Aggretsuko Review

By: Nik S

Rated: TV-14

Directed by: Rarecho

Produced by: Kelly Luegenbiehl, Kaata Sakamoto, Yoichiro Shimomura, Miyuki Okumura

Cast: Kaolip, Rarecho, Souta Arai, Rina Inoue, Shingo Kato, Maki Tsuruta, Komegumi Koiwasaki

Studio: Fanworks

Network(s): TBS Television (as one-minute shorts), Netflix (as series)

Aggretsuko, or Aggressive Retsuko as it's short for, is a Japanese anime based on the character created by Yeti for the Sanrio company (the people who made Hello Kitty). Retsuko, the title character, first appeared back in 2015, and a year later had 100 one-minute animated shorts by the studio Fanworks which ran on TBS Television from April 2016 to March 2018. The short TV anime was part of the O-sama Brunch program and saw a DVD release in January of 2017. A month after the last short aired Netflix launched an original net animation worldwide of ten episodes.

Retsuko (Kaolip) is 25 years old, Scorpio, single, and blood Type-A. She works in accounting at a trading firm that she absolutely hates. She's always under the thumb her misogynistic boss Ton (Arai) and is a literal play-on-words of the term "chauvinist pig". She does have two work friends that help to make work a little more berable, Fenneko and Haida (Inoue and Kato respectively). Fenneko the fennec fox is a monotone and innocent sounding, but she's actually highly perceptive and able to deduce anyone's mental state through mere observation or snooping through social media. Haida is a hyena with an under bite that has a crush on Retsuko after the five years they've worked together. Retsuko's only escape from her mundane life is singing death metal karaoke, which somehow makes her voice become very masculine (Rarecho) and has the Japanese word "Rage" on her forehead.

Her life takes a complete turn when her old high school friend Puko comes home for a visit and fills her head with ideas to quit and help her create a store. That soon goes sour when it turns out to be a very small business she's running out of her apartment online. She loses her accreditation at work, loses her hours, and they pile even more work on her. She then makes it her mission to try and find a man so she can be a housewife, though it's not going to be as easy as she hopes.

 At its purest form the show is an in-depth look at the modern day office, sexism that women face almost daily, love, and finding what is going to make you happy. They know that a character who is overly shy and awkward, to the point she can't even leave a clothes store without buying socks even if she didn't need them, makes her more relatable. Everyone needs a vice to get through they day, and it's comedic that this sweet innocent red panda happens to get enraged and sign death metal. The greatest lesson of Aggretsuko comes from the last few episodes when she's looking for love, as it brings up the debate of what exactly is love, the effort put into a relationship, and if you're truly happy or you just think you're happy.

The animation is very stilted, due to everything being in flash animation. Even though the characters have a smooth design, they certainly don't move that way. This may be due to the fact they're trying to keep with their original design, but being an actual series and not one minute shorts there should be an improvement in animation at the very least. Aggretsuko is not for everyone, as the audience it's aiming for is limited to mid-twenties women or office workers (or both). They know their original audience that grew up with Hello Kitty are now older and they want to continue marketing to them.

I can't say that I didn't enjoy Aggretsuko, but it's not something that I could easily recommend to someone. There are a lot of morals sprinkled through almost every episode, and I think the two biggest ones are finding what makes you happy and the fact you shouldn't force to make yourself happy in a relationship. Each episode is only fifteen minutes so you can easily fly through the first season in a day without having to binge it.