Aggretsuko Season 4 Streaming – Review

Each season of Netflix‘s Aggretsuko has felt more ambitious than the last. What started as a cute workplace comedy about anthropomorphic animals just trying to get by as Millennials in Japan has become a veritable soap opera of rocky relationships and biting social commentary. I’ve seen some fans complain that Retsuko’s sudden descent into the world of Japanese pop-idols was a bit out of place and off-kilter, last season, but I appreciated how it gave the show a chance to take some swipes at more than just the usual pitfalls that come from working a more typical 9-to-5. The whole idol industry is overdue for some more critical takes from the anime industry, and the new cast that Retsuko fell in with helped to flesh out the ensemble nicely.

Aggretsuko may be putting its focus back on Retsuko’s day job, but it’s more ambitious sensibilities are just as apparent in Season 4, which sees the show willing to take risks and go in directions that might alienate its audience even further. The biggest controversy might well come from how the show handles the increasingly complicated will-they-won’t-they “romance” between Retsuko and Haida. Those scare quotes come courtesy of the fact that, despite how the show has been teasing Haida’s growing confidence and Retsuko’s willingness to open up to him for three seasons now, Season 4 of Aggretsuko does not take the easy route of simply telling its version of a cheesy rom-com story. Without spoiling anything, Haida makes some choices this season, and while his conflicts and fears are certainly realistic, to an extent, they also turn him into a really frustrating character. This is intentional, mind you, so I’m not necessarily criticizing the show for this turn of events, but I suspect many viewers will empathize with how often I wanted to throw something at my T.V. screen and yell, “For the love of God, Haida, you idiot, it doesn’t have to be this way!”

Thankfully—at least, depending on how invested you are in the “shipping” aspect of Aggretsuko—the uncomfortable romantic developments are not the focus of this season. Instead, with the arrival of the inscrutable CEO Himuro, Aggretsuko sets its sights on really digging into the toxic and dehumanizing elements of modern capitalist work culture in Japan. If you had told me that this season would make me a fan of characters like Anai and freaking Director Ton of all people, I might have called you crazy. It’s true, though. With Retsuko’s love life being treated mostly as a side-story, Aggretsuko Season 4 gives some of my least favorite characters opportunities to shine, and it uses them to tell some achingly relevant stories.

I work as an educator, so I am no stranger to the stress and turmoil that follows a brand new boss when they show up to a job and decide to start changing everything, all at once, damn the consequences, and damn the opinions of the people who’ve actually been working there for years. When Himuro arrives, he forces Director Ton to make the kind of impossible choices that will either result in good people losing their jobs for no reason, or him putting his own position on the chopping block. The office workers all see how willing the new management is to throw them under the bus the minute they aren’t working at Maximum Efficiency™, and when the time comes, some of them get left in the dust, while others are looking at shiny new promotions that completely destabilize the office dynamic. The season touches on issues of depression, exploitation, dubious corporate ethics, and all of the other distasteful crap that adults have to deal with every day just so they can keep their paychecks coming in.

There’s one scene with Kabae, the chatty hippo, that genuinely got me tearing up because of how I’ve literally seen and heard her exact struggle happen, over and over again. When her kid comes down with the flu without warning, the department head puts on his cool and understanding act, but it only takes a second for the mask to slip and for him to pepper her with invasive, hurtful questions and accusations. “Other people at the office are dealing with their own stuff, too, and they’re still showing up. Can’t you just find a family member or a neighbor to take care of your kids? Maybe you should stay home for more than just a day, so you can think about your priorities”. For anyone that’s been on the receiving end of that kind of passive-aggressive harassment, Aggretsuko stops being funny, and starts to be kind of bone chilling.

That’s not to say that the show isn’t still a goofy comedy about cartoon animals that occasionally break out into death metal musical numbers! Aggretsuko is the same show it ever was, just a bit more mature in its age. That also means, though, that the same issues from previous seasons can hold the series back, too. While the balance of interpersonal-drama and career-crisis-management in the season’s plotline is solid, for the most part, Aggretsuko once again finds itself rushing to tie everything up in its final episode. The stakes in this season feel relatively high compared to past years, so it is even more noticeable when we have to scramble to get characters and events right where they need to be in just ten bite-size portions. I also would have loved it if there had been just a skosh more time devoted to the karaoke scenes and musical numbers, since the season almost forgets to include them until the last few episodes.

If you’re mainly here for the sitcom romance, you might want to prepare yourselves to drink deep from the Well of Sympathetic Embarrassment Cringe, and some of the plot details might hit a little close to home if you’ve ever worked a day job like Retsuko’s. At this point, though, you should know whether or not you’re a fan of Aggretsuko‘s whole vibe, and I’d say that this season is one of the show’s best so far, featuring some of the most mature and socially relevant storytelling that the little red panda has been a part of. With any luck, Netflix can use some of its leftover Cowboy Bebop money to fund plenty more seasons of the wonderful little show.