Pet Shop of Horrors 1

Matsuri Akino – Tokyopop – 2003 – 10 volumes

Digging a little further back in my backlog, here’s a series I bought for fear of it going out of print. It has, I believe, and all ten volumes sit on my shelf unread years later. It is time. The good count deserves better.

There are a lot of elements at work here that appeal to me. Classy shoujo horror, vengeful pets, good “short story” one-shot chapters, an effeminate and mysterious main character playing host (though I am partial to the Cryptkeeper, Cain, and their ilk as well), and “careful what you wish for”-type wish fulfillment that ends badly. That it doesn’t always end badly here is a point in its favor. The atmosphere is amazing, as is the art.

The mix of all these things, and all of them done well, really won me over in this first volume. The framing device of a police officer investigating D for the mysterious deaths of the patrons of his shop was of secondary interest. There will be time for that later.

I was quite taken by the variety of pets and their exotic natures. They weren’t all extravagant, though. Some only seemed that way. Some were very deadly. Most came back to punish the owner when they inevitably failed to follow D’s directions. The variety of rule violations and the consequences were just as fascinating as the pets themselves, though. How about humanoid songbirds that you were not to look on as they mated? What about a little rabbit-girl that consumed forbidden sweets? Or Gizmo the little creature at the beginning, that hated light and wasn’t supposed to get wet or be fed after midnight? The basilisk?

Each pet also has its own style that it mimics, which Akino discusses in the back. There’s influences from Erte and Bali dance costumes, but a lot of other things, too, and the world of D’s pet shop and the strange air of Chinatown in general come across well.

The one-off characters range from greedy to enamored to desperate. Their stories are always touching, and as I said, usually end badly. Not always with the death of the owner, sometimes they simply have their views changed or lose something precious. Sometimes they don’t end badly at all, as I said earlier, and that offers an excellent surprise at the end. All are moving, though, and with the dark, exotic atmosphere, the varying extreme moods of the customers, and D’s seeming indifference to all of it, it makes for a strange and addictive read.

I’m really excited to read the rest. I can’t wait to see where the actual plot of the series goes, if the individual chapters are all this good.