For Your Consideration: Rilakkuma and Kaoru (Season 1 Review)

It's interesting how Netflix, over the past few years, has slowly worked towards accumulating an exciting library of animated shows for 2019, starting with the anthology series Love Death & Robots and, in the near future, Lisa Hanawalt's Tuca & Bertie—it's also been a great year for ampersands, apparently. (Cupcake & Dino Season 2 May 3rd!) But wedged between those two more critically-attractive shows was another that captured my attention almost immediately: the Japanese, stop-motion animated slice-of-life show, Rilakkuma and Kaoru.

Based around the incredibly popular Japanese cultural figure of Rilakkuma, a cuddly, dango-obsessed bear with a rather inconspicuous zipper on his back, R+K (his first television series) drags in other characters attached to his franchise, including pet bird Kiiroitori, bear cub Korilakkuma, and most importantly, Kaoru, a woman who discovers Rilakkuma in her house one day. (A new character, a young boy named Tokio, also makes occasional appearances.) While Rilakkuma is at the forefront of the show's advertising, and often wrings out the series' finer comedic moments (however subdued), Kaoru is the show's greatest asset, becoming more often than not the heart of the show.

What's most immediately noticeable about R+K is its tone, which I'd consider strongly Pera-esque. It pulls strongly from slice-of-life storytelling, with each episode slowly progressing across a full year, beginning and ending in spring. While time is the most evident sign of change, the narrative is centered most squarely on Kaoru; she's a character whose life is stuck in a perpetual rut, working an unstimulating job and living her life with deeply-etched ennui, in desperate need of the sense of purpose that Rilakkuma increasingly provides.

Whereas the fact that she lives with two massive, costumed bears gives the series a cartoonish edge, she's a grounded character who embodies complete sincerity and authenticity in her listlessness, perhaps no surprise considering the show was written by Naoko Ogigami, a filmmaker known for work about emotional healing, which is squarely what Rilakkuma and friends provide in their own endearingly silly ways.

While episodes like to flirt with the bizarre and supernatural—one involves Korilakkuma encountering and befriending aliens, and another ends with snowmen coming to life and dancing about—there's always something of an emotional core that motivates the series. It's telling that one of the season's most affecting episodes, "Ghost Girl," involves the gang encountering the ghost of a young girl who was accidentally run over when going on the first date with the boyfriend of her dreams, yet found a strange amount of resolution in the sense that, for a moment in her life, she found true excitement.

Even so, R+K is at its best when it truly embraces much simpler, inelegant storytelling, finding ways to slowly develop Kaoru and allow her to grow in subtle yet, in the context of her character, profound ways, whether it's deciding to buy a new umbrella or hearing that her boss at work considers her handwriting invaluable. It's an incredibly difficult show to really define, but it's sweet without ever feeling saccharine, and each story feels vividly organic, even when crazy things happen. R+K's never indulgent so much as it uses stranger plot devices, like Kaoru buying exercise equipment uncontrollably so she can see an attractive deliveryman every day, to reveal inner truths of its cast. While the series is sometimes unsuccessful when it makes things imbalanced to the point of threatening insincerity (one notably odd episode involves Rilakkuma and co going viral performing a Hawaiian dance while atrophying development on Kaoru's part), there's always a positive light reminding you that bad times are just times that are bad, and the world moves on.

What really seals the deal, too, is R+K's stunning, fluid stop-motion animation. This is a series that goes all out in crafting a detailed universe that never feels like its choice in medium is restrictive. Everything about the series' visual appeal is meticulous and unique, and accompanied by a lush and energetic score, everything about R+K just feels warm and fuzzy. It really reinforces the fact that this isn't just the adaption of a popular franchise but a labor of love. R+K will probably fall under your radar, and it might be slow at times, but if you ever get the chance to check it out, seize it.

SEASON GRADE: A-.

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