Aggretsuko (ONA) 4th Season

The Term "Character Assassinations'" was recently introduced to me as a friend of mine relayed his feelings towards a movie he has seen. He explained to me that it was difficult to enjoy the content when the main character kept making bad decisions. After watching Season 4 of Aggretsuko, those words popped into my head. While Not Outright Attempting to ruin the experience I must Mention that THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS The Ending of Season 3 of Aggretsuko put a lot of the shows best cards on the table, which made me and i'm sure many others really be excited for the potential of another season.Retsukos secret is known to the world, she's made some level of peace with her mundane job, and the chances for love seem to be implied to be right around the corner. Seeing how Season 4 plays with the past as a result can vary from, acceptable to indifferent to frustrating. Season 4 has two main plot threads, the chance of a relationship for Haida and Retsuko, and the bold business decisions of new acting company President Himuro. On the one hand, the first thread is something the show has played with from the very beginning and its potential was always one that I'm sure many people who were active Haida X Retsuko shippers were waiting for. On the other hand... this is a very hard relationship to root for after a certain point. How much time we must spend playing will they or won't is certainly a problem but ultimately... The problem is Haida. No longer just a guy pining after his co-worker he's essentially this seasons lead character. Unfortunately this is where those two little words I opened this review with rear their head. To put it simply, Haida makes bad decision after bad decision this season. From spending half the season with cold feet in love making it impossible to progress the relationship at all, to his new found place in the company, and the choices he's ready to make for approval. It lasts all the way up to the point that you think the show is ready to abandon any chance of liking the character anymore all the way up to the shows final few minutes. This wouldn't be nearly as big of a deal if he wasn't so much of the focus this season, and as a result the core stories being offered here feel less then stellar to say the least of seasons past. It's great that the show gave us a chance to let us understand him better as a person, something Retsuko says in regards to him several times this season. It's just that what's here feels rather weak and less like something you'd expect from the character but more of a way to create a 10 episode season that may very well could have been resolved in...I don't know 3? 4? It's definitely possible Director Ton also gets more time in the spotlight then usual, and I'm mixed about this. On the one hand, it's nice to see a more human side to him, seeing a side of him that values his job and his employees...but on the other hand this chance for empathy feels like it was missed a long time ago with the amount of times he's harassed employees and made sexist comments. It feels like the show wants to say he should get a clean pass, there are greater evils, and I'm not sure I agree...still he brings some of the more humorous scenes you'll find this season...for as many as you can find anyways. And then there's Retsuko herself. She's here...she's certainly here, but other than playing her part in just a constant lack of communication between herself and Haida which slows the show down a lot, it often feels like she's just a side character, doing what i'm sure was plenty but still not much in comparison to the larger portions of this season. Even the namesake of the show, her death metal Karaoke feels incredibly underutilized as Retsuko spends far more time drinking Coffee/Tea with her friends at a restaurant instead of belting out lyrics at the Karaoke. It's especially frustrating since now that all of her friends and Co-Workers know her secret, you'd think that more time would be spent here. But nobody has any questions, rarely does anyone have any desire to sing (not to say that there aren't moments) and the death voice seems more utilized as a platform to aid Ton during the Business part of this story. (Still nice to see how popular she is) There are good things about this season. Characters like Fenneko and Tsunoda as the love police are constantly entertaining. Anais frustration from trying to be better about NOT yelling at company heads is pretty funny, and Kaba's personal struggles in the company and her passion for her children are all entertaining moments...it's just a shame that these moments feel like savory treats in what is otherwise a bit of a messy story. If there were more of these i'm sure my overall enjoyment rating would've been higher. It sucks to say all this because i'm actively a big fan of this anime. I rewatch old seasons every time a new one drops and I enjoy them just as much on rewatch...the problem is Season 4 of Aggretsuko feels far more disconnected from anything that the show has done before than rather than feel like it's the natural stepping point going forward, it's a completely different, somewhat entertaining but just not as good story. I did see that Retsuko will return though, so given the way this season ended, there's still a lot of potential for season 5 to differentiate itself from this season and perhaps focus a little more on Retsuko. If you love this Anime, you'll have a fair amount of fun with season 4 but you may also finish the season questioning whether or not they made their first less than exceptional season. I'm still glad I watched it though, I still had fun, and if you feel like giving it a watch, I hope you will too! Overall I rate mostly on enjoyment and the story brought that down for me so... Final Score 6.5 (ish)/ 10

You know how you sometimes have to pull the cord on a gas lawnmower a bunch of times to get it going, but after it starts it continues generally fine? Season 4 of "Aggretsuko" is kind of like that. The first HALF of the season is a will-they-or-won't-they over Retsuko and Haida, after Season 3 spent so long bringing that to a head. Pretty much everything other aspect of the season gets *set up* while that's going on, but is firmly in the background. At that point in the middle, I found that I just could not care anymore about whether or not they became acouple, because so much of the problem between them this season is simply that they don't communicate like adults. Now, part of that is Haida's lack of confidence, which is a major factor of the season, but I feel like it wasn't too much to ask for them to resolve that in, say, three episodes? Maybe? Not 5. Not, really, the entire season. We only see them on happy dates a handful of times, even. Anyway, overall season story is about a new and unscrupulous (and younger) CEO coming in to the company where Retsuko and the gang work. And, yes, the fact that he's younger is important because he's set up in contrast to the lackadaisical old guard bosses... who care about people's jobs. Cripes. Yes. In this season of the workplace comedy about how work sucks, the management gets humanized because they're people, too. And they're actually protecting you. Give me a fucking break. I recognize that this aspect of the season is even more steeped in Japanese business culture than usual, but it's an odious reversal. Ton is not a fucking good guy. He can be nice to his family, but he is not the only thing standing between the accounting department and the door. You don't get to go "well, he was young once, too," in Season 4. Especially since, yes, he should be stepping down soon. He's retirement age. Young leadership is good, and the only reason we don't acknowledge that is because of old guard mythmaking. Bah. You may notice that not a lot of this has to do with Retsuko. Well. The season doesn't have much to do with Retsuko. That's not necessarily a bad thing. However, in this case, I thought it was unsatisfying because it comes down to her doing stuff online mostly offscreen and one climactic confrontation with Haida. And that's it. No matter how good it was to have some direct conflict between Haida and Retsuko, it couldn't carry things for me. I'll say this, though: finally, the curse of the soft reset has been broken. Slightly. Almost everything is still the same for no reason, as of the last two minutes. But the Season 4 soft reset DOES allows one thing to change, and it's a good change. So here's to Season 5 and maybe having more luck next time.

I get why people might feel that Retsuko and Haidas relationship was enough last season rather than seeing more of it this season. However I felt it was good to see how they get on with each other even if they are not “officially” dating yet. I really thought the doggo president was a new interesting character even if he’s supposed to be the baddie who tries to make Haida his minion. We see a new side of Haida and that really is surprising since he’s normally just a “awkward goody two shoes who’s hopelessly in love with Retsuko”. I also liked his mini songin the end and the fact we see mr donkey Elon musk again made the series worthwhile. While I felt this season was rather rushed, I can say it was a bit better than the last season. Urgh I just want a 5th season already, it’s just so good to binge this series as it’s just so watchable and easy to enjoy whether it can be good, bad or wtf at times…..

After how season 3 ended the way it did, I was very much hoping for this season to somehow magically fix the shark they’d jumped. Season 4 started promising, it was obvious that the focus would be back on the office rather than the insane gimmicks they’d pulled for seasons 2&3 (however fun season 3's started) but then things went... well, plot-wise they went downhill, but so did the character portrayal. I don't know if the writing was just so bad I didn't catch the character motivations or if I just didn't see them because Retsuko and Haida were just written so plot-conveniently that I stoppedpaying attention. tl;dr season 2 made me side-eye the writers in confusion, season 3 made me yell at them for the ending, season 4 made me realize this is apparently not the show I thought it was and should really just give up on it.