Netflix’s ‘Aggretsuko’: Why it’s so relatable for women in Japan
If you’re unfamiliar with the Netflix series “Aggretsuko,” our protagonist is Retsuko, a young red panda struggling to find purpose in her daily life. In the opening scene, she’s hopeful and earnest about starting a new life as a company employee. But the second scene shows her five years later struggling to drag herself to work. Later on in the episode, we see her privately raging in the office toilet trying to get herself back into the mindset of “a mild-mannered office employee.”
A mirror image of the reality for working women
Retsuko’s life is all too familiar to women here. In each short episode, the scenes that play out are painfully relatable, as is the depiction of her relentless frustration and despair. Her boss is—quite literally—a sexist pig, several of her superiors harass her daily, and Retsuko often works long into the evening. In other words, business as usual in Japan.
Ton, the pig boss, nicknames her koshikake (腰掛け), which is subtitled as “short-timer” but could also be translated as “bench warmer.”
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