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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
Okay, so I reached chapter 45 or so and I quit because I got tired of Sumi and all the excessive melodrama. A year later I decided to give it another shot, continuing from where I left off of course (I don't think I could stand rereading it from the beginning). So far, it's still melodramatic but I think I might be continuing with this for a while (until all the drama becomes too much for me at least).
Started off okay - typical shoujo, with the arrogant short-tempered rich guy picking up the sweet, naive, bordering on idiotic poor girl - and then just barreled off downhill.
No character development, especially for Sumi, very little in the way of a really interesting plot, and to be honest, I find none of the characters likable or relatable anymore, if I ever did at all.
What ended this manga for me, though, was the characters making so many decisions seemingly completely at random, with no logic whatsoever behind their actions. That got me so frustrated and annoyed I just couldn't bring myself to keep reading anymore.
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.
Ok, this series sure is insane sometimes, the charachters are a bunch of weirdoes, lots of cliches and you can pratically predict the end by now but well... Sou is changing his personality, he's becoming a better person and Sumi is quitting being sooo naive (at least a bit) and I'm really really looking forward to seeing Nozomu going nuts with the news the are coming (concerning Sumi, family, firm etc). The true is I'm a big fan of soap-operas (mainly the Mexican ones with all that drama) and there's the art that's really great (I mean, Sou is such a bishie, man) so I really enjoy reading Hadashi de Bara
After reading up to 48 ch of this, I think it's too much of a let down to continue this torture. Sumi and Soichiro are willing pawns played by just about every other character. I can't even sympathize over their plight because there is no character development, and you can't blame it on stupidity either, as they seem to know their own predicaments (Sumi loves being a martyr while Soichiro is too prideful). So you just kind of switch from loving them to despising them because they are truly unrelatable. It's like they are the bad guys in this story and you start to empathize with Nozomu, who's become a tragic hero! Also, the plot is so predictable the ending is obvious.
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
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 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.
First off, let me say I am a huge fan of Ueda-sensei's work. I've read everything I can get my hands on and most of them are wonderful.
This one, however... I can only recall being this frustrated over one other manga out of all the one's I've read. There isn't a single character who has even one lick of common sense and the melodrama is piled on so high that reading has honestly become a chore. And I'm all for willing suspension of disbelief, but there are limits even to that. The author has to meet the reader at least halfway if they want anyone to take their work seriously, but all current circumstances are simply too extreme to ever be believable.
Sumi is seriously so dumb/naive that by all rights she shouldn't even be alive. Souichirou isn't much better, acting rashly and not thinking about anything before he does it. And NONE of the characters ever learn from their many, many mistakes. Nozomu is a legitimate psychopath, constantly terrorizing Sumi, and yet she keeps allowing him to get away with the most ridiculous things ever.
And every chapter, there is some new, monumental revelation, whether it be about the company being taken over or the truth about Sumi's past. It's almost like Ueda-sensei is playing a game: How Ridiculous and Over-Dramatic Can I Make the Plot Before All My Readers Finally Get Sick of It?
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.
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