Common Name: Aggretsuko
Alternative Names: Aggressive Retsuko
Score: 10/10, 5/5
Length: 10 Episodes
Genre: Drama, Comedy, Slice of Life, Short-Form
Summary: Retsuko is what you might call an adorable, little pushover. After years of working in the corporate world, she's stuck in a dead-end job and spends day after day working for an insufferable boss and coworkers who are quick to offload their work on her. Left with little choice other than just survive this abusive, corporate hellscape, Retsuko manages to get by thanks to her secret passion. Almost every day after work, this demure office lady sequesters herself in a karaoke booth and screams away her problems with the healing powers of Death Metal. Even with her unique form of stress relief, though, things are coming to a head for Retsuko. After all these years, things haven't gotten any better and she's getting to the point where she will take any excuse to leave her shit job she can get.
Review: Like most short-form anime, what you see is what you get with Aggretsuko. Unlike most short-form anime, however, what we see and thus get is easily one of the best, funniest, and most real slice of life drama's to see a worldwide release, thanks to Netflix. Considering the massive amounts of recognition and praise this show has gotten over these past few months, you've probably heard at least a tiny piece of the hype surrounding this show and have been given a number of reasons why it is so good. Keep in mind, however, that this fairly true-to-life anime, one full of vulgarity and a resigned hatred of the corporate world, is a Sanrio property. In other words, the company that is renowned for it's innocent, cutesy, and easily marketable cast of characters, with internationally recognizable Hello Kitty at the helm, gave us an anime that looks at, criticizes, and recognizes the inner workings, the good and bad alike, of the most boilerplate office job in the world and the clinically depressed red panda that is this show's focal point.
It is by no means an exaggeration when I say Retsuko is the voice of a generation.
The weird thing, though, is that half the reason this show is so effective is because it's built on Sanrio's aggressively simplistic and saccharine character designs. While the cutesy animal designs typical of Sanrio do make the show generally more approachable and easier to digest, it stands as one of this show's greatest selling points as a means of obfuscation. Were the story of Retsuko told using humans instead of animals, it would have been infinitely easier to write off. It would have simply been a Japanese drama that only bore relevance to the standard, overworked, Japanese office worker. With human characters, we'd easily be able to sympathize, empathize, or connect with the characters on the screen and their daily troubles. As animals, however, we are still able to do all those things, albeit less effectively, while also being able and comfortable using these characters and their situations as personal identifiers. Strictly because they are automatically dehumanized, these characters are infinitely more accessible to a global market simply because we can unabashedly claim "I am a Retsuko" or "Fenneko is my spirit animal." Now, sure, anyone could do that with human anime characters too, but then issues of insensitivity and racial markers come into the argument. Since all those human characteristics, racially charged or otherwise, are wiped out of the equation though, this show becomes something anyone could watch, appreciate, and connect with in a way that just wouldn't be possible in any other format.
Oh, just to be clear, Fenneko is 100% my spiteful, little spirit animal.
Recall how I said that's only half the reason this show works? Well, that other half of why Aggretsuko works is the simple fact that, in spite of the show's cast being made up entirely of personified animals, it's characters are still entirely human in nature. While their outer appearances are inherently dehumanized, their personalities make up for that intentional character deficit in spades. No character ever feels out of place or inaccurate to real life simply because they are all built around the various human caricatures that exist in our world. If you are not, yourself, a Retsuko, then you undoubtedly know someone who is just as "responsible" or spineless as this show's protagonist--a person who can never bring themself to say "no" or otherwise inflict themselves on others, causing them no small amount of grief. The same can be said of Fenneko, the standard media troll who survives through an unending supply of spite and passive aggression. Heck, even the literal "chauvinist pig," Director Ton, is representative of the nightmare boss we all love to hate.
Yet this show wouldn't be nearly as interesting or engaging if characterization just stopped there.
As funny and accurate as these portrayals are, though, these characters, their personalities, and their struggles don't just stop at that level of comedic caricature. Each and every one of them has something deeper to their personality that makes them believably human. Retsuko, for example, is made all the more relatable because a lot of her problems are self-inflicted. Her job might be the source of all her problems and the ultimate blame will always fall on those who take advantage of her weaknesses, but most, if not all, of Retsuko's problems are born of her own desperate and often-times thoughtless attempts to magically solve and escape from her problems. Or, more accurately, a lot of her problems are born from her inability to confront her problems, both internal and external, which only causes her problems to compound until she is left with only two choices: snap or submit.
You can probably guess which of those choices lead to her death metal segments.
What's more interesting, though, is that this level of character depth doesn't stop with our main character. From side characters like the "doe-eyed" brown-noser, Tsunoda, to the show's obvious villain, Director Ton, every character has a bizarre kind of believable rationale behind their actions that make them understandable without wholly justifying or condoning their toxic approaches to workplace survival. But, again, the buck doesn't stop there. While the show does go out of its way to humanize its inhuman cast, it also acknowledges that we, as people, are often inclined to not look that deeply into other people. More often than not, we see and accept the same kinds of simplified or even idealized caricatures that these characters were built on just to make our own lives easier. Towards the end of the show, Retsuko actually has to face this very problem as she struggles to look past the simplified caricature she imposed on someone as yet another coping mechanism. Heck, it could be argued that Retsuko doesn't really begin to grow and change as a person, for the better, until she acknowledges that things might turn out better if she stopped trying to hide behind her "good girl" persona or caricature and let the real Retsuko out from time to time.
Pretty sure no one would want to cross someone who looks at them like this.
It's these kinds of deep and thoughtful insights into real life and social politics that make this show the absolute masterpiece that it is. Each and every arc has some relevance and relatability to most people. Each and every character has a kind of purposeful depth to them that not only reflects what we might easily see in others but points to the simple truth that people aren't nearly as simple as we might like to think. From the plot and characters to the art and animation this is the kind of show that is crafted and honed to a level of perfection and level of intention that I've rarely been able to find in full-length series. The fact that this short-form anime is able to deliver on that and do so cleanly and clearly for all to see is nothing short of astounding. In all seriousness, if you have not given into the hype surrounding this show yet, I wholly recommend you do so. On top of just being a top-tier show that's quick and easy to watch, I can easily see it becoming one of those titles that will define anime as a genre for years to come.