Labor of Love

!It is often said that it is dangerous to have romantic relations with a coworker, especially within a work environment. Considering there is a possibility of bitterness after a breakup -- including your productivity and willingness to work with that person will drop significantly -- it is quite evident getting involved in these types of relationships shouldn't be pursued. Its kind of like playing with fire, it may look fun to do, but eventually you will get burned.

Even with this, emotions can't always be controlled that easily, and really, somethings will be inevitable.

Mixing work culture and romance is something we don't see all that often in anime. However, this season we do have one anime that covers such a subject, in a far more cheerful manner -- that anime being Servant x Service.

We pretty much have two separate relationships within the offices of Servant x Service; one is already establish, and keep secret for the most part -- that being Chihaya and Ichimiya. The other is Hasabe trying to convince Lucy to start something -- and as of writing this, they have their first date coming soon.

Servant x Service, although it is a comedy, there are some cases to be made for the level of seriousness the anime takes when dealing with relationship between characters. Whether that be romance or otherwise. Compared to Working!! -- which was created by the same mangaka, Takatsu Karino, who made Servant x Service -- deals with the whole "romance in the workplace" a bit differently.

Both have the focus be inside the workplace -- that being a restaurant in Working!! and an office in Servant x Servant. The only thing different, making for a subtle but noticeably different feel, is the fact that most people in Working!! are of high school age, and currently attending.

That difference molds the way the anime carries itself in trying grab the audience. For Working!!, romance isn't the central focus, but the show was hinting at it throughout. And Servant x Service's romance -- although not the focus as well -- isn't afraid to dig deeper in the complexity of balancing work and personal personal life.

At the end of the day, slice-of-life can only go so far as a genre before you find it feeling repetitive. Office love is probably one of the few things that hasn't been tapped yet -- mainly because the industry to trying to appeal to the dominate market, and high school romance is the hotness at the moment. It is something that should be explored more in the future, and I want to see happen.

We might see more slice-of-life romance in office settings sooner or later, but for right now we only have a few that I've listed and Rec just to top it off.