If there’s anything that Aggretsuko offers, it’s real life issues in animated form. Even though the characters are animals, they have troubles that all humans can relate to. Whether it’s working for a shitty boss, being unsure about marriage, or releasing your stress through Heavy Metal, Aggretsuko mirrors reality.
In season 2, Retsuko’s mother tries to coerce her towards marriage with arranged meetings. However, marriage is not on the radar for Retsuko. When she tells her mom she wants to focus on getting her driver’s license her mother backs off bc she agrees that driving is a good skill to have. While attending driving lessons, Retsuko meets the unenthusiastic and seemingly lazy Tadano san. He’s easy to talk to and they begin to form a friendship that eventually turns to romance. However, Tadano forgets to mention that he’s a tech genius with a lot of money.
Retsuko and Tadano keep their relationship discreet, but the paparazzi catches the lovebirds on a date and the entire world has something to say about Retsuko. Tadano is considered a tech leader of the world and nobody can understand why he’s dating Retsuko. The question of marriage comes up and Retsuko finds out that Tadano does not believe in marriage. Although Retsuko wasn’t sure of marriage with a random person, she is sure that wants to marry Tadano. This brings up the lesson that compatibility will not always result in a relationship. Retsuko and Tadano got along fairly well despite their differences in social status and ideals about the world. They had fun with each other, but never discussed their relationship goals. Thus, the difference in beliefs on marriage resulted in the end of their relationship.
In fact, Retsuko wanted a more traditional lifestyle, but Tadano wasn’t a traditional person by any means. He wanted to use technology to eliminate the need for jobs so that people can have free time to do other things. In his mind, free time means making your own dreams come true and adding to the advancement of society. Tadano wanted to get his license so that his driver could do other things, but Tadano was incapable of doing a simple task because it was too boring for him. Although he could create an artificially intelligent robot to drive his car and he pilot a plane, driving a car was too simple for Tadano. He almost convinced Retsuko to quit her job, but she couldn’t think of anything else she wanted to do. Her boss, Director Ton, made her realize that some people need jobs to help them cope with life. Tadano was too advanced to realize that seemingly menial jobs helped society as much as A.I. robots that could do tasks for people. After all, who would do maintenance on the robots and how would people consume products if they didn’t work for money? Would money and consumerism end in Tadano’s world? Would crime escalate since people had more free time? Would everything be equal? Or would life just become painstakingly boring?
Overall, Aggretsuko season 2 taught me to communicate what I want from a relationship. This season also taught me to stand in my beliefs because every person’s path is different and that’s okay.
