Time for some Netflix and Chill.
Far removed from the days of cute characters for cuteness' sake, Sanrio has tried to create cute characters that hit home with consumers in more ways than one. For example, one of their latest creations, Gudetama, is basically a lazy walking egg yolk with a butt, the poster child of contemporary social attitudes (and believe me with this one, I procrastinated several times trying to write this).
In this case, one of their latest characters is Aggressive Retsuko, or Aggretsuko, a red panda that embodies the modern working woman. Retsuko is a red panda who works as an Office Lady or OL. Her job entails mostly thankless, low level clerical work, and the position offers little chance for promotion; the workers are expected to leave and become housewives once someone decides to marry them, a sort of limbo with sexist overtones. Retsuko has to deal with all this, along with asshole colleagues, a (literal) sexist pig for a boss, and other work and social pressures. Retsuko lets off steam by singing death metal at karaoke every night after work. (Her name is even a play on words; the Retsu, or 烈 kanji in her name means "violent" or "extreme".)
It's the kind of social rage that is immediately relateable for anyone who has ever held a shitty job, especially millennial women in today's society. Far from being a show that merely exists to promote cute things, there's actually a level of social commentary going on in here, and it's amazing. The show acts as a criticism of social work attitudes and unreasonable expectations towards women and it highlights various other issues like office politics, everyday microaggressions between coworkers, workplace relationships and workplace ennui.
At 10 episodes of 15 minutes each, it's a breeze to binge in one go. It won me over easily, and it's a show I'd wholeheartedly recommend. Now excuse me while I sing some Cannibal Corpse.
Far removed from the days of cute characters for cuteness' sake, Sanrio has tried to create cute characters that hit home with consumers in more ways than one. For example, one of their latest creations, Gudetama, is basically a lazy walking egg yolk with a butt, the poster child of contemporary social attitudes (and believe me with this one, I procrastinated several times trying to write this).
In this case, one of their latest characters is Aggressive Retsuko, or Aggretsuko, a red panda that embodies the modern working woman. Retsuko is a red panda who works as an Office Lady or OL. Her job entails mostly thankless, low level clerical work, and the position offers little chance for promotion; the workers are expected to leave and become housewives once someone decides to marry them, a sort of limbo with sexist overtones. Retsuko has to deal with all this, along with asshole colleagues, a (literal) sexist pig for a boss, and other work and social pressures. Retsuko lets off steam by singing death metal at karaoke every night after work. (Her name is even a play on words; the Retsu, or 烈 kanji in her name means "violent" or "extreme".)
It's the kind of social rage that is immediately relateable for anyone who has ever held a shitty job, especially millennial women in today's society. Far from being a show that merely exists to promote cute things, there's actually a level of social commentary going on in here, and it's amazing. The show acts as a criticism of social work attitudes and unreasonable expectations towards women and it highlights various other issues like office politics, everyday microaggressions between coworkers, workplace relationships and workplace ennui.
At 10 episodes of 15 minutes each, it's a breeze to binge in one go. It won me over easily, and it's a show I'd wholeheartedly recommend. Now excuse me while I sing some Cannibal Corpse.
Out of curiosity I watched Brillante Mendoza's Amo. There's a level of technical accomplishment behind it, and the film is generally better produced than any other local TV production out there.
But that's where the praise ends. There's much in Amo that doesn't pan out, and it has nothing to do with its skewed worldview.
The series is divided into two stories - the first deals with a high school kid who works as a drug runner, while the second is about a botched police operation involving a Japanese drug lord. Anyone with half a brain cell can see that the two stories are fictionalized versions of true events - the first story arc draws comparisons to Kian delos Santos, while the second is inspired by the kidnapping and killing of Jee Ick-joo. Let's not forget that the real people behind these stories have not been proven to have been connected with the drug trade at all - and here, their fictional counterparts are depicted as being fully entrenched in the drug trade. Artistic licence and all, perhaps, but it still feels quite off at best, insensitive at worst, an awful perversion of 'found story'.
The characters of Amo serve as little more than cardboard cutouts: their motivations don't go further than "drugs are everywhere, so I might as well do this." The dirty cops involved in the second arc are motivated by greed, so at least there's a little bit more nuance there, but it's a far cry from the depictions of gray morality in Mendoza's previous films. There's nothing in the series that is the least bit compelling, and halfway through the series, it was obvious to me that getting through it was becoming something of a chore.
For someone who prides himself as a storyteller, Mendoza's storytelling in Amo can get horribly inconsistent at times. A character is seemingly killed by gunshot in one episode, only to miraculously show up in the season finale, with no indication as to how they survived. Another character is shown to be dismembered during one scene (an unintentional callback to Mendoza's Kinatay, perhaps?) and during the next scene said character's intact body is being placed inside a body bag.
Speaking of Kinatay, comparing that movie to Amo only highlights how much Mendoza's depiction of reality has transformed: in his previous films, the protagonists possess their share of good and bad traits, and some of these movies showed how evil can be brought out from the best of people if the wrong stars align. In Amo, this is hardly the case - there are good guys (no matter how bad some of their actions might seem) and there are bad guys, i.e. guys involved in drugs. Most deaths in the series are due to drug syndicates executing their own, or people who fight back during police operations. Depictions of activities that highlight the drug war - operation Tokhang, drug lists and other police operations - are mostly done in a positive light, because obviously there is no such thing as a wrongful arrest, or errors in a foolproof drug list, or something like that. In the world of Amo, those things cannot possibly exist.
But in a free society, artists can release whatever they want. They can release whatever depiction of subjective reality they so choose. And that's where the appeal of Amo will probably come from to many people, especially those in favor of the current drug war. In a way, through this series I've come to understand them, that they are fueled by a sense of idealism, foolish as some may think. It's an idealism that's admirable in its own way, because I've come to be too cynical with the world at large. Just when Amo premiered, Mendoza tweeted this image:
In my opinion, Amo may not be as "truthful to the issues that surround us" as Mendoza thinks, but it presents a comfortable illusion. Because if the world is clearly defined by black and white, if the world is clearly divided into good guys who can do no wrong and bad guys who are always 100% guilty, then it becomes easier to live with it - because the alternative is perhaps too hard to fathom.
But that's where the praise ends. There's much in Amo that doesn't pan out, and it has nothing to do with its skewed worldview.
The series is divided into two stories - the first deals with a high school kid who works as a drug runner, while the second is about a botched police operation involving a Japanese drug lord. Anyone with half a brain cell can see that the two stories are fictionalized versions of true events - the first story arc draws comparisons to Kian delos Santos, while the second is inspired by the kidnapping and killing of Jee Ick-joo. Let's not forget that the real people behind these stories have not been proven to have been connected with the drug trade at all - and here, their fictional counterparts are depicted as being fully entrenched in the drug trade. Artistic licence and all, perhaps, but it still feels quite off at best, insensitive at worst, an awful perversion of 'found story'.
The characters of Amo serve as little more than cardboard cutouts: their motivations don't go further than "drugs are everywhere, so I might as well do this." The dirty cops involved in the second arc are motivated by greed, so at least there's a little bit more nuance there, but it's a far cry from the depictions of gray morality in Mendoza's previous films. There's nothing in the series that is the least bit compelling, and halfway through the series, it was obvious to me that getting through it was becoming something of a chore.
For someone who prides himself as a storyteller, Mendoza's storytelling in Amo can get horribly inconsistent at times. A character is seemingly killed by gunshot in one episode, only to miraculously show up in the season finale, with no indication as to how they survived. Another character is shown to be dismembered during one scene (an unintentional callback to Mendoza's Kinatay, perhaps?) and during the next scene said character's intact body is being placed inside a body bag.
Speaking of Kinatay, comparing that movie to Amo only highlights how much Mendoza's depiction of reality has transformed: in his previous films, the protagonists possess their share of good and bad traits, and some of these movies showed how evil can be brought out from the best of people if the wrong stars align. In Amo, this is hardly the case - there are good guys (no matter how bad some of their actions might seem) and there are bad guys, i.e. guys involved in drugs. Most deaths in the series are due to drug syndicates executing their own, or people who fight back during police operations. Depictions of activities that highlight the drug war - operation Tokhang, drug lists and other police operations - are mostly done in a positive light, because obviously there is no such thing as a wrongful arrest, or errors in a foolproof drug list, or something like that. In the world of Amo, those things cannot possibly exist.
But in a free society, artists can release whatever they want. They can release whatever depiction of subjective reality they so choose. And that's where the appeal of Amo will probably come from to many people, especially those in favor of the current drug war. In a way, through this series I've come to understand them, that they are fueled by a sense of idealism, foolish as some may think. It's an idealism that's admirable in its own way, because I've come to be too cynical with the world at large. Just when Amo premiered, Mendoza tweeted this image:
In my opinion, Amo may not be as "truthful to the issues that surround us" as Mendoza thinks, but it presents a comfortable illusion. Because if the world is clearly defined by black and white, if the world is clearly divided into good guys who can do no wrong and bad guys who are always 100% guilty, then it becomes easier to live with it - because the alternative is perhaps too hard to fathom.
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