Netflix's Aggretsuko, an animated sitcom about a normally mild-mannered red panda who works as a paper pusher by day and vents her frustrations with her job via hardcore metal karaoke sessions at night, has been entertaining audiences since it first premiered as a series of shorts in 2016. Since then, the Sanrio-mascot filled show has spawned a full TV series, which is receiving its fourth season this December. While there's nothing that could quite replace the hilarity of Retsuko and her coworkers, there are actually a surprising number of workplace anime that could tide you over while you wait for more episodes of Aggretsuko - or even become your new favorite.

Wotakoi: Love Is Hard for Otaku

We'll start off with a fairly straightforward one, the most similar in tone and content to Aggretsuko - Wotakoi: Love Is Hard for Otaku. The protagonists are Narumi and Hirotaka, coworkers who share a lifestyle in both devotion to their careers and an obsessive love of nerd culture. The main difference between them is that while Narumi is somewhat embarassed by her hobbies, Hirotaka is unfazed by others knowing about his love of all things anime and gaming. They find a sort of solace with each other, understanding the desire to both be self-reliant adults and indulge in their fandoms. The show itself is much like them, actually - it loves its fun reference humor and some juvenile jokes, but also takes the romance between its main characters fairly seriously, with them hitting it off basically right away instead of following a will-they-won't-they plot that is usually present in anime romances. Along the way we are introduced to other nerdy coworkers and friends of theirs, and a fun, unique repitoire grows between them.

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My Senpai Is Annoying

If you prefer the chase part of a romance, though, you might enjoy the currently airing My Senpai Is Annoying. Again following a group of white-collar coworkers, the main character Futaba is a small but scrappy woman whose issues about her height drive her to succeed in work. Along the way, though, she ends up falling for her coworker Harumi, who is her complete opposite - large, boisterous, and with a complete lack of self-consciousness. Unfortunately for Futaba, it's exactly Harumi's blindness to the small and sensitive things in life that keeps him from seeing what everyone around them can see: Futaba's barely concealed affection for him. Since Harumi and Futaba getting together would ruin the central appeal of the show, My Senpai Is Annoying is primarily a comedy of errors, seeing Futaba stumble around the office trying to capture Harumi's attention while only half-realizing that she has feelings for him in the first place, Harumi never noticing her attempts at flirtation, and their friends as they try to eventually push the two together.

Heaven's Design Team

The shows listed so far are about workplaces and they purposefully don't define what exactly the characters do at work in order to keep the situations that can arise as loose as possible - but maybe you're itching for a show that tries to capture the feeling of actually working at work. If that's the case, Heaven's Design Team is just the anime for you. The concept itself is far from grounded - literally - as it follows a group of people assigned by God himself to create creatures to inhabit the world. The colorful cast of this show - each named and themed after a planet, like the tiny Pluto or the fashionable Venus - receive assignments from their boss to come up with concrete examples of his vague ideas. Whether he wants a furry sea creature or something "cute but deadly", the titular design team must put their heads together to come up with an idea that not only matches the commission, but is also practical. The series uses this concept to explore obscure details about all sorts of real-life animals, explaining how they function in a fun, accurate, and easy to understand way, while also poking fun at all sorts of fantasy creatures, explaining in often minute detail exactly why they wouldn't last a day in the real world. It's also one of the most down-to-earth portrayals of what it's like to work in a collaborative team environment, with much of the fun coming from seeing the charismatic cast butt heads over creative differences and find unlikely inspiration in each other as well.

Patlabor

The fantastic not doing it for you? Maybe you're more into grounded sci-fi, exploring ideas about, let's say, what it would be like if we had utilitarian robots to help us do manual labor. It might surprise you to find out that a whole franchise exists with exactly this concept - the 80s police comedy Patlabor. A series with an admittedly sprawling scope of media, Patlabor is a series of manga, anime, movies, novels, and even a live-action show about the "near future" of 1998, where robots called Labors have been in use to help do things like construction work, and a special division of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police has been granted a small, provisional force of "Patrol Labors" to help combat crime and various issues related to the Labors. The series mainly follows the wry, middle-aged Captain of this division, Keiichi Goto, and the often bumbling but always lovable and good-hearted recruits who work under him. The franchise being a big as it is, there is a tone for everyone depending on what you want, from the funny sitcom antics of the Early Days episodes to the more contemplative politics of the movie trilogy. No matter what you go with, though, the heart of the series is always in the antics of Division 2 and the strange bond they form as coworkers maneuvering the new technology they've been given and the new problems that arise with it every day.

Polar Bear Cafe

Finally, it would be remiss to not bring an Aggretsuko-inspired list back to its furry animal roots, which is why the relaxing comedy of Polar Bear Cafe has to be mentioned. The premise of Polar Bear Cafe is as simple as it sounds - a polar bear named Polar Bear runs a cafe in a quiet town that has a rotating cast of regulars and fresh faces, a lot like Cheers but with zoo animals. His most frequent visitor is the lazy freeloader Panda, who is also the character we follow the most often, but as the show goes on you'll also get the chance to fall in love with characters like the narcissistic Penguin and the free-spirited Grizzly. The show has a genuine charm to it, clearly written by people who love these creatures and have put a lot of thought into just what it would be like to run a cafe that acts as their 'watering hole' of sorts. The drama is low-stakes, the gags are gut-wrenching, and you'll find yourself flying through the 50 episode run of this adorable show.

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