Rilakkuma and his friends began their lives as mascots developed by the San-X company in 2003. Their initial appearance in children’s picture books made them desirable for very young children to acquire merchandise of—rather that be stuffed animals, notebooks, or anything else their little hearts desired. (Such is the genius of companies like this who manufacture adorable characters to essentially print money.)
After sixteen years, the characters (and their fans) are getting up there in age. (Thankfully due to the magic of animation, Rilakkuma and his friends will always appear the same age, with the same cuteness.) Some of the kids who walked around with Rilakkuma backpacks are old enough to have kids of their own. As such, perhaps in response to the success (and associated merchandise sales) with older viewers from Netflix and Sanrio’s Aggretsuko, San-X decided to try creating something similar—a series which worked on separate levels for adult and child viewers.
Rilakkuma and Kaoru follows the daily life of Kaoru, a hard-working woman in Tokyo who’s struggling to find her value in life. Thankfully, she’s got some friends to offer her a unique perspective on life: Rilakkuma, Korilakkuma, and Kiiroitori, to be exact. Despite the initial bizarreness of seeing a woman living with two bears and an abnormally-skilled bird, no one in the world of the series seems to be bothered by it. In fact, having anyone be bothered by it would likely take away from the atmosphere of the series.
Rilakkuma and Kaoru, while not shying completely away from conflict, is set up to be a very calm series. Most conflict is restricted to things like “Oh no, we burnt the pancakes!”. It is little problems like this, and the often humorous solutions that the bears and the bird come up with, that will keep child viewers entertained (though I’m sure adults won’t mind the cuteness either).
At the same time, there is an underlying level of conflict that adults will be able to pick up on with the character of Kaoru. She is a single office woman who struggles with feelings of being unwanted/useless to her company and the world around her and is sometimes desperate to a fault to make something of herself. She is a character a lot of adult viewers can see themselves in, and perhaps grow from based on her experiences.
If I had to knock on the series at all, it’d be that the length of it keeps it from reaching its full potential. It tells a great, quick story, but it’s something that I could see on children’s TV airing in two 11-minute segments to reach a full half-hour (with commercials). As it stands, there’s not enough for it to potentially receive that kind of syndication. There’s plenty more of the world that stands to be explored (will we ever know what’s under Rilakkuma’s zipper?). Hopefully we’ll get an announcement for another season soon.
