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Description
From Viz:
Poor Sumi Kitamura… Her irresponsible older brother Eisuke keeps bringing home orphans for her to take care of even though they can barely afford their own basic needs! Just when Sumi's financial problems become dire, wealthy Soichiro Ashida enters her life with a bizarre proposition: he'll provide her with the money she so desperately needs if she agrees to marry him. But can Sumi fool high society into thinking she's a proper lady? Moreover, is it worth giving up everything for this sham of a marriage?
Type
Manga
Related Series
N/A
Associated Names
玫瑰契約 裸足でバラを踏め ก้าวย่างบนดอกกุหลาบ Hadashi de Bara wo Fume Stepping on Roses Stepping on Roses Barefoot
My pride is telling me to hate this, but it's so good. Sumi, the lead female, epitomizes everything wrong about shoujo manga. She's the vulnerable damsel in destress who can't do anything and frequently falls into the clutches of evil. But she always puts on a happy face. The male lead, Soichiro, is an uber tsundere. Nozomu, the main villain, is absolutely sick. I'm surprised that such a fluffy series has such a disturbed villain. It's a really cliche set of main characters, but that's to be expected. The supporting characters are fine. The plot is really cliche. The art is cute. The setting is nice (I'm in love with the Meiji era). The dialogue can range from cute to overly sweet to down-right disturbing. The character interactions are actually pretty good. Add these all together and you have a cookie cutter shoujo manga. But for whatever reason, Hadashi de Bara wo Fume is much much more addictive than regular shoujo. Overall, I wouldn't go into this expecting great art. Just turn off the intelligent part of your brain and enjoy the ride. Hadashi de Bara wo Fume will easily become your guilty pleasure if you let it. Just try to ignore Sumi's overbearingly sweet personality.
First the butler who abandoned his master and it really doesn't seem like it's fake. But the actual reason the butler quit is even more stupid. A little trust issue, and that's it. But the master is actually not trusting his butler, who has been that for well over 10 years, on an issue concerning a month-old maid. So this whole part made me want to hit them. But it was already inconsistent from the beginning : a wedding before a fixed date to inherit while he is the only relative of his grandfather ???? Come on... And now it seems like he doesn't have anything left, no money or anything... HOW did he do before he inherited ?? And there's no bloody way the sumi would want to even see nozomu who actually tried to kill her after having kidnapped her... But she goes to take a shower at his home. and hse poses for his painting. Soooo annoying
The girl is plain stupid, no problem about that. The main male is also becoming more and more dumb. The rival is really creepy and I totally hate him.
So why the 5 ? because the romance is kinda cute nonetheless and I like the art. But if you expect a great drama, pass your way.
So I dropped this series a few month ago cause it got stupid and I felt like slapping her in the face.... now I pick it up again and she's still stupid if not worse
Spoiler (mouse over to view)
Like how can she be so naive as to trust everyone?!?!??!!??!?! And she KNOW that the blond guy still likes her AND SHE STILL WENT TO HIS PLACE TO SHOWER?!?!??! And in Chapter 31 it looked as if she want him to touch her O_O Seriously you stupid women stop trying to be sympathetic to every guy you see!!! UGH!!
Oh yeah, I also hate how everyone is going psycho, like
ok, so at the beginning i loved it. yes, it's quite cliche and kinda far-fetched - but still, the idea was cute. an innocent girl and an arrogant brat meet and their love will most certainly change them into better people...
WRONG!
you get utterly disappointed. there is no development. instead, everything just gets stupid.
you'd think that the sweet sumi would develop into a stronger person or get a clue about what's going on in the world - what with everybody around her being so cultured and her proving herself a real chess genius and all. well, you soon realize that playing chess is about the only intelligent thing she does. yep - her brain is glorious in those times but downright out of order ALL the rest of the time. the author doesn't seem to know the difference between kindness or naiveté and plain idiocy.
Spoiler (mouse over to view)
the perfect gentleman nozomu turns out to be an obsessed psycho. oh, but that's ok, sumi is stupid enough to forget about his assaults every single time. take a shower at his place, alone? puh-lease, no problem. i have no problem with a nice dude turning out to be evil, but that guy just went nuts. oh, and his cute fiancee? psycho #2. she just tries to kill when she get jealous. why not? i, for one, do it all the time...
but i think the manga hit rock bottom when Souichirou quit his job. one minute he's Richy Rich, the next they're all living on the street, eating bread. could someone please explain? i (almost) forgave the butler quitting his job (souichirou - yet again inexplicably - wouldn't trust him) and deciding to go all CIA on us, but there's a limit to how irrational a story can get. the millionaire dude ends up litterally in the dirt! what, did he return his clothes to his grandfather too? that white shirt he's always wearing was all that was left?
so yeah, i got really disappointed. it could have been really nice, but the author wouldn't spare two minutes to think about her plot. sumi and souichirou are really cute, but sweet scenes don't make a story. plus, someone in his review said that they randomly fell in love, and i agree. it wouldn't have killed to add a couple of scenes in which we are shown what they see in each other. random romance just gets on my nerves.
This is one of those mangas that I know I'm going to end up forgetting about...but the super intensive soap opera elements just keep you pretty interested for the moment XD First of all...the characters are all either extremely exaggerated or not realistic (aka. freaking crazy) to begin with. OK we get that the main girl is super nice, but there are straws to a human's temper and hers just fail to even exist....she gets nearly-raped in like..70% of all the chapters, and the times where she's not, she's either cooking for her dominator (i mean, uh, husband), thinking about nozomu, or crying. Her character is linear and BORING...she's pretty and all but you can't help but think that she is just a flat non-realistic character that NEVER gets mad even among the rest of all the other characters - who's nerves are bipolar to say the least. The characters are WAYYY too predictable. I'd also like to point out that each of them seem to have "two modes". For example....Nozomu is either crazy or flower-boy happy (to see sumi), Soichiro is either annoyed/arrogant or (more rarely) happy to see sumi. Sumi is either sad and crying or happy-go-lucky. There's really no variation in their feelings.
There's NO character development...unless you count Soichiro's newfound love for Sumi, and even that wasn't very well developed. Every chapter ends with him trying to smex her up..and failing. None of the characters communicate with one another...soichiro and sumi have BARELY had a conversation in order for them to truly know each others feelings. The mangaka tries to fill these, I guess, "non-action" parts with sex scenes..and that just fails to do anything for the character relationships.
The art is pretty nice. If the characters were more interesting, and the plot was less filled with breakups and misunderstandings every chapter, I would enjoy it way way way more, afterall, the romance IS quite cute (if you consider the fact that they get cozy with one another quite fast in comparison to other shoujo mangas). Advice to the author....tone down the rape scenes....please focus more on the actual characters...unless your target audience happens to be pervs :s
I wish someone would just telling me the ending. It's just getting ridiculous and overly dramatic. Sumi needs to learn boundaries. None of the characters are really that endearing.
i luv this one.First i read this because of it's title "Hadashi de Bara wo Fume"-" Stepping on roses barefoot " so touch^^. I just found this manga this morning and read from ch1 to ch27 and that 's so interesting ^o^. Want more >_< vol5 is so great. hope next chap 'll release soon.
The romance between the main characters was nice, and I have to say in the beginning I thought this manga would turn out to be one of my favourites. But I grew to hate it progressively the more I read. The main girl was really stupid and annoying. And that Nozomu character was a real psycopath, I didn't enjoy all his scheming. By the end there had been so much irritating drama I just couldn't feel any joy that they were finally together it was like oh, well that was always going to happen so whatever. Usually it's so nice that a couple overcomes every obstacle and gets together. But there was something really unromantic about this story, despite everything. It was a chore to read.
Well,the art is nice but the story is so full of cliches!!! So many stereotypes too! And if at the start the story was....quite nice ....there's a limit to drama °___° It should be drammatic but sometimes it makes me laugh xD so much soap-opera-like drama xD Anyway I guess I'll continue reading it...just to see how it ends
i love this series so much. I cant wait to see what happens next ...SPOILER(?) personally i think that sumi and nozumo are brother and sisters (there are many hints in the book that gave it off), i wish that they are so that he would stop stalking her, but at the same time it would be a little weird.
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