Fairy Tale Spotlight: Aggresive Retsuko

Aggressive Retsuko is a Netflix exclusive Japanese anime from 2016 that I recently watched 2 seasons of. It's actually been a bit. I got sidetracked and probably should have written this review a while back.

I don't know if I ever said this, but I am a huge fan of Disney's Zootopia. But the truth is, I pretty much am looking for anything with furry type characters in it. So Aggressive Retsuko hit my radar pretty hard. But I think the thing that fascinated me the most about it was that it was made by Sanrio. If you don't know who they are, these are the people who gave us Hello Kitty. Only with this new franchise... the content is intended for adults.

I know what you're thinking: A company that has catered to children suddenly wants to show they can make adults happy too. What this usually means is a bunch of cute animals saying crude things and talking about sex. Wait! Wait! No. This show is actually amazingly written and interesting. Wow.

No, seriously! The first episode had me hooked. By the third episode, it was like my own personal crack. I got addicted. I may have missed a few meals.

Aggressive Retsuko follows the story of a red panda named Retsuko as she navigates a hostile work environment as well as deal with the trials of being a young adult. She is adorable. She is so adorable. Also she takes out her stress by singing death metal karaoke. That's so cute.

Her boss Ton, portrayed as a fat pig, often treats her like crap. Wait, I know. It's a male chauvinist thing, right? Well... kinda? Like sorta? The thing about this show is... they tend to deliver you what you think are political tropes, but then they very evenly give you both sides of the story. So... even if you end up hating Ton for how he treats her, you kind of know where he's coming from. I mean... by the end of season 2 I actually kind of liked him.

It is really hard to predict anything in this show. Annoying character become endearing as time goes on. It is all a matter of learning more about them and why they act the way they do. They even went after snowflake millennials from a very compassionate angle while still fully acknowledging that they are a problem. But there was one character that threw me for a loop: Tadano the donkey.

Tadano is actually my favorite character in the whole series, and he doesn't even show up till season 2. I once had a friend like Tadano. His name was Roger. Roger believed that all our problems could be solved by creating an AI that could work for us while we worked towards a utopia where everyone relaxed and just did the things that made them happy. This is Tadano in a nutshell. The difference between Tadano and my former friend Roger was that Tadano was actually bothering to make it happen... and Roger was sorta... talking about it... a lot... and trying to get other people to do it for him. Tadano wins. Sorry, Roger.

At his heart, Tadano is 100% a nice and even wonderful person. He truly believed in a world where everyone could just be happy and create things. And he was making a honest push for it and could back it up with his own personal experience. In a way, he was already living that life for himself. And even if he was a bit misguided in the way he was doing this, there was no denying that he was a sweetheart. I don't want to spoil much more about his plot line, but I liked everything they did with him and his relationship with Retsuko.

I adored both seasons of this show. It is well written and extremely thoughtful. Nothing felt like they were trying too hard to separate themselves from their children roots. They just wanted to write a good story for adults to enjoy. It never goes too far in either direction and explains all points of views. Also Retsuko is so cute. God, she's cute.

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