#edit: i ended up finishing this at 5am so the last part got really sappy

[curestardust]

Dust Watched: Aggressive Retsuko Season 05

Genres: Comedy, Social Commentary // 10 episodes //  S01 (x) | S02 (x) | S03 (x) | S04 (x)

Seeing as this is the alleged (I don’t trust anything Netflix says) last season of Aggretsuko, I thought a normal essay format would be better to express my frustrations with the run of this show.

If you asked me what I thought of Aggretsuko in the beginning I would’ve said without reservation that it’s one of the best anime out there. Unfortunately, with each season, it was beginning to be more and more difficult to recommend this show and this final season was the worst kind of icing on the cake.

Season 5 has some incredibly great moments sandwiched inbetween incredibly dull and non-sensical moments that ruin the flow and make the ultimately great message of this season get lost among everything going on.

I guess it speaks to how much I cared for Haida and Retsuko’s relationship that I didn’t even bat an eye to the fact that they’re dating from the very beggining of this season despite the last season ending on an (another) will-they-won’t-they moment. I never thought the two of them had much chemistry but the show was pushing them so hard that it was pretty much a given that they would end up together.

Haida having suffered a basically complete character assassination in Season 4, turning him from a wet tissue paper to an *annoying* wet tissue paper, almost made me give up on S05 from the second it began as we start out with Haida having taken over as the protagonist. This only lasts a few episodes but these few episodes surprisingly turned out to be the best this season had to offer. Alas, this plot thread still isn’t carried by Haida, but a new character.

Haida, who is now unemployed, spends his days playing a gacha MMO (the horror) where he hangs out with another player called Shikabane. We’re shown one scene of him being sucked into spending a shitton of money on some gacha pulls, which plays a lot less importance than it could have, and on top of that he is getting kicked out of his apartment as his family who’ve been letting him live there for free found a tenant.

This puts us into one of the best short arcs from the whole anime. Haida decides to live in an internet café where he actually ends up meeting Shikabane in person. She is a 21 year old girl, who actually does “live” in a net café. She has no house, nor has any interest in subjecting herself to the fake facade people need to put on in a “normal” 9-5, instead living off of occasional freelance work and sleeping in a net café. But.. is that really what she thinks? Put a pin in that.

From here-on I’ll speedrun the rest of the season with SPOILERS upcoming.

Haida gets himself a gruelling physical job that pays like shit, suffers a bit, Retsuko and gang find out about it, he moves in with her, there’s like 1 episode focusing on how their relationship isn’t sunshine and rainbows, while we get some scenes of how Haida struggles with getting hired (put a pin in that n.2).

The second actual arc is bonkers and starts way too late into the season for it to have a satisfactory conclusion. Haida and Retsuko meet Haida’s family, we find out his dad is a politician and his other son, Jiro, will be running in the election for their Ward instead of him. Meanwhile, Retsuko’s former idol group are hamfisted into the story for no other reason than to force the other half of the plot to happen. A politician from the “Rage Party” saw Retsuko’s death voice videos and thought that she could represent today’s society’s Rage and win a seat for the declining party. Thus a few episodes are spent on FORCING Retsuko to take part in the running against Jiro, we get some minimal social commentary on what this Rage is (put a pin in that n.3). 

Then, I kid you not, we get literally 5 seconds of some papers flashing that Retsuko and Haida are getting married (????), the vote (Retsuko lost), Shikabane apparently being convinced to “get her life together” from a single karaoke session, Haida getting a job (we don’t even know where or what!).... and. That’s it. The final scene is a looping back to the beginning of the whole anime. Retsuko being smooshed in the train while on her way to her normal office job.

Yeah, so, this season was messy enough as is but as a final season, it was even worse. The pacing was catastrophic, it was too slow where it should’nt have been and too fast where things happened we actually would’ve cared about (the marriage??? hello???). 

But really, my main disappointment comes from those few moments where the show shines like it used to.

Aggretsuko might be a comedy but it’s just as much a social commentary. Now, the names of generations and how they are seperated differs from country to country but for the ease of things I’ll just use the western categorization.

Retsuko’s original premise is what life is like for “millenials” starting out at their first traditional jobs. How the previous generation still rules how things should be done, the power structure, the fake facade, the overtime. While not exactly translating to the west, it’s an incredibly relatable setting for the generation who was in the same shoes as Retsuko and the show itself explores all of it quite well in the first 2 seasons.

The following seasons became more bonkers, focusing less and less on the office or realistic scenarios and more on the comedy from outside sources. It was easy to kind of forget just how grounded the show used to be.

That’s where Shikabane comes in. Shikabane represents the new generation who just hit adulthood, or as we know them, Gen Z. I’m a late millenial myself, but I definitely saw a lot of how I think but especially how my younger sisters think about the world as it is now.

There is no planning for retirement, planning on buying a house or a car, settling down to have the perfect family while working a traditional job.A lot of young adults have lost hope and the drive to make a future for themselves because they cannot see how it would be possible in today’s climate. Surviving one day to the next, with no particular goal in sight, because it seems impossible. Working a 9-5, putting on a fake smile, abandoning your own personality and *hating* every second of it just to make enough to live paycheck to payckeck is something a lot of them refuse to do. But at the same time, the world is still run by the same people it was 50 years ago. Times have changed so much but they themselves refuse to change. Society is afraid of change. So what else is there to do but... give up?

That is the story you can see told through Shikabane. And in the final episode there’s a metaphorical “torch pass” between her and Retsuko. “My life isn’t what people need to see now. It’s yours.”

And despite how many problems I had with this season, despite how I wish it ended seasons ago, I’m glad Shikabane exists today because she reminded me of what I loved about this show in the beginning. 

I wish I could bid farewell to this show in a better way but hey, it is what it is. And for every Shikabane out there; keep fighting.

My Rating: 4/10