I haven’t watched regular TV at home in months. Most of my TV time is split between video games and Netflix. I am a huge sci-fi buff and I have been inhaling everything from Star Trek Discovery to Annihilation to the Lost in Space remake. However, there is a new non-Scifi love it town – her name is Retsuko and she is bae.
Frustrated with her thankless office job, Retsuko the Red Panda copes with her daily struggles by belting out death metal karaoke after work.
Aggressive Retsuko
Japan has a big problem balancing work, family and leisure time. It’s not unheard of for office workers, teachers etc to spend 80+ hours a week at work – hardly taking time off – even national holidays. Aggretsuko or aggressive Retsuko delves into this, albeit not directly but also mixes in various characters you would usually find in the workplace such as the rumour spreading office worker, the terrible boss and the ass kissing new recruit just to name a few. The writing is so good and the humour hits home most of the time often in unpredictable ways.
Studying Japanese
I started to watch Aggretsuko mainly to study Japanese – it has everyday relate-able dialogue that I can follow at my level in short episodes. I still use the subtitles but it feels good to understand more than half the words spoken even though my understanding and translation is a little different from the subtitles at times the gist is usually the same.
Check out Aggretsuko if you like cute characters and real-life situations with a comedic twist. I have a few episodes left to devour and I am already anticipating future seasons and injuring my wallet when more merchandises become available.