Paper short abstract:

Sanrio’s Aggressive Retsuko is an anthropomorphic lesser panda combining cuteness and anger in a workplace anime. Though a seeming anti-Hello Kitty, her narrative is far less revolutionary than it may seem. I argue that this anime, now in global release, is relatable to millennials around the world.

Paper long abstract:

In this roundtable I will discuss what seems to be the anti-Hello Kitty, Sanrio’s Aggressive Retsuko, and its anime depiction of Japanese office work in global reception. This low-level OL “office lady” character is a red panda and a Scorpio, twenty-five years old, with type A blood, and all the associated stereotypes. Her name “Retsuko” includes retsu “ardent, violent, furious,” as in the word for heroine, retsujo, and ko “child.” She alternates between good and evil versions of self. Her name also recalls the Japanese naming of the creature as ressā panda, “lesser panda.” Retitled Aggretsuko, multilingual versions came out globally on Netflix to positive reviews. Though she’s less cute and more expressive than Hello Kitty, this heteronormative anime doesn’t challenge the status quo.

Aggressive Retsuko is usually mild-mannered in the office despite abuse, venting anger in death-metal karaoke sessions in which her face resembles an evil character. She meekly accepts extra tasks, works late, and endures gossip, as well as other micro- and macro-aggressions. It is easy to assess her, under Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare guidelines, as a victim of power harassment, pawahara, given the treatment she receives. However, her dilemmas broadly involve generational- and gender-based differences in workplace and gendered power relations that have apparently resonated with foreign viewers. Fan comments show that this anime’s cultural odor is easily ignored or reinterpreted, such as an “herbivore man” character in the narrative’s descriptions as aromantic/asexual or stoned.

Power-based and sexual harassment are overt and are addressed, but are glossed over as inevitable in some cases and as fabrications in others. This follows neoliberalism by placing the burden on the individual workers rather than supporting institutional support. Retsuko’s imagined alternatives to this workplace are marriage or entrepreneurial work, both of which she initially craves and eventually resists. She enacts the choices of enduring the workplace or leaving it, rather than embodying any possibility for change. The pixellated displays of Retsuko’s anger remind us of contemporary social problems but ultimately dissipate them into the mediascape.