Sanrio’s characters and mascots are renowned for their cutesy, adorable, and wholesome merchandise and shows like Hello Kitty and Friends Supercute Adventures, Kuromi’s Pretty Journey, Gudetama, and 2025’s latest hit, My Melody & Kuromi. Heck, Sanrio has even created more classical anime-styled shows with unique twists like Sanrio Boys, Jewelpet, Mewkledreamy, and Onegai My Melody. But there’s one Sanrio character and show that especially stands out for its unique and relatable take on adulthood, in the classical Sanrio chibi animal style: Aggretsuko.
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The shows and characters of the Sanrio world tend to run on sweetness, mildness, and cuteness; Aggretsuko, on the other hand, cranks the angst up a few notches. As edgy as Kuromi tends to portray herself, that girl has nothing on Retsuko’s rising rage. Aggretsuko may at first just look like another adorable Sanrio show about an adorable red panda taking on a mundane, mild salarywoman’s mature life, but the premise holds so much more.
Subversive Workplace Humdrum
Retsuko is a typical 25-year-old who goes to her typical job at a typical workplace. But despite being one of the more diligent workers, with the stresses of misogynistic remarks from her boss, pressure from condescending co-workers, and exploitation from her colleagues piling up, it’s enough to make her want to explode. So, keeping her anger and frustration bottled up until it’s time to clock out, Retsuko finds refuge at the local karaoke scene. Finally alone and able to let off steam, Retsuko unleashes her righteous death metal screeches to vent about the idiocy, hypocrisy, and duplicity in the workplace.
Need to vent about workplace woes? Retsuko is right there with you! Aggretsuko, like the aggressive Retsuko herself, is a refreshing take on workplace scenarios with typical, relatable frustrations adorned in a cute style. Although, in typical continuous cartoon fashion, the story arcs seem to get more and more wacky with Retsuko branching out in dealing with scenarios like becoming an idol or getting into politics, the core relatable topics still pervade the main premise. Workplace woes and gossip, maintaining friendships, branching out into new interests, finding love and navigating relationships, and overall learning to be unapologetically oneself, under the exaggeratedly adorable veneer, Retsuko’s struggles feel pretty real.
Retsuko Rightly Rages Against the Machine
An overblown boss who treats his subordinates with a lack of respect, feeling underappreciated in a work field that may not be life-or-death but acts like it, and working hard even though the outcome always seems to be the same — Retsuko gets it. And in this economy, fans have never resonated with this premise’s sentiment more. Outside of long work hours, employees need an outlet to vent. While Retsuko has her death metal karaoke to scream out her rage, the core theme can still be a demonstration of how real-life employees should remember self-care. Although even job hunts can come with their own sets of struggles, it’s important for employees and those unemployed alike to value something above the humdrum of surviving today’s vicious economy: themselves.
Feel like a worker drone stuck in a dead-end job wbo]] has nothing to do with your wasted degree with no potential for promotion and livable wage? Currently frantically searching for something, anything in this bleak job market that seems hopeless for employment, let alone the pipe dream of buying a house to grow a nonexistent family in? You’re far from being alone. While Aggretsuko highlights some real-life woes, it does so in a relatable, endearing way. If Retsuko can get through the struggles that are thrown at her, there’s still hope. Don’t let the man get you down. You’re worth more than what overblown big business and faux economic luxurification take you for.
Retsuko struggles with burnout and having her mother breathing down her neck to settle down. Haida struggles with expressing his feelings for Retsuko. Shikabane struggles with isolation and stagnation, resorting to living in a cyber café and getting whatever work she can online just to get by. Each character has their own relatable, palpable struggles. Let’s be real, navigating adulthood is difficult, especially now. But Aggretsuko, as a sort of escapism from real-life struggles, highlights said struggles in a way that, albeit with a signature cute Hello Kitty-style flair, has a certain relatability factor that manages to introduce adults into the Sanrio world in a unique way that nothing else can quite grasp.
Aggretsuko can be streamed on Netflix.
What does Aggretsuko mean to you? Let us know in the comments if you can relate to Retsuko’s rage!
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Image via THQ Nordic -
image courtesy of 20th Century Studios
