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Live-Action Peach Girl Star Makes Peach-Shaped Prayer

On February 28, Mizuki Yamamoto (Momo), Kei Inoo (Kairi), and director Kōji Shintoku attended an event at the Tokyo Daijingū (Great Tokyo Shrine) to promote their upcoming film Peach Girl, a live-action adaptation of the manga of the same name. As the shrine is popular among the lovelorn, Yamamoto hung an ema on a blossoming peach tree to pray for success for her film and success in love for Japanese girls (and specifically, the twenty lovestruck girls in attendance). Ema are usually wooden tablets with prayers written on them, but in this case, the ema was a big peach. The event was connected to Hinamatsuri, a March 3 festival that celebrates girls.

Afterward, Yamamoto, Inoo and Shintoku discussed Peach Girl. Yamamoto acknowledged that portraying a "gal" like Momo was difficult in this age (the kogal trend has mostly passed) and she "thought a lot about the director and hair/makeup artists." She was impressed by Momo's smiles when she read the manga and put an extra effort into making her smiles seem authentic when she played the part. She also emphasized the difference between being in love with Toji and being in love with Kairi. "Of course girls would love to be in a situation where they're fought over between two handsome boys," she said.

Inoo described his character as "kind of dumb and frivolous" but "lovable" nonetheless. He also made an effort to convey "loneliness and poignancy" in his scenes with his family to emphasize a contrast. Inoo was initially "excited to be in a sparkly, romantic kind of movie" because he thought he'd be able to perform kabe-don, an act of (sort of) pinning a girl to a wall to make her heart flutter. To his surprise, he found himself "getting pinned to a wall by three people" instead (see the trailer below). "Different strokes for different folks. It set my heart beating, but not in the romantic way."

Shintoku with Yamamoto

Shintoku made note of the fact that not only was Peach Girl his debut film, it was also Inoo's, and Yamamoto was starring in her first shōjo manga adaptation. "For these three first-timers, it felt like our youths were coming back," he explained. Although the director acknowledged that Yamamoto and Inoo felt like they had been too busy to enjoy their youths, he said he "really didn't have a youth."

The actors finished off the event by praising the film. Yamamoto described it as a story where "a romantic incident happens every five minutes" and hoped that everyone in Japan — not just girls — would see it. Inoo likened it to riding a jet coaster and also recommended it to a wide audience — "the young generation, of course, but also older people like the director hoping to relive their youths."

Peach Girl opens in Japan on May 20. It is not unusual for film or anime staff to hold promotional events at shrines to pray for their work's success; the makers of Yōkai Watch, Dance with Devils and One Piece Film Z have all done so.

Source: Comic Natalie