Here’s How Netflix’s "Aggretsuko" Anime Perfectly Captures All of Our Social Anxieties At Work

For anyone who’s not already watching Aggretsuko, stop everything and get on board the death-metal-karaoke-as-a-source-of-relief train. Originally a series of one hundred one-minute shorts, it’s now a 10 episode Netflix Netflix series about a red panda named Retsuko who’s constricted by gender norms and corporate soul-sucking drone-dom. And make no mistake — Retsuko is us, and we are Retsuko. Here are some of our social workplace anxieties (woohoo!) Aggretsuko so perfectly portrays. Let’s RAGE. Suffering through small talk (source) Sometimes going to work means dealing with co-workers like Kabae who get way too excited about things we don’t care about — we're talking about gossip. or pictures of children who are only cute to their families. Are we going to completely blow them off? Of course not, but if they never talked to us again, that’d be cool too... Wanting a drink, but not wanting to interact with anyone to get it (source) We’re thirsty. So, so thirsty. Or maybe we just want to get a can of coffee for our dumb-dumb crush AKA Resasuke. Whatever it is, we don’t want to interact with anyone to get it, especially not a suck-up like Komiya. We’re going to have to listen to him talk about something stupid like golf or being busy, and we’d rather die. Making friends with co-workers (source) What about the coworkers we don’t mind? Do they like us too, or do they think we’re dumpsters? Do they want to form a deep, meaningful connection or betray us by telling everyone our secrets? Even Miss Washimi and Director Gori, who are so put together and high up on the professional chain, are up in their heads about how to friend! This sh*t is hard! Dealing with a dickhole boss (source) Maybe he’s born with it, maybe he’s been misogynistically demanding tea for so long that his makeup brand is "asshole". Either way, Director Ton is extremely unpleasant and reminds us how awful it is to deal with an obnoxious boss. Do we stand up to them and match their intensity, or do we cower and fulfill their outrageous demands? Doesn’t seem like they’ll like us whatever we do, so we’re just stuck in their weird power plays (like only speaking to us when we’re in the bathroom stall next to theirs [true story]). Getting stuck with work that’s not ours (source) We'd definitely love to stay late, do more and more work for less and less money, and never see the outside world ever again! And yes, our eyes have always looked this dead, hahahahaha. Please, shove more work at us, lololol. Expressing our emotions into a copy machine (source) All we want to do is smash our faces against this copy machine and reflect on our lives so we can make endless printed copies of our emotions. Can we please just be left alone to express ourselves into this copy machine in peace!? How do we function? (source) Apparently we haven’t been using the copy machine correctly. Are there other things we’re not doing correctly? How did we even get to work? Oh, right, we’re responsible. Wait, are we too responsible? Did our responsibility get us into all this? Are we breathing? What is life? What is love? How do we function? How do we function? HOW DO WE FUNCTION?!?!? Aggretsuko, you complete us. Do you have any more work anxieties that Aggretsuko gets? Share them with us on Twitter! Contributor: Lara DeFordView Count: 1Featured: Weekly View Count: 1Content Tag: smoshsmoshpitAggretsukonetflixanimedeath metalkaraokeofficeMass images: