Of Love and Lust: School Days vs O Maidens In Your Season

If there was one thing that bothered me during O Maidens In Your Savage Season’s airing, it’s people that compared it to School Days for some reason. I hadn’t watched School Days at that time, so I couldn’t say anything then. Now it’s different. I have so many questions on whether or not the people saying these things have watched School Days or have just seen a video on it and wanted to use that wrong knowledge to hurt a good show that didn’t deserve it. School Days has a massive reputation behind it after all. That being that the show just becoming unhinged and out of control with a somewhat cathartic death at the end. It is in some ways, but there are so many nuanced things going on in School Days that it isn’t just outrageous and out of the control.

I can definitely say that while there are some similarities in terms of themes and some character relationships in School Days and O Maidens In Your Savage Season, that’s about it really. The shows couldn’t be more different if they tried really. Yes, sex is there for both of them but how each show approaches talking about sex is different. From why these shows are constructed to the writing process, both have had different goals and ideas in what they want to do. That doesn’t just mean discussion and exploration between the two shows is unfounded. Mainly because that is what I am about to do here. Let’s have some fun, shall we? I think we should.

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Characters

School Days

If there is comparison that could be made here, it’s the fact that each show has a love triangle in them. School Days’ central conflict is based around Makoto’s relationship between Kotonoha and Sekai. Kotonoha is the more restrained and soft beauty while Sekai is the more energetic and proactive girl. Makoto is the boy whose never been in love before and wanted a relationship with Kotonoha in the beginning. Sekai is the love interest that gets together despite her not well held back jealousy.

All the other characters in the story affect how this main relationship changes over the course of the series. A lot of girls have a crush on Makoto, so how those girls interact with Makoto also changes how the relationship that Kotonoha and Sekai have towards Makoto does to in similar ways. That’s the extent on how character relationships work in School Days.

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O Maidens In Your Savage Season

With that in mind we can talk about the relationship with Izumi and the two girls crushing on him, Azusa and Niina. Kazusa is Izumi’s childhood friend who she has a crush on and a little bit plain. Izumi doesn’t know how to deal with this because he thinks of Kazusa as a sister at first. That’s romantic side plot while Niina is the most sexually exciting girl who has started having a crush on Izumi during their brief conversations with each other. She’s also dealing with Pedophilia from her former dance instructor from her childhood who is pushing her forward more to make her blume. EWWWW. I should also mention that Niina and Kazusa are in the same club (the literature club), are friends, but has their relationship strained because of their crushes on Izumi.

There is also the fact that this is one of four things going on in the series. O Maidens focuses on five girls in a literature club that reads porn during a sexual awakening. There is a character discovering that she is a lesbian and doesn’t want to Nina and Kazusa to fight named Momoko because they are her friends. There is also Rika, a prude girl who discovers a guy that likes her for real recently and she’s learning how to deal with that too. Lastaly, there is Hitoha who wants to write erotica for a living and is crushing on their literature club advisor and is more forward wanting to have sex with him to write her novel out of experience and the club advisor continually saying no to her or deflecting her legally.

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Conclusion

O Maidens has much more going on while School Days is hyper focused on this relationship forming and breaking down in interesting ways.

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Society and Societal Restraint

School Days

I don’t need sections for this one because it’s obvious which show has restraint and which doesn’t. School Days doesn’t not pull back from anything that’s going on here. There are barely any adults in the situation at hand to say “no, you shouldn’t be doing that”. Only that one teacher in the beginning part of the show to give a lecture and yell at Sekai or Makoto when they stand up or are loud. That’s it. The kids are free to do whatever they want whenever they want with nothing stopping them. Also, Kotonoha is rich but doesn’t affect anyone at all besides casual mentions of a yacht and vaction places.

School Days puts characters in a institutional situations like school and sometimes part time work where they just go to it while having almost complete freedom in what they do outside of those situations. The small elements of society are there only to give the show a sense of normality because it could happen on a desert island or anywhere else really. The police didn’t even show up at the end of the last episode to arrest anyone. I think all of that works in a since of usual harem anime situations which are very similar to this. It’s fine though, because what happens is incredibly interesting.

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O Maidens In Your Savage Season

In O Maidens, society plays a huge part in the show itself. It starts with having physical parents, teachers, school administration, book organizations, and all sort of things pushing these girls forward in a way. The presence of adults is never missed and also felt no matter what happens because that’s the point. O Maidens is a show about Girls being affected by society, going about their sexual awakening while society crushes on them, the girls fighting back and saying no. It’s realistic in context of what the show is going for. It’s not just a romantic comedy, it’s something else too. Society wants these girls to only being doing this and that at this age while our five girls reject it and go on their own paths. It’s very strong material that anyone can really related to. Even me.

All of which goes into the responsibilities of the adults trying not to get fired or sued for what they are doing. Hitoha constantly pushes and flirts with the literature club advisor, right? It’s a good thing the guy has enough sense to know that student and teacher relationships are illegal and could throw him in prison. He does toe the line saying “doing this is legal” and such, but he inevitably just tells her no and why they can’t. A similar sort of thing happens between Niina and her pedophilic former teacher who pushes her to think in certain ways until she hits him and completely rejects him. So many complicated and interesting things to explore here.

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Conclusion

It’s obvious here. Both series have different plot elements with similar settings. School Days is hyper focused in what it wants to achieve down to the location of where everything is going on doesn’t even matter and O Maidens In Your Savage Season can’t work without society being in it because the girls are affected by it. That really is the thing here.

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Finally, Love and Lust

School Days

School Days is the story of a boy named Makoto going completely out of control without being checked, but he’s a spineless wimp that had a crush on a girl and then finds out he wants sex instead of love. He finds Kotonoha’s interest of having a normal relationship boring and then instead cheats on her with Sekai. Why? Because Sekai seems more sexually exciting to him until Sekai wants to have a normal relationship and then she gets cheated on by the same guy. It’s almost like Sekai taught him that doing this is ok OR Makoto just found out he really likes having sex and that’s it. There’s a lot to read here.

So the main themes of what is love (baby don’t hurt me) and what is lust are heavily apart of the story behind the tragedy in this anime. I feel like Makoto confused the two and whenever a girl dragged him in to kiss or sleep with him, he thought it was because the girl loved him not because she was in the moment and wanted to sleep with him for any other purpose. That and he really wasn’t that good at saying the right things and understanding the feelings of the women he hurt, even though that wasn’t completely his fault. School Days is complicated, yo.

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O Maidens In Their Savage Season

Love and Lust plays a large in O Maidens too. Except, no one has sex in this series. There are many cases of “almost having sex”, but the action never happens. Instead, the five girls in the literature talk about sex a lot privately and amongst themselves. There is a lot of good jokes here and there along with some very scary and completely horrifying moments from it too. Each girl has a different perspective on what these things mean and pursue it their own way which is interesting to watch. Even when some things are creepy, it’s good to have conversations on those things using fiction.

At the tip of this story is the inherent love triangle between Izumi, Kazusa, and Niina. Once again, very School Days like except Izumi really cares about what he says and does because he’s a shy dork who loves trains to the point of masturbation. I’m not kidding about this by the way. Izumi has had his own sexual awakenings too. So in the end, Izumi discovers his own conclusion between the sexually interesting Niina and his childhood friend Kazusa who has a crush on him. I feel like this was one of many of the show’s thesis statements on love and lust. The fact that they talk about it is pretty good.

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Conclusion

School Days discusses it’s love and lust concepts through actions while O Maidens In Your Savage Season does it through talking and flirting here and there. Some character arcs are similar, but one series doesn’t just let it explode like the other one.

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So in the end here, just because one show takes a few steps to be somewhat realistic with it’s characters and explores the same sort of things as one series doesn’t mean it’s exactly like the other series. As I’ve said, comparisons are valid. I feel like O Maidens might have more in common with something like Neon Genesis Evangelion then School Days because of it’s emotional honesty. School Days is it’s own entity because nothing is really like it. Well, as far as I know suppose. So yeah, I’m not going to buy people’s instantaneous “this show is just school days again” thing with O Maidens anymore. Don’t just compare things haphazardly, ok?

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