The Anime Backlog

Pet Shop of Horrors

Hey there Loggers*, I hope you all had a great Halloween! We're moving into the festive months of the year but it's always Samhain in my heart. If you're wondering what's kept me busy lately, go take a look at Fall Manga Guide, the Fall Light Novel Guide, the K-Comics Guide, and be sure to read the upcoming Otaku Holiday Gift Guide, the soon-to-follow Best/Worst/Most Anticipated seasonals, the Best of 2024 feature, the Winter Trailer Watch Party, and the Winter 2025 Anime Preview Guide.

That's my life from now until mid-January, but I'll be honest that I've really enjoyed producing this column. It gives me a unique dopamine hit of "finishing the thing" (you know, like when you complete one of those household projects on your to-do list that you've put off for three months but only took you about 20 minutes once you finally did it) and it offers me an opportunity to write when the primary function of my job is to manage and facilitate 20+ other people so they can write.

*(Does this work? Can we coin this?)

Note: This column will routinely include spoilers. Reader discretion is advised.

I'm realizing I have a startling amount of Madhouse anime in my backlog. I picked up Sentai Filmworks Pet Shop of Horrors SD Blu-ray about a year ago, and last month seemed like the perfect time to pop it in. The four-episode series has a somewhat unique origin; it's not an OAV. Instead, Madhouse produced this adaptation of Matsuri Akino's manga specifically for the TBS Wonderful! programming block in 1999. The episodes are loosely connected by setting but are otherwise standalone: an individual enters Count D's pet shop located in Los Angeles' Chinatown and purchases a humanoid-like pet. They swear to show it to no one and obey the guidelines set forth by D. Inevitably, they will fail to upkeep their promise and, most likely, meet a gruesome end.

Pet Shop of Horror's staying power in the North American fandom is curious; it may be a case of being in the right place at the right time. Short one-and-done home video releases were common in the market for a long time (remember Debutante Detective Corps and Elf Princess Rane?) and Pet Shop of Horrors slots easily alongside visually similar dark, adult fare like Darkside Blues and Vampire Princess Miyu. Its manga counterpart was part of Tokyopop's beginning catalog, bolstered by Akino's gorgeous artwork.

Prior to Sentai Filmworks' release, the Pet Shop of Horrors anime series was part of the now-defunct Urban Vision's catalog. The company would probably be considered a "boutique" licensor now, as much of its inventory centered around founder Mataichiro Yamamoto's relationship with Madhouse. Before shuttering in the early aughts, Urban Vision's releases included Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, Goku: Midnight Eye, Wicked City, and other similar fare. Pet Shop of Horrors fit right in. Its setting also lends it to American anime first-timers; like Gunsmith Cats and other OAVs of the era, Pet Shop of Horrors takes place outside Japan (in this case, Los Angeles!), so it offers all the anime aesthetic with less cultural learning curve for late '90s era viewers.

Pet Shop of Horrors director Toshio Hirata may not be well known to fans in the West, but he was well-loved within the industry. Known affectionately as "Pon-san," he was friends with fellow industry veterans Gisaburō Sugii (Touch, Lupin III: The Secret of Twilight Gemini), Masao Maruyama (founder of Madhouse and MAPPA), and Rintarō (Space Pirate Captain Harlock, X, Metropolis). Hirata's work covers a multitude of genres but there is a definite lean towards realistic drama and reflections on war, from Barefoot Gen to Rail of the Star - A True Story of Children and War between his more all-ages film work.

Hirata utilized his working relationships for this project, bringing in Rintarō to take the lead on the opening sequence, Hisashi Abe (Chobits, Gunslinger Girl) to design the characters, and Giant Robo director Yasuhiro Imagawa to pen an episode about killer rabbits. However, outside of YouTube uploads, you won't get to see Pet Shop of Horror's opening on an official release. It heavily utilizes live-action footage of the opening theme band LEGOLGEL, which I suspect created a more complicated situation for licensing.

Pet Shop of Horrors is an anime I could easily become obsessed with if it were longer, and I had seen it during its heyday. It functions in a similar space as Hell Girl and Vampire Princess Miyu, two other series I have watched (and rewatched). It keeps a very tight cast: Count D (truly serving before it was culturally cool), brash police officer Leon Orcot, and a few appearances by Jill, a fellow cop. Each episode cycles through various pet shop clients who are all too willing to buy a potentially dangerous animal so long as it fills the current void in their lives.

Pet Shop of Horrors isn't horrific in the classic sense. It sticks to a well-developed sense of tragedy and eeriness. The episodes are also morality tales, which gives them a Grimm's fairytale quality. Episode one is easily the weakest, with a hamfisted warning for parents who spoil their children and a dated perspective on drug addiction. (I could also find zero information to support the idea that rabbit kittens eat their way out of the mother's womb). The middle two, though, are fantastic in their creepiness, featuring a vindictive bride-turned-siren and a lizard woman who bonds with her owner, a has-been actor struggling to find work. The last episode is the most bonkers (an accomplishment in a series that includes a girl who is actually a bunch of rabbits) as we meet a Kirin who facilitated both Hitler and Truman's rise to power and a body-swap plot. Episode four is a big cliffhanger, begging for one more episode to wrap it up. In that sense, the anime is frustrating, but that only speaks to how I wanted more of it.

Sentai Filmworks' Blu-ray release is in standard definition, and it shows. There currently is not a high-resolution transfer on the Japanese market, and I can't speak to the probability that Pet Shop of Horrors will get one or whether its source materials are usable for an upscale, but it needs it. The anime's art is gorgeous but cannot be fully appreciated here, as it oftentimes looks muddy instead of moody. The voice acting timing is also inconsistent in the Japanese version, with the lip flaps acting more like suggestions than truly matching up with the performance.

Pet Shop of Horrors scratched a very particular itch for me, even if it didn't feel "complete" by any means. Fortunately, we're getting a new release of the manga from Seven Seas Entertainment soon and this did its job well enough to sell me on finding out more.

Watch it if all the other anime I name-dropped in this column are some of your favs, then join me in wishing for a cleaner transfer and pre-ordering the manga volumes.

Final Verdict: Yes.