't factor into shaping these original core elements of the media mix.
Plus I just think it's neat, as always.
