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

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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

*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.

[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.