Review: Netflix’s show “Aggretsuko” Prepares for Season 4 Release in December

In 2018, Netflix launched the hit anime series “Aggretsuko” and is being renewed for a fourth season. The story follows a red panda named Retsuko who is 25 years old and works in a Japanese accounting firm. Her boss is awful and her coworkers are annoying; this leads Retsuko to find a way to take her anger and frustration out. She learns of a karaoke shop in her town and begins to sing metal songs that involve the subgenre, screamo. 

The third season starts off with Retsuko falling in love with an artificial intelligence that is included in a virtual reality video game. The game states that in order for the AI to be in love with the player, they must drop money into the game and buy new items for the AI. Retsuko puts herself in massive debt, which leads her to finding a way to pay her bills. Retsuko decides to spend less money and save on food to help pay for her bills.            

While stressing about her money problem she begins to head back home from work, not realizing she put her car into reverse and backed into a work van. While she is still in her car, a cheetah named Hyodo walks up to her car. He tells her that he does not want to wait for the police, then gives Retsuko his phone number and drives away.
           

Retsuko’s coworker, Gori, who works in the marketing department for their company and is also a close friend, begins working on a concept app for cell phones. This app makes it easy to match with someone to date. It has an algorithm that matches anyone with their suspected soul mate. The app is still in development stages but Retsuko signed up for it out of courtesy.

 
            Later into season three, Retsuko finally calls Hyodo to plan on how to fix his van. He states that he wanted to make a deal with her and hands her a piece of paper. The paper states that she owes him 200,000 yen or roughly $1,750 in U.S. dollars. She tells Hyodo that she is an accountant at a firm and only makes a small paycheck. Restsuko also says that she is going to get a second job so she can pay him off. He offers her a job at his second job as being a yes-man (or woman in this case) for an underground pop star group called OTM.

            Retsuko begins working as the yes-woman and doing their dirty work. She goes straight to their workplace after working her accounting job every day. Her hobby of karaoke will soon be the beginnings of her stardom. Hyodo and the lead singer of OTM happen to go by the karaoke shop to work on their latest single. Hyodo lets the lead singer get set up and wanders around the shop. He stops by one of the doors where Retsuko happened to be, singing more screamo to let out her stress. He immediately recognizes her and she notices him staring through the door.

            Thus, Aggretsuko was born. Hyodo decided their next new OTM single needed Retsuko; it needed to be metal. The group went from a pop-star style band to metal. The fans loved adding Retsuko to the mix. One OTM fan thought she ruined OTMs music for good. This fan decided to stalk Retsuko to her house, follow her to work and even attempt to kill her. This attempt failed thanks to Haida, a coworker and friend of Retsuko.

             In the past two seasons, we have seen Haida fall madly in love with her. This season is not much different. We finally see Haida express his feelings towards Retsuko, only to be denied once more. After Haida safes Retsuko’s life, it would seem their relationship may has turned around for the better.

            This season had a great lead up to season four. Fans hope to see Haida and Retsuko together at the end of it all, considering the prior circumstances. Season three showed progress and character development between characters that used to only be minor characters to the story. Season four will change the game just like season three did. The new season releases Dec. 16. on Netflix.