Dear Internet,
Today I
pulled the card for "Pet Shop of Horrors." It is a short four episode television series
based on the manga of the same name. The
narrative revolves around Detective Leon Orcot and his attempts to uncover the
mysteries revolving around Count D, the owner of a Chinatown store that
specializes in obscure animals which are all claw length in the supernatural. In each of the four episodes, the story
follows the same jest. Someone comes
into the pet shop, gets a strange creature to take home with some condition
attached to it, and then breaks the conditions and it all goes wrong. Three of the four episodes follow this to the
letter. Only the forth one makes a
divergence. The problem with making a
formula is that the predictability of the show goes straight through the
roof. For example, the television series
"The A-Team" almost always had the good guys captured at the 42nd
minute (when aired with commercials) mark.
After watching a marathon of the show you could set your watch to
it. Everyone who watched this knew it,
but what made people watch it was the cast of characters and enjoyable
plot. The same thing must be addressed
in "Pet Shop of Horrors."
The regular
cast of the show number a strong two or a weak four depending on whether you
want to count the police chief and Leon's female co-worker. Leon is a poor detective to say the least,
but the show tries not to make him seem so.
The first act of his foolishness is to walk up to Count D in his shop,
claim that the shop is a den for drug dealers and human trafficking, and expect
Count D to admit to it. What kind of cop
would think direct confrontation would work?
I doubt any criminal short of a stool pigeon or fink would cave so
easily when approached such. Even guilty
children when asked if they stole a cookie avoid the question, trying to pin
the blame elsewhere. Leon is not the
brightest police officer and I would be OK with that had the shown played him as
such, but it does not.
Some of
the other characters deny common sense when confronted by the supernatural "pets"
that Count D offers. The first three episodes
all have a customer come into the shop having recently lost a person near to
them and walk out with a "pet" that looks nearly exactly like their
recently lost person, albeit with a tail or two. The first problem with this that a viewer
would see is that these people are attempting to fill a hole in their life with
a substitute. The parents in "Daughter"
try to replace their deceased child who they spoiled to death, literally. The man in "Delicious" tries to
absolve himself of the guilt of his wife's suicide. The actor in "Despair" wishes to
fill the void of being divorced. All of
these people are running away from their actions or problems and seeking an
easy escape. With this understood, it
only makes the character of Count D to be tenfold despicable. He, as anyone else can, tell that his special
customers are desperate people and are eventually going to break the conditions
of the contract that he makes with them.
He knows their weaknesses and exploits them. The show attempts to absolve him because it
is the weaknesses of the customers that do them in. But that would be like saying giving an
alcoholic a bottle of whisky is alright since it is the drunk that drinks.
"Pet
Shop of Horrors" does have a few things that work for it once you get past
the formula, which thankfully occurs in episode four. The horror elements are all there including a
visually unnerving image of demonic rabbits and the psychological concept that
is paired next to it. The show even goes
as far to question whether or not Count D actually sells supernatural pets at
all in a few episodes by only having him and the customer ever seeing the
creature in question before the contract breaks. Another time it is purposed that the customer
hallucinated the creature before they died and Count D was lying to Leon. There are a number of overlaying themes and
motifs that weave themselves together for each episode. Although, some of the concepts that an
episode leaves the audience with are rather troubling to say the least. Episode three ends with Count D praising the
decision of his customer to kill himself and be known for a single spectacular
role in a movie than "getting old and wasting his life in the ugly world
of show business."
Overall
"Pet Shop of Horrors" is a an average show that might have been
better provided it had more episodes to continue. The source material had ten volumes to draw
from, but there were only four episodes made for television. Nearly every male character is a pretty-boy
with disproportional legs, but that's
because its source material is a "shojo" demographic aimed at young
girls. The biggest pull of the show is
also its biggest flaw. The themes of
loss are universal, but the way that the characters respond to it and are then often
made to seem sympathetic despite their bad decisions. The old saying "you've made your bed,
now lie in it," comes to mind. The
characters here instead go to a roach motel.
Except for episode four. That guy
gets a nice little white house.
Yours in digital,
BeepBoop
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