Araburu Kisetsu no Otome-domo yo.
O Maidens in Your Savage Season

Edit

What would you like to edit?

SynopsisBackgroundAlternative TitlesPictureChapters/VolumesPublishing DatesRelationsTypeExternal Links  

[Warning - Spoilers Abound]

This is one of the few narratives in romance manga that tries to capture teenage sexuality. Through the unique perspectives of five girls, and occasionally one boy, we are privy to the anxiety, angst and temporary euphoria that comes with a maturing body and newfound focus on satisfying the innate desire to be loved.

However, an attempt at realism in fiction does not necessitate a pleasant experience, nor does it make a reading convincingly realistic. Araburu utilizes NTR in a rage inducing love triangle for the purpose of evoking an emotional response from the reader. Unless this is your fetish, it is not ... an enjoyable experience to watch two "friends" chase after an indecisive boy who has no apparent redeeming features and isn't worth the attention. Araburu features an illegal student-teacher "relationship" that is entirely inappropriate in a realistic scenario. No matter how many times sensei tries to convince us that he's just not into children, it is never comforting watching an adult engage in the sexual stimulation of an underaged student. There's really no point to this relationship existing other than to appeal to the audience who enjoys being teased by the sensei-student forbidden romance trope.

Many of the reasons that readers dislike Kuzu No Honkai should apply to this manga - you must watch characters you grow to love suffer. The narrative grows progressively darker. The characters grow progressively melancholic with no signs of emotional relief in sight. but Kuzu No Honkai is a superior version of what this manga is trying to accomplish. That manga and it's adaptation carry a somber tone from the very beginning so there is no confusion over what general direction it will take - you know to brace yourself for the impending avalanche of pain. There is NTR and a student teacher relationship there too, but the instigator is a self affirmed nymphomaniac who fully embraces her depravity, unlike the dynamic in Arabaru where the student-teacher are merely tip toeing around a uncrossable line. Unlike the dynamic in this love triangle where the cheating parties shy away from acknowledging their roles in betraying the companion who they claim to love. You can appreciate, if nothing else, the brutal honesty exhibited in KnH, while there is very little reprevie for the the underhanded deceit in this manga. Furthermore, the characters actually have sex in KnH, in one case with the same sex, early in the narrative and quickly learn that it doesn't fulfill them a single iota, whereas in Arabaru there is lots of talking and nil action.

You are deceptively given some hope that Arubaru will be heartwarming with a tinge of bittersweetness by the inclusion of goofy comedy in the early chapters and the innocent reliance upon literature as a vehicle to explore a subject that is uncomfortable to communicate otherwise. It is was fun to watch them come up with code-words to describe sex, because saying it outright is just too embarrassing, and to form genuine bonds over the mutual curiosity of eroticism. This makes it all the more jarring that those bonds are so soon shredded apart, in some cases irreparably so, and those laughs are swiftly transformed into groans. It doesn't even feel like I'm reading the same manga anymore, and it's hard to justify so dramatic a tone shift that feels more manufactured than genuine.

Any serious attempt at capturing teenage sexuality is invariably prone to an overdose of slow burning indecisive love triangles, stupid teenagers, fractured friendships, hormone driven decision making and misunderstandings. That is not inherently a fault of Araburu. But initially presenting itself as something other than what it becomes, seemingly stirring up drama for the sake of evoking a reaction, and not being realistic in spite of a premise that tries to capture realism, is. I appreciate the attempt here to capture an adolescent experience that is usually glossed over in this medium, but not so much the execution. I'd rather just read Kuzu No Honkai again.

Araburu Kisetsu no Otome-domo yo is an interesting read. It’s a shounen title about a group of girls’ sexual awakening through literature written and drawn by a duo of women. It charts their course from learning love and sex on paper to learning what it feels like for real with sensitivity towards the girls’ experiences and emotions that are often overlooked or sexualized in books of this type when they’re written by men.

That is not to say that the girls in this book are not sexual, they most certainly are, but they are not objectified. Rather, Okada-sensei introduces us in each chapter to some new ... emotional development which ties into their sexuality. She tackles difficult subject matter in the series with sensitivity and subtlety while glossing over or skipping altogether other typical “drama” that one usually finds in shounen and shoujo titles to instead focus on subtler issues that gives the manga a sense of realism and higher purpose.

This title is really an overlooked gem. It is so layered. What strikes me most is how the author knows how to visit them at just right the moment. Each moment pushes the story along without it feeling sparing, rushed, lagging, or over-editing. It has such a natural flow and the author has such a wonderful, natural sense of pacing that leaves the reader wanting more with each successive chapter.

The art is likewise wonderful. It has a natural airiness and simplicity to it which on its own is exceptional, but together with the story is genius, perfectly complimenting the story and the personalities of the young characters.

*Minor spoilers*
I was very excited to start reading this manga. The first episode of the anime came out and immediately after watching it I knew I wanted to read the manga as well. I always appreciate manga trying to take a more serious approach to sex and eroticism and that seemed to be exactly what Araburu was doing. Usually, with many of these romantically themed mangas, we get characters who dance around concepts of sex and it can feel very repetitive and immature for someone who reads a lot of romance. Araburu got straight to the point of it and takes an interesting and realistic ... take on what sex is like for teenagers. It seemed to bring something new to the genre and I was very excited.

Unfortunately, my excitement quickly vanished as halfway through the story the plot goes in a very cliched and regrettable direction. The love triangle that emerges is essentially what ruined this manga for me. Not only does it cut through any character development that the male MC has, but it takes away from what the manga really had going for it. Despite the troublesome nature of growing up and facing the insecurities that teens have with sex, the main girls all had the literature club, and most importantly each other, to help them deal with these problems and their relationships to one another was what made the manga cute and fun to read.

With the love triangle, we are resorting back to the typical ways high school drama is written about and it's aggravating. We see friendships being broken beyond repair as the two main girls actively pursue the same love interest who, before this point seemed like a decent character but has instead fallen into the douchy and oblivious male role we expect to find in trashy harem writing. Instead of focusing on the feelings behind sexual desire, the basis of this manga initially, it is all about hormonal teens making bad decisions and, while this may be realistic in its own right, it has lost the sophistication I felt it had at the beginning.

I was excited to see each girl follow their own path towards adulthood and while I expected the angst of show about high school, the turmoil caused by the love triangle put a hold on any future development for the two girls and has made the only male mc completely unlikable. I appreciated the introduction of a non-straight character but her involvement in the feud seems to undermine her story and growth as well which is a huge disappointment.

I know it is not over yet but I am unsure that anything could fix this decision and it seems the story is beyond help.

I wanted to give this manga a 5, as a sort of neutral rating to represent that there was very high highs and very low lows, but ultimately this series ended up being so frustrating that I will dock that extra point on the "highs" side.

*This review will include spoilers since I've completed the series. The manga hasn't finished updating the last few chapters yet, so I supplemented that by looking at raws and watching the anime where I couldn't understand some of the Japanese, since the screenplay is ultimately the same.

I was really into this manga in its early stages. As someone who really ... enjoys coming of age stories, I was pretty excited to see one that tackled teenage girls learning about sex not only in a way that wasn't fetish-y, over-sexualized nonsense, but was also candid and awkward, too, because that's all true to the experience! When you're in high-school it feels like you're constantly fumbling and making really stupid decisions and you're figuring things out and for some reason nobody around you understands your very specific feelings. That's what made this manga good. The euphemisms for sex, the overreactions to romance, the friends cheering each other on and having each other's backs despite not knowing what the hell was going on, through such a confusing time--all of that is what drew me in and made me believe that I'd found a rare gem. It's all sensationalized because it's a work of fiction, of course, but that's obviously part of the fun.

The moment Sugawara realized her feelings for Izumi I knew this manga was going to take an undesired turn, and I was unprepared for the extent of that turn, and I think Mari Okada was as well. I genuinely have no clue what she was really trying to tell the readers, and I don't think this manga being some kind of portrayal of youth as messy and erratic cuts it.

All of what made the series enjoyable at the start, the comedy, the awkwardness, the energy etc. gets sidelined to make space for romance. To be fair it isn't like the romance is particularly cliche like you'd usually expect. It's still largely framed by the feelings of confusion and embarrassment, just that this time it isn't fun and it actually just bothers you the whole time. Young characters should be allowed to make mistakes, but in this case it was more like bad decision upon bad decision was being made and not a single narrative-important, HEALTHY adult figure was around to put a stop to it.

I think Sugawara is the worst of it. It's honestly just sad because I think you're meant to believe that her actions are a result of being groomed by Saegusa, who I will tentatively call a pedophile, and how that's warped her perception of literally everything the series is about: love, sex, being a girl entering adulthood, what it means to even be a person who experiences new and exciting things for crying out loud! She talks about how she's going to "die soon" because the child in her will soon be gone, she connects her self-worth to her looks and to her seemingly mysterious personality, and sees sex as the only way out. What was a light-hearted, enjoyable plot is suddenly overshadowed by Sugawara failing to properly reckon with trauma. And that'd have been fine if it wasn't like getting on a train ride that absolutely lost control. I don't want to blame Sugawara too much because it really doesn't feel like Okada had any intentions for her to heal from her past, whether through her own actions or the intervention of another character, but man is it hard. Watching her abandon her first ever real friendships to chase after a boy that you really cannot piece together how she came to like at all--like I'm still at a loss as to how she developed such strong feelings for him--was probably one of the most frustrating things I've ever seen to date. It was awful watching her essentially harass him on the train, and then blame him for getting aroused. I honestly can't tell if it's just bad writing on Okada's part why Sugawara was so fickle, because in one instance she didn't like Kazusa turning her into a love rival over her good looks, and then in another she was using them against Izumi. Then in a scene where she was actually confronted she would say things like "That was just me saying some bullshit!" I thought where she had been really steadfast with her decisions before, she suddenly had become really flaky and honestly, a terrible friend. I wish somebody had called her out on it.

To be fair to Sugawara, she did say she was choosing love over her friends. It's just that that she still tried to hold on to both...? I imagine if she wanted to really cut them off she wouldn't have asked for Kazusa's permission to confess to her boyfriend, but who knows. And then to act like Kazusa giving her permission was the obvious conclusion to that request just seemed so disrespectful. In the final moments as well where she's still trying to get Izumi's attention despite Kazusa being right there...........

If it seems like I'm dunking so much on Sugawara it's less her personally than it is my confusion with what purpose any of that was supposed to serve. I think Sugawara's decisions ultimately highlight something I think this manga really frustrated me with, and that was how nobody was really held responsible for their actions.

Hongou and Milo-sensei, for example. Their student-teacher relationship was another gross thing this manga just springs on you. While I think the theme of exploration of one's sexuality is something that can be done creatively and even with a certain level of risk attached, this aspect of the series was just ridiculous. Maybe the grossness could have been avoided if the legality of the situation, as in the fact that Milo-sensei is ultimately a creep for entertaining any of Hongou's advances at all (despite not having feelings for her), wasn't treated as empty blackmail material or some kind of half-hearted awareness that what they were doing was wrong. Milo-sensei constantly saying he's too cowardly to be into minors, or only saying that he just doesn't want to lose his job, and yet still messing around with one. And we're supposed to believe he's a good, responsible adult?

I think by the end I was just happy Momoko at least had a moment where she freaked out. Finally somebody was trying to defend themselves! But even that fell flat, because all it took was the object of her affections barely acknowledging her feelings to satisfy her anger.

I think this manga just ended up being so half-hearted. I thought it was trying to do something different regarding topics that really could use more works, but just ended up being a slog through the mud. It constantly spouted what it thought were truths like "Romance and sex can't be separated!" as if that excused any of the characters' actions, and really that statement is hardly true! It relied on stereotypical gender norms like Kazusa being a weak girl for Izumi to understand that he had feelings for her and wanted to "protect her". Only Sonezaki experienced any real outrage at Juujou's expulsion, which was truly refreshing because everybody else was like "Meh what can you do", and that makes me wonder why that plot point was even in the series. Don't even get me started on Momoko. I thought a gay character could be more confident about straying from the "norm", only for her to be let down by Kazusa during that scene by the river, or how she comes to watery decisions like "maybe it's not about the gender of who I love" which honestly feels like the usual cop-out when faced with making a character outrightly gay. By the end of it all a pedophile is still allowed to run a theatre school for young children and faces no consequences for his actions except an APOLOGETIC punch, and I think that sums up how nothing is acknowledged by the end.

I think the art is very nice, at least. And I think Okada has skill as a writer. But I can't say I think she has ideas I find worth-while, after this one. The manga is entertaining and well-put together. But the actual content of the story eats itself alive, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how or I guess why that happened. The playing of colour tag would have been a nice way to wrap up the series, I think, if the conclusions brought about by playing it hadn't been as ambiguous and indirect as whatever ideas the manga tried to put forward. And I think that's a shame.

I recently found this manga earlier today due to the anime adaption it will be getting and I have to say that I'm shocked by how unknown this manga seems to be.
As far as the story goes it's entertaining, with a good balance of humor and more serious topics, with a main cast of characters which are all unique and entertaining with their own distinct personalities. The art for this series is also great. It's nothing revolutionary, however it well compliments the tone of the story while being mostly unique and pleasant to the eye. The various gags brought on by the sexual themes ... in this manga also hit their mark every time, making this one of the first manga to make me laugh out loud in a while. Another good thing about this series is that it doesn't rely on sexualising the characters themselves to attract readers, which is something easy to do when focusing on themes of sex.
Overall I feel this is a manga many more people should read and I will be picking up a physical copy at the first chance I get at the first chance I get. Hopefully the anime adaptation does it justice and brings more people to this mostly unknown series.

After watching the anime I just HAD to read the manga as it's well known that transitions from manga to anime is sometimes a rocky journey. Not so in this case as the author, Mari Okada, was heavily involved in both.

Let me just say from the onset, Araburu Kisetsu no Otome-domo yo is not for the faint of heart. It deals with the risque topic of female sexuality and how young women see romantic relationships. This is not some fan servicey male fantasy, the author is female, her intensions far more complex. Its not about how men see women, but about how women see themselves. ... Her approach is fresh, authentic and sometimes too brutally honest for comfort. She softens the blows with outrageous humour and seemingly excessive hysteria. The manga feels like a sneak peak into the somewhat deranged mind of adolescent girl as all blood migrates from the brain and into other parts of the body. Somehow it felt nostalgic for me as I was reminded of the absolutely dumb things I did as a sexually awakening teenager. Totally embarrassing 😂

Okada-san treats all her characters with real affection, giving them a safe space in order to work out unfamiliar feelings and urges. You may be surprised to find that I found this manga and its characters wholesome. While some scenes are shocking, I never felt it was gratuitous. It felt like a wild roar from a tribe of savage maidens, exposing hypocrisy, destroying taboos and double standards, demanding people to see them as they are.

Never once was promiscuity or 'ecchi' promoted, just an all too honest look at what makes women tick. Wise men will listen and takes notes. I'd like to think that young women would benefit from reading it, but I'm afraid it may be too real for comfort. It may best be appreciated by older women looking back nostalgically at something that was once a mystery to them.

I felt Okada-san was very brave writing this manga and deserves 9/10

[Somewhat Spoiler warning.]


Well. This had a lot of potential. That is before it became a big mess. I really had high hopes for it in the beginning. Though once the characters had made some choices, even though others strongly advised against it they ruined it. They turned the story into a love triangle in which nobody will be happy. One in which there is NTR in which one character goes on to cuck their "best friend" in their own words.

I liked a lot of the characters in here, they were cute and I liked seeing them be young but also growing up at the ... same time, but with the twist it takes. It becomes one of those stories. One were it just becomes a soggy love story. One were the author truly does pull out all these cliches and tropes to made it seem so much deeper and sadder then it is. Watching the lead guy go from a somewhat good character to the same old "Uhhhhhhh which girl?" guy that we've seen over and over again is frustrating. The whole series becomes something just frustrating and dreadful to read.

This was disappointing to me. It started off really strong with a lot of fun humor and a strong premise, seeming to be an exploration of teenage girls' coming into their awareness of sexuality in a realistic way, but by the 3rd volume it took a turn for the melodramatic with a cliché love triangle and also started introducing a creepy teacher-student plotline that wasn't handled well at all. The humor was also disappearing at the same time. A real shame as this seemed like it had the potential to be something pretty unique and special among all the typical high school romance series out ... there.