Sanrio is a kind of peculiar company. They are purely a merchandising company. They have produced some art featuring their characters themselves, but largely it is about selling various items, articles of clothing etc. featuring these characters. The best known of them is of course Hello Kitty, an absolute titan of this industry, but Sanrio has a cavalcade of other characters, such as the frog Keroppi or the bunny My Melody. Most of these characters are rather simple and their personality is pretty easily defined, usually with a rather simplistic environment that reinforce a positive attitude. However in recent years Sanrio has branched out and introduced some other characters that exhibit a wider array of the human emotion, though definitely retaining a cute appearance overall.

One such character is Aggressive Retsuko. An anthropomorphic red panda living in an animal society, Retsuko is a put-upon female office worker who releases her stress and anger that builds up from her dayjob by going to Karaoke and singing death metal.

Aggressive Retsuko's first foray into the anime space was with a series of minute-long shorts that ran for 100 episodes between 2016 and 2018. These shorts are basically each telling a joke, with Retsuko encountering a situation with inconsiderate co-workers or her horrible boss that inevitably results in Retsuko wanting to scream her lungs out at them. While these shorts are funny and there is some variety in them with different characters appearing to drive Retsuko up the wall, they are also kind of repetitive. Of course, this short format isn't very well suited for any sort of plot progression.

In 2018, Netflix started releasing a full TV series, with three seasons so far for Aggressive Retsuko. Each season consists of ten 15-minute episodes, which bring back the characters from the shorts and build out from there. There is also a christmas special in between the first and second season. The conceit is largely the same. Retsuko is a young office worker in the accounting department of a trade company. She has a horrible boss who hates her and her coworkers include an indelicate hippopotamus and a kiss-ass of a gazelle. In addition to a work-life with few prospects, her private life is also rather rudderless with no real hobbies and no romantic relationship. Her only solaces are hanging out with friends from the office and her karaoke sessions in which she airs her grievances through improvised Death Metal songs.

Throughout the course of the series, we see Retsuko try and change some things to escape her dead-end job and repetitive situation, ranging from looking if she can join her former classmate's startup company to finding love, getting married and quitting her job to become a housewife. Nothing seems to ever work or truly change for her. While that can be expected because, after all, she is still an ever-unchanging Sanrio mascot character, it is also a rather poignant comment on existence as an office worker in general and as a millennial in particular. That isn't to say that the events in the show are not interesting or entirely meaningless, as Retsuko does find some truths about herself and hidden depths in the other people that surround her, but in the end she doesn't seem to move forward.

The biggest roadblock is Retsuko herself. Though she is obviously frustrated, she is also very reluctant to actively make changes on account of her timidity and uncertainty of what the future brings. You really have to wonder what would happen if she took a leap of faith or two, if she actually went into business with her friend or if she finally noticed the crush a coworker has on her (or if he finally grew a spine and just told her outright). This is also evidenced in the main gimmick of the show. Retsuko never actually screams at anyone, regardless of how much they would deserve it. Her release of anger is held back for the soundproof karaoke booth where it can't escape, but perhaps she would do better if it did.

For me Retsuko's story hits particularly close to home. The only differences are that I am ten years older and male. We also share a penchant for aggressive music, but in my case I am more of a punk rock guy than death metal. Thankfully the office culture in my department is a bit better, and my work is slightly more meaningful, but only just. Aggressive Retsuko as a series has definitely prompted some reevaluation here, and through that it is probably one of the more impactful works of fiction on a personal level, and I can't imagine I am the only one.

The thing I believe the series is missing though is a bit of a general worldview. With rampant capitalism causing ever increasing exploitation and wealth gap, as well as environmental catastrophe on the horizon, you wonder how much change really is possible to make in your own life. Of course that could also rather easily break the scope of a series like Aggressive Retsuko, and Retsuko's rather myopic view of her own life doesn't make things easier.

Aggressive Retsuko is a good and important show, some animation quirks not withstanding. Escapist it is however not in the slightest.