Origin
Japan
Anai is an office worker and a supporting character in the 1-minute TBS Television shorts. He made his official premiere in the Netflix Original series in the episode titled "The New Hire Named Anai". Anai is a graduate accountant who works at the same firm as Retsuko and is left in her care for training. Anai's appearance is based of a Japanese badger. He has peach fur and tail, light brown stripes around his eyes, and similarly colored hands. He has thick, black eyebrows and gray eyes. Anai — at first glance — seems pleasant, enthusiastic, and good-natured, but beneath the surface, he is extremely afraid, insecure, and neurotic of his place as an newly hired adult; his paranoia reaching to the extent of reacting to advice rather badly and unable to handle any criticism. His overtly defensive nature even gets to the point of confrontation through email only, and insists that any personal business must only be settled in written form. If anyone tries to talk to him about a problem in person, he resorts to recording them on his phone as a form of protection. Despite all of this, he is shown to be a great cook and steps up to work obligations when spoken to gently by Kabae and Haida. Although sometimes still paranoid, he has since mellowed out and become less stressful over time.
Aggretsuko
Some offices have stereotypical dynamics: the chauvinistic pig of a boss who never does any real work; the employees whose goal is to suck up to the boss; the ones whose lives seem perfect; and the individuals who have all the actual work pushed onto them. Retsuko the red panda is in the last group, as she stays late most nights to make up the work her coworkers are too lazy to do themselves. Her relief from the stress of her everyday life comes in the form of singing death metal at a local karaoke club. Night after night, Retsuko channels her grief into a microphone and considers the place to be her own personal sanctuary. But as she moves further away from her comfort zone and the ideas people have of her, she discovers that letting others into her world of death metal may not be such a bad thing.
