Anime Starts with a death metal scream, ends with a whimper.
Not so fun fact, I had a job at an office, as the kind of 'do everything' guy. The years I spent there were utter hell, leading to depression. This is one of the main reasons why I end up disliking any sort of media that deals with 'lol this group of assholes in an office/work is mean and/or incompetent'.
So, when Aggretsuko first started, even if it was made with a japanese audience in mind, it really resonated with me. The bad boss, the office sexism, the atrocious work conditions, people licking boots and the squeeze of a capitalist lifestyle... the minutiae were different but overall the feeling was the same. I watched the shorts some months before the Netflix series aired, and followed the series to the end.
Basically, what started as a really solid slice-of-life about the frustrations of working in a hostile environment ended as a rather bleak and frustrating soap opera riddled with seriously bad advice, and a Status Quo is god message.
I chalk this to three main factors, one leading to the other: 1- The writing crew wasn't prepared. 2- Haida 3- STATUS QUO IS GOD.
Retsuko was originally a bunch of cutesy shorts with a simple structure, and out of nowhere they had to jump into a whole season with an overall arc. Seasons 1 and 2 still adhered to the main 'core' of seeing Retsuko navigating a chaotic and crushing life, tying up with her romances, and having to learn to stand up to herself. Those in my opinion are the best ones, haggling overall well between 'slice-of-life tidbits' and an overarching story and so on, but the author revealed that he only had material for two seasons.
And Netflix wanted more.
Without material for bitsy of slice-of-life, there is a sudden reliance on the overarching arc.
And on Haida.
I genuinely don't hate the guy, but he is a gigantic problem. He is a character meant for a long slow growth who was crammed in a tiny series and, because of his crush on Retsuko, due to the drama potential, he turns into a plot tumor. Whenever the narrative focuses on Haida, everything stops, and its nearly always the same thing: He likes Retsuko, but something prevents him from approaching and/or continuing with her (or moving on), and 100% of these problems come from himself. Either his lack of courage or maturity or need for validation. And when he solves a problem, another shows up by exposing another side of him. He starts as a whiny jackass devoid of a spine to talk to Retsuko, and ends as a man-child who can't even keep an apartment he is crashing on clean and constantly needs directions and orders. Its hard to sympathize with a dude that feels like a load all the time, there is some progression and he does grow up, but its such a tiny bit after so much time wasted on him that it feels negligible. Since the writers didn't plan far ahead, they couldn't wrap things up with neither him or Retsuko.
And this leads to the last problem: Status Quo is God.
Relying on an overall arch, yet unable to properly wrap up the leads (and without material to fill the 'slice of life part') everything started to crumble. Side characters were plainly forgotten, retconned, or flanderized. Retsuko herself sometimes acted like a hypocritical bitch who ditched her old friends in favor of her new ones, her bosses, only remembering the old friends when she needed a favor. Haida's whole existence resumed on pining for Retsuko and Fenneko's whole existence relies on telling Haida how much he is an idiot. The one I hate most is the retcon of how Ton is actually a JerkWithAHeartOfGold. Yes, he gave Retsuko good advice sometimes in the first two seasons, but it doesn't mean he is a good person (which doubles as a good real life advice).
And when you can't move the plot ahead, any sort of suggestion or movement that would solve this situation turns into a hindrance. So the good advice on how to deal with shitty situations is swapped by creepy, if not downright deranged advice in order to keep things going. I always felt that the writers wanted to double down on the social commentary, but they ended just brushing past SERIOUS problems in japan that are rarely talked about. For what reason, if they didn't want to anger the sponsors, or couldn't research. Season 3 only brushes about how shitty is the life of an Idol and how hard it is to achieve the top and had a perfect opportunity to wrap both leads up and give them happy endings without burying the series, but they backed off to Status Quo - Your job is more important than chasing your dreams.
Season 4 touches lots of serious problems, like the technological and mentality gap between generations and how blind tradition is crushing workplaces, and how sadly sometimes the best thing to do is, in fact, fire some people to save the company but the new CEO is evil and greedy, and all his good points about changing the company were down the drain. And changes to the traditional are going to put your company in the red. Yes this got so awful that I agreed with the villain.
Season 5, the last one touches again on the generational gap, but goes with more barbs, how Japan is basically dominated by a group of old people who yearns for the bubble era and ignores the plight of the younger generation who has to sleep in net-cafés, without any sort of hope for the future. But people will just blindly vote for people they already know no matter how awful the situation is, so attempts at change are meaningless. All you can do is rage in a Karaoke to voice your frustration even if nothing will change. Everyone just smiles and waves including Haida just casually chatting with his brother even if his family TRIED TO KILL HIM.
So this ends the series, could have ended with a bang and a rage against the machine, but its just a whimper. Personally I'd have focused on the side characters more (especially with the theme of masks) and showed THEIR point of view (could be interesting to see someone else venting about Retsuko, or Haida) and given Fenneko a boyfriend after all what she went through to get the leads together, gal needs one after that honestly sad moment with the PS 4.
Anime Decent slice of life work, but nothing that will blow your socks off
Aggretsuko is a 10-episode long Netflix original series made by Sanrio, the same company that made Hello Kitty. The characters have the same sort of general simplified design as Hello Kitty, with most of the primary female cast being chibi female characters with large heads, big eyes, and a small mouth.
However, unlike everything else Sanrio makes, this is very much a series directed at adults, as the main character of the series, Retsuko the red panda, is a miserable professional accountant, working in a large office building in Japan with a bunch of other anthropomorphic animals – yes, this is very, very furry.
Retsuko is the main character of this slice-of-life series, and it initially seems to be focused on her and her two coworkers, Fenneko the fennec fox and Haida the hyena, in their daily struggles against Ton, a literal chauvinist pig and a general jerk of a boss.
Retsuko is a little ball of misery at the start of the series – a total doormat who never says no, never stands up for herself, works too hard, stays far too late, is easy to push excess work off onto, and generally is a little ball of stress and anxiety that is constantly simmering beneath the surface, her only escape being escaping to the bathroom or a karaoke lounge at the end of the day to screech death metal to express how she really feels about her miserable life – something she is otherwise half-accepting and half in-denial about.
Frankly, it didn’t exactly enthrall me at first – while the character designs were cute and the voice dubbing was excellent (I actually greatly preferred the English voices and script to the subbing), Retsuko was not really the most enthralling of characters, and her general misery sort of felt like a preaching to the choir type thing, with everyone being something of a shallow stereotype.
As the series goes on, however, two of the seemingly untouchable higher staff women in the office – Washimi the secretarybird secretary and Gori the gorilla who supervises marketing – end up taking an interest in Retsuko and take her in under their wing (so to speak). We get to see more and more of her coworkers, and come to recognize that they’re not as shallow as they seem at first glance, and all have motivations for being the way they are, imperfect as those motivations might be. The result is that, over the course of the ten episodes, we get a better idea of what kind of people they are, as Retsuke gradually learns to take more control over her own life and be less of a pushover.
This series was decent, and I watched it all the way through to the end, but at the same time, I never really loved it – on the whole, I was left feeling lukewarm. It is decent overall, but there’s nothing that really stuck out to me. None of the characters were particularly amazing, but none of them were really deep enough for me to really care about them as people, either.
Anime Lost Me Too Many Times
I feel it's worth noting firsthand that there is a decent amount I like about the show in general. I think the voice cast is perfect for their roles, and there's a lot of generally goofy fun that helps break apart the less enjoyable aspects of the show.
Unfortunately this show had an uncanny ability of hooking and losing me in rapid succession. For every awesome moment the show had it always seemed like it got invalidated very quickly after the fact. Ton going back to his typical Jerkass behaviors even after being reprimanded by the CEO for his abuse, or Anai never getting any sort of punishment for his horrendous behavior towards his peers are the kinds of moments that make this show infuriating to watch. I get that there's some Values Dissonance and obvious intention with realistic outcomes when it comes to conflicts like these, but to me it sadly just comes off more as poor writing rather than some kind of fridge brilliance. If scrappy characters like these are just allowed to get away scot-free with being insufferable with minimal repercussions, or if lead characters are not going to learn from their past experiences and repeat plot elements from the season before, then why should I care about what happens to them?
I'll admit I gave up only after a couple seasons because these conflicts just became too grating for me to stay interested anymore, so I don't really know if it got better or not after, but from what I watched I simply just did not enjoy the show.