In Django, the validation & type coercion would typically happen in a Form object (or, if you're using Django REST Framework, a Serializer). That step at least is outside of the ORM and seems much more explicit to me.

Also, in Django models are explicitly defined. There's no ActiveRecord magic of reading the database to define the model. Which is not to say that AR's approach is bad or wrong, but it is pretty significantly different from Django.