Comic Review: Aggretsuko: Meet Her World #3

 

 

Overview:

Retsuko is in an excellent mood for once. She has big plans after work and even bought a new dress for her night out. Unfortunately, when Director Ton needs someone to accompany him on a work meeting, she is in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Surprisingly, the business meeting is taking place at a live wrestling match. The venue was chosen by a higher up’s daughter, Momo, who loves violence and mistreating people. While Retsuko is one of the victims of this young girl’s actions, so is one of the wrestlers. Thankfully, one of them can teach Momo a lesson about how you treat people.

 

Our Take:

As we patiently await the fourth season of Aggretsuko, Oni Press has been delivering plenty of comic books about everyone’s favourite red panda. A new series is planned to hit stands in just one week. But for now, Meet Her World wraps up with this third issue.

Aggretsuko: Meet Her World is the follow-up mini-series of Meet Her Friends. Both limited collections have featured unique stand-alone stories in each issue created by new and upcoming creators. Newcomer Danielle Radford scribes this latest issue. A comedian with no previous works published in the comic book game. This goes to show how open the publisher is in promoting rising talent.

This latest story continues the beloved themes established in the animated series but works as a stand-alone into Retsuko’s world. Unfortunately, this plot plays on many of the same points that we have already seen from the cartoon and comic titles. Thankfully, it combats that by throwing in some hefty action.

The story puts Retsuko in the uncomfortable position of escorting Director Ton to yet another important meeting. And once again, it is the last place that she wants to be, with other things planned for her evening. Fortunately, this time around, Ton is not the biggest problem. In fact, by the end, he is showing sympathy for his young employee.

The major change-up for the story is the wrestling theme. Retsuko finds herself at a professional wrestling match which only accentuates the problems she is facing. Once again, she meets a strong, empowering woman who helps lead and act as a voice for her. But the plot does wrap up without Retsuko herself learning anything.

There was a lot of lead-up throughout the panels that never paid off, aside from Retsuko’s failure to find her own voice within the tale. There was also mention of her new clothes being fragile at the seams, only for the dress to be ruined by being spilt on. It would have had more payoff had the dress cost a significant amount, instead of being a cheap flimsy material.

Overall, this issue keeps the tones and themes necessary for a good Aggretsuko story but avoids taking any risks. It is not impossible for an adaptation to take things in its own direction, as we have seen from some of the other Aggretsuko titles. On the same token, some issues have offered a lot less than can be found in this piece.