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.