FYI I watched the show in Japanese with English subtitles, so the quotes are a little different than the English dub.Retsuko is a cartoon red panda and the star of Sanrio’s new Netflix show Aggretsuko. She works a thankless job in the accounting department of a giant corporation under Director Ton, a literal chauvinist pig who makes unreasonable demands, assigning her other people’s work and expecting her to do things outside of her job description (like filling his humidifier, cleaning his desk, and making tea) because it’s "women’s work." She always complies, relinquishing her time, energy, and happiness. Retsuko’s only solace is expressing her rage by singing death metal.
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"It’s cute, isn’t it?" Director Ton says to his assistant after Retsuko makes a cup of tea that’s not to his liking. "Incompetent women might be annoying, but they’re better than the competent ones, right?"
Death metal starts playing and we see red as if we’ve just heard the Kill Bill siren. "Pushing us around when we can’t fight back / Neanderthal knuckle-dragging chauvinist pig! / Looking at your face just makes me sick / How can any person be such a dick? / Shitty boss! Shitty boss!" Retsuko screams. She pants as the frame zooms out to reveal that she’s standing on a toilet, alone in a bathroom stall."After I count to 10, I’ll be a mild-mannered employee," Retsuko tells herself, and we see her force her emotions down once again, swallowing her rage to get through another day.Over ten 15-minute episodes, we watch Retsuko navigate the rat race: She works for a brutish pig whose personal mission is to make her life a living hell. She wants to quit but can’t or won’t. She skates by on her meager salary to fund her rent, drinking habit, and death metal karaoke sessions that function as therapy. She aches for a change in her life but lacks the guts and imagination to do anything about it.
Retsuko chugging beer at an office party
While Retsuko’s story is certainly relatable, I experienced a bizarre disillusionment seeing the miseries of my adulthood expressed in the language of my childhood. (I am an Asian millennial from Queens! Everything for school/work was Hello Kitty until dangerously late into college!) With Sanrio perpetually linked to the back-to-school season in my mind, it felt natural to see the same animation style of anthropomorphic animals used to tell the story of office life in all its mundanity—but also unnerving to watch these adorable furry creatures grapple with soul-crushing capitalism, the bleak state of workers’ rights today, and insidious workplace misogyny.
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It’s simultaneously disheartening and freeing to watch—it hurts to see the icons (or iconography-adjacent characters) of my youth experience heartbreak again and again. I have the knee-jerk reaction to protect Retsuko the way I wish I could have protected my child-self, the urge to keep her locked away in a happy, cartoon version of the world where all the animals get along and live free from the human problems of power and abuse. But this is a dumb and heartbreaking fantasy: both Retsuko and I have to learn things the hard way.Retsuko is good at putting her head down to get work done, but not much else. When she wants things, she makes small strides towards them but doesn’t follow through. (When the opportunity to start a business with a friend from school requires Retsuko to sacrifice her apartment, she immediately backs out rather than trying to find other solutions.) She is simple and old-fashioned to a fault, becoming fixated on the idea that she can marry her way out of her terrible job (instead of, you know, just getting a new one). She wishes she could stand up to her sexist boss but she lacks the courage, and her half-baked plans to get on his good side backfire and explode in her face.
Same girl same
Trying to understand Retsuko's decisions is frustrating: Why does she think a husband will fix all her problems? After two of her friends accept her as the Death Metal Princess she is, why does she keep her passion a secret? Why doesn't she ever advocate for herself?
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The show should make me sad, but instead it energizes me—like death metal. Retsuko fails at a lot of things in life, but she’s trying her best. Seeing her fumble again and again evokes an urge to shake her from the mires of her own limits. Retsuko is an effigy of childhood meant to be burned and replaced with something new, something darker and more powerful."Life doesn’t always go the way you expect. It’s a series of disappointments and misunderstandings, but we must work through our discontent and move forward," she says in the season finale. It's painful to see Retsuko realize this truth because it hurt when I learned it, too. How can a regressive fantasy take me to a purer state when I’m forced to cycle again through the trials, failures, and bitter lessons of my own life?
Where we might turn to cartoons to feel nostalgic for a time when we were innocent and loved, Aggretsuko serves an arresting wake-up call, using cute imagery to convey a hard truth: Life is an endless series of mundane and cruel tasks and we’re trapped in a fucked-up system built to keep us vulnerable and therefore easier to exploit. To break free, Retsuko must contend with her truth and harness her rage rather than suppress it.In a brain-melting world of endless pain, Aggretsuko is a disarming mirror of our discontent that asks: Are you going to do something about it?
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