Bee and puppycat (especially the lazy in space/netflix show) is so in my brain because it feels like kiki's delivery service for aesthetic-oriented gen zers with no prospects. Like Kiki was a "coming of age" in a career pursuit/starving artist context, b&p feels like it was made for a similar and worse off audience. Career pursuit (or lack thereof) is a big theme in b&p, but the webseries was mostly about a girl who doesn't know what she wants to do and just floats. Lazy in space is about a lot of different people being screwed in all different ways. Cas quit her wrestling dream for a stable but unfulfilling programmer job. Deckard IS pursuing his dream going to culinary school!! .. but he's failing all his classes, so he won't ever get the job he wants, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Puppycat/space outlaw is.. an honest to god highschool dropout. Cardamon is forced to take over his mother's job AS A CHILD due to her being in a coma, paralleling disprivileged kids losing their childhoods because they have to work to help the family business or help financially support their family due to illness, disability, or general poverty.
"American iyashikei" stories often fall short of that label because of how politically celibate they are. No, the "healing genre" isn't when there's pretty landscapes, housekeeping montages, and whimsical scores. Iyashikei stories are healing because they depict people experiencing their mundane lives amidst the same tragedies we experience in real life. Miyazaki movies are vocally anti-war. The series Mushi-shi explores how illnesses (acute, chronic, or permanent) socially, physically, psychologically, and economically affect people and communities. Even Ghibli movies that "aren't as good because they're not Miyazaki movies" (bad take) often tackle things like the plights of activism (Pom Poko) or the effects of profound loneliness, depression, and self-isolation (When Marnie Was There). Iyashikeis are kinda sad at their core. They're intentionally politically engaged. Iyashikei is not the same as escapism.
Kiki's delivery service was a coming of age about a starving artist losing passion in her craft when it becomes her job and navigating class differences, and bee and puppycat is an american workforce biography about how all work is deeply tragic, and you can't just "choose" your way into a gainful, sustainable living situation.
