Aggretsuko Season 4 is now streaming on Netflix.
We've gotten to know the impossibly adorable yet rage-filled Retsuko (Erica Mendez) quite well over the course of three seasons. The diminutive red panda is a kind young accountant by day, and a die-hard death metal karaoke singer by night, a hobby she uses to vent all the frustrations that come along with her everyday life as an office worker. Who hasn't been a ticking time bomb at the end of a particularly stressful day at work? You might zone out with your favorite TV shows or take a bubble bath. Retsuko finds catharsis when decked out in corpse paint, screaming at the top of her lungs. Same difference. That formula mostly continues to work in its fourth season, tackling workplace conflicts with empathy, even if it does become mired in some romantic comedy tropes.
Since we met Retsuko, she's grappled with a whirlwind romance with a vapid tech CEO, an overbearing boss, the dangers of overworking, and a short-lived idol career. Now that she's put all of that behind her, she's facing a new set of challenges: changes in the workplace between her and her good friend Haida (Benjamin Diskin), and the struggles that come from being a young adult in the rat race of everyday life.
Retsuko's just moved from her old apartment in a bid to escape from peeping paparazzi and terrifying fans since she ended her idol career. She's invested in a ton of weapons to keep herself safe, and she even lives atop a store at night, which has plenty of light to scare away would-be harassers. It would sound overly cautious if this type of behavior weren't what happens in the real world, but Aggretsuko has always been able to bring those types of worries into the animated realm to create a relatable atmosphere.
To ensure Retsuko feels totally safe at her new place and to finally push Haida into confessing his obvious love for her, Fenneko (Katelyn Gault) suggests Haida walk her home at night. This seems like a great idea, until it isn't, and Haida handles these many moments to confess his feelings to Retsuko about as well as you'd expect, which is to say absolutely terribly. This sets the stage for an incredibly awkward season that amps up the "will they or won't they" factor, which has been bubbling under the surface for the entirety of the series.
Unfortunately, it becomes a dominant, driving force throughout the rest of the season, and it ceases to be funny or entertaining the fifth or sixth time in this run of episodes when Haida continues acting erratically. Of course, Retsuko seems inexplicably unable to act rationally in response either, even when she daydreams about potentially dating Haida. But the amount of frustration this will cause viewers is almost off the charts at times, and a rote trope that the series seemed it might avoid at first.
Luckily, there's a lot more at stake this season than Retsuko and Haida's potential romantic relationship. Carrier Man Trading Co. Ltd., the company they work for, has a new CEO: Himuro (Trevor Devall). Himuro is a no-nonsense leader who seems to care only for numbers and the bottom line, which leads him to force director Ton (Josh Petersdorf) to lay off a few employees. When Ton refuses, he's given a "new" assignment, prompting a chain of other changes at the workplace, none positive.
The result is something of an abusive office where workers are afraid of what might happen next, who's going to be reassigned, and who's going to be without a job. It's certainly commentary on the state of office politics and the tendency of corporations to put profits over people, and a fascinating part of the season that tends to take a frustrating backseat to Retsuko and Haida's dalliances. Aggretsuko has always been at its most powerful and entertaining (and relatable) when it doesn’t dwell too long on couples that obviously aren’t perfect for each other, and Season 4 certainly suffers from the staid storyline between nervous Haida and fed up Retsuko. Still, it swims by when it leans on what's worked in previous seasons.
from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/3Fi7I0S
This could be a real lead forward for personal gaming... Revolutionise gaming
No comments:
Post a Comment