AggRetsuko Season 2: Office Romance, Ramen, and AI (Spoilers)

Ahhhh, June 2019. The birth month of myself and many other friends of mine. The month where Spring ends and Summer begins, kids get out of school, and the big Summer movies begin to swarm in like the kaiju of?Godzilla: King of the Monsters. This is also the month where Season 2 of certain shows I love come out, like?Final Space later in the month, and?AggRetsuko, which released on June 14.

I remember in September 2018 when I posted my article on the first season and how it was really good in terms of relatability to characters working in an office a few years after college, and that there are times where people are frustrated with their jobs and want to find other means of making a living to get out of their job. I was in college when I wrote that article. Now I'm a college graduate in 2D Animation who is looking for a job in animation, and I specialize in mostly animation done in Harmony, but I can also animate in Photoshop and After Effects ever since I took a class?at Columbia where?one can animate content??quickly as opposed to striving for beauty in animation.

Note: Technically, using these three software (or Toonz or Flash with the other two Adobe software) makes a show classify as a series done?in Flash.

Anyways, Season 2 of?AggRetsuko. I already covered the history behind the show in the previous article, so I would recommend reading that and watching every episode in the two seasons before you read this because I do get into some heavy spoilers.

Disclaimer: Even though it's out there and I didn't cover that at all, all I can say about the Christmas Special is that it is very funny in terms of the use of Instagram, but cathartic in its perspective about work on the holidays.

A New Story for A New Season

AggRetsuko Season 1 covered how Retsuko was trying and failing to get out of her bad workplace through a friend’s promises of an imported goods store that fell through (since it was online like Amazon), or through marriage. So she vents out her frustrations in a death metal song at karaoke after work or in a different room since, as it is pointed out in season 2, her venting in front of someone at work would get her fired?on the spot. Thus, she decides to go to yoga to try and deal with the stress of work and the looming fear of getting fired since apparently, "her days were numbered".

Season 2 follows after she breaks up with a red panda like herself who was not her type. Retsuko's mother gets involved with the plot in terms of trying to clean up her apartment and hook her daughter up with dudes that she photoshopped??to make them look rich and professional. Basically her mom is the worst kind of helicopter parent.?Then a new graduate from college named Anai is hired by the firm and Retsuko and her two friends, Fenneko and Haida, are tasked to help train him. One catch though that feels?heinous: this kid is cowardly in that?instead of confronting the people who supposedly insult him or make him pull his weight, he texts management to report the worker’s alleged harassment of him, and he even pulls out a voice recording app on them. Thus, another subplot comes up where Retsuko decides to go to driving school (apparently getting a license in Japan is pretty uncommon) to get her license and a car to get out of commuting by train and briefly stave off the need for her mom to hook her up with another photoshopped guy. Although, it gets a little weird when marriage is brought up during a subplot involving a guy who went to driving school??who turns out to be like Steve Jobs and is a CEO for driving AI, and eventually dates Retsuko.

The first season has themes of trying to deal with the stress of work when you can't find another job in another company, and introduces the audience to the world of these characters made by Sanrio. Here, it's dealing with the theme of people being afraid of growing up, with Anai and his very cowardly tactics of using his phone to make others give written responses for evidence instead of just confronting them and talking about it, and Retsuko being uncertain about how to go about her life. In the end, it does the smart route with Retsuko not quitting her job because of this new guy, even though the last two episodes are a retread of the last two episodes of the last season.

Characters and Their Impact in the Season

All the main characters are still around, from Fenneko and Haida, to chauvinist Ton, and other annoying coworkers. However, this time, there are new characters and those who get more depth in this round.

Retsuko has a new arc on her possibly wanting to marry and everything she goes through while deciding whether she wants to or not. She's also still as angry as she'll ever be, but when a couple of new characters come in, she erupts. She doesn't go to karaoke in this season as much, but she still vents.

What is surprising to me is the depth in the annoying Kabae. To add some context, let's talk about new character Anai. This is a character that people would either relate to or love to hate for being a weasel. You know it would be the latter if he uses recording apps in the workplace (which probably violates any company policy on privacy) and even the written response bit on the boss to where he's in tears. What is surprising is that it's not the boss that makes him go down a peg and actually do some work, it's the coworker with a husband and kids that does it. He adds to the theme of people being afraid of growing up, and thus, he gets shown how to do things without feeling belittled.

Disclaimer: Sending complaints to management are not against rules, but coming from a family that's in HR, threatening and harassing coworkers is against policy. Recording apps being used in workplace and getting caught with that is against policy on privacy.

Tadano is another new character at the Driving School which stems from the paranoid new hire who is learning how to adult subplot. He's first seen as jobless and doesn't know how to drive until you see he's a CEO that lives in a limo and created a driving AI called ENI-O that the firm would like to??introduce into society. He's kind of nice and provides another arc that gets closed in terms of character, but of course, he's kind of a retread of Resasuke, Retsuko's first ex from Season 1, except he was the one to make her decide to quit. It comes full circle when he feels marriage is pointless and Retsuko realizes she does want to be married and have kids. Thus, he's just there to be a potential guy that she ends up dumping in true AggRetsuko fashion.

My favorite characters are still Washimi and Gori, but they get a bit more depth when the former sees that marriage is pointless after she married and divorced four months in, while the latter is wanting to marry someone, even by pretending to be younger than she is at a speed dating event. Thus, they did something smart that involves them getting into a fight and having to see Retsuko separately until she?spends exclusive days with Tadano and then has a falling out with?him.

Already Mentioned Flash Animation

There?is some improvement in the animation, especially with the opening theme. There's just more lighting and feeling in the animation and layout work, which I can spot after my senior year of college granted me the ability to spot tiny animation errors in each shot like jutting lines.

I will say this since this is a thing with digitally animated shows: saying a show is animated in Flash is a very broad statement since not all shows that are claimed to be Flash animated are done on Adobe Animate. What they mean is that animation was done digitally. There are shows that use Adobe Photoshop and After Effects for layouts/model sheets and compositing respectively (my short film?Blue Mercy had layouts and characters in each shot drawn on Photoshop and the animation and effects were done in After Effects). As for the animation software, I've seen shows done with Animate (Home Movies (later seasons),?Teen Titans Go,?Devilman Crybaby (somehow),?Mighty Magiswords, and this series), my main software Toon Boom Harmony (Final Space, Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Loud House, DuckTales reboot, and Rick and Morty), or Toonz (used by a lot of Cartoon Network shows like?Ben 10 reboot,?Victor and Valentino,?Steven Universe,?Regular Show, and?Adventure Time). Thus, not all shows are done in "Flash" so much as they were drawn on a computer, and that doesn't make a show bad at all.

"RAGE!"

Music and voice acting are as great in this season as they are in the first season. Just like the original article:

"With either the English or Japanese dub, the voice acting offers different flavors of comedy to the series, with the latter being appropriate for how Japanese work culture functions, while the former offers more comedy and touches on that work culture with a spice of American office work culture added in the dialogue."

Erica Mendez, Ben Diskin, and company are still as amazing as always, but we have new players in terms of new characters. Anai is voiced by Bill Kametz, known for?Rising of the Shield Hero and?JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Tadano is voiced by?Devilman Crybaby voice actor Griffin Burns. They're great in their respective roles.

"I'M ALL ANIMAL!"

The season is, more or less, similar to the first one. While it gets intense in the first half, it does cool down and tug at the strings in the second half of the season. It may have done the same season finale twice, but I'm fine with seeing more of this show. Retsuko's arc seems to be figured out so it would be nice to see the side characters get more depth like what was given.

I do recommend this season if you are a fan of the show like myself.

What do you think of?AggRetsuko Season 2? Better, worse, or similar to the first one? Comment below your thoughts and let me know!