Rokudou no Onna-tachi Harem Manga Review: Every Girl is a Delinquent

Harem anime and manga are formulas for success. Take a guy (or a girl), surround them with attractive and appealing potential partners, and let the imagination run wild. Within the realm of this seemingly limited genre, however, is actually a surprising amount of variety once you get past the initial premise. Monster Musume takes a close look at what it might actually be like to romance real monsters from legend. School Days is a lesson in what would happen if someone tried to aim for the harem ending route (spoilers: it means a despicable human being and a lot of violence). Rokudou no Onna-tachi, or “Rokudou’s Wicked Women” throws its hat into the ring with a story where all girls are violent yankii-types.

Rokudou is a loser, and everyone knows it. He gets picked on at school, gets snide looks from passersby, and can only muster up the courage to complain in secret with his equally hapless friends. Looking to turn his life around, he desperately uses an ancestral artifact passed down in his family for generations: a scroll that is capable of subduing all demons. However, in the modern age it has a different effect—it makes all delinquent girls fall in love with him.

One or two yankii girls are somewhat common in harem series, but as far as I know this is the first to feature nothing but them. In addition, while the female delinquent archetype is often drawn with the idea that their hard exterior hides a soft heart, one look at the girls of Rokudou no Onna-tachi implies that whatever compassion is in there is buried deep, deep inside.

There’s clearly one girl that’s supposed to be the main lead, a blonde that harkens back to the days of the old-fashioned sukeban-type delinquent. While she is ostensibly the most beautiful, especially because she doesn’t have a perpetual Dragon Ball Z scowl, the first chapter also shows her mauling an entire gang of thugs. Not only is she strong, the series also avoids portraying the girl’s strength in contrast to a visual elegance, as is often the case. Instead, she is literally covered in her opponents’ blood, and it is in this orgy of violence that love is supposed to blossom.

Thus, while there is potential concern that all of these girls are going to end up subservient, I predict that this manga will defy expectations. Even if some of the girls do get infatuated with Rokudou, the way they show their affections will be more for comedy than thrills. The potential for fighting action is also sky-high given the premise of the series. Rokudou no Onna-tachi is a manga for those who want to entertain the thought of a truly powerful harem.

As a final side note, it’s not unusual to see ex-delinquent moms in anime being wives to fairly meek men. In this respect, it’d be interesting if this were a thematic “prequel” of sorts to that kind of story.

Image Source: Weekly Shonen Champion 2016, Issue 30