 |
| From http://i.animecrazy.net/pet.jpg |
Dir. Toshio Hirata
Japan
 |
| From http://ani.me/site_media/media/articles/2012/10/27/pet-shop-of-horrors-1_png_650x10000_q85.jpg |
In Joe Dante’s Gremlins (1984),
the younger buyer of a Mogwai is given a set of rules of how to take care of
it, including the rule the title of the review is taken from. If not followed
then the seller is not accountable of the misery the results lead to. Pet Shop of Horrors, a four part anime
mini-series adapted from a manga by Matsuri
Akino, follows this same idea. Morality tales are a vast part of human
storytelling. In the West it has been with us since the fairytales we heard as
children, and while slasher films got too puritanical for their small britches
at one point, moral warnings still exist in the horror films we watch as
adults. In Japanese pop culture, morality tales are quite common in horror
fiction. You could argue that the morality tale could be viewed as a way to
distract people from the truth of certain things, used to scare anyone into
conformity with public fears and old wives’ tales, but they also exist as
warnings from wiser people to others of having common sense and to avoid making
mistakes that will cost you dearly. The old phrase “be careful for what you wish for” applies to a lot of horror tales,
especially with ones like Pet Shop of
Horrors and its characters who may be far from innocent in the first place.
 |
| From http://www.watchcartoononline.com/thumbs/Petshop-of-Horrors-Episode-1.jpg |
Housed in Chinatown in Los
Angeles is a pet store owned by the mysterious Count D, a soft spoken man with
a sweet tooth and a feminine demeanor, who sells “dreams” to his customers as
well as regular pets. The ‘dreams’ however are bizarre creatures that require a
strict contract of three rules to be signed to acquire hem, that cannot be
broken by the client at any point. If the rules are broken, the pet store is
blameless for what happens and something exceptionally gristly is bound to
happen. Officer Orcot, a homicide detective, believes D is clearly behind the
deaths after buying these pets, but the true nature of the customers is far
more morally grey than one would immediately presume. Bear in mind that this
mini-series is only four episodes long only, single stories that do not get
deeper in terms of connecting plot as
the manga may do*. Also like some of the horror tales I’ve seen in anime and in
manga, it is full of elaborate explanations after the events to explain them
and the morals of the tales, which could be seen as off-putting for being over
explanatory. It became quite obvious with this work that this over-elaborate explaining,
all from Count D himself and his philosophising, is the main meat of many of
these tales as well as the gruesome conclusions, and the mystical creatures in
this mini-series that may be real and hallucinations, so to view the work with
this in mind markedly improves it greatly. Count D effectively becomes a
one-man Greek Chorus and Crypt Keeper as well as the one who gives them the
object (ie. the pet) that causes the events to happen. The four episodes play
off the conflicts of human emotions and their follies, the old chestnuts that
are still great themes to tackle, but adds the additional fact that, like in
many Japanese stories, the person involved may have willingly let themselves be
damned. Why Hideo Nakata’s Ringu (1998) became such a legendary
horror film as it has was probably both its premise of the cursed videotape,
but also its theme of the complicity of people, in how the tape came to
existent and that a victim, anyone of us viewers in reality too, could let this
happen to us even if we knew going in that viewing the tape could kill us after
seven days, gambling our life on such high stakes and scepticism. Pet Shop of Horrors plays with this concept
nicely in such short a space of time.
 |
| From http://www.randomdestination.com/members/mj/amvscreencaps/Embrace_Your_Fate.jpg |
If there is an issue with the
mini-series it’s that, despite being hand drawn animation before the use of
computers after the Millennium that became standard in anime production, it’s
not the best it could have been even for television. The first episode, which I
read in some form in a sample catalogue of manga from a distribution company,
is naturally going to be superior in most exceptions on page, even if this
version includes a bit I may have been deprived of from the sample that will
disturb female viewers more than the male ones, but despite the virtues of the
story itself, it lacks the complete punch an animated adaptation could have
had. Pet Shop of Horrors is a solid
ninety minute DVD, but it wasn’t allowed to fully form into something special
because of the lack of episodes and the clear faults of the visual look and
design. It may be a one-off viewing for many only because of this, unless you
become enamoured by the material, but within the context of morality tale
fiction, and what this does right in just four episodes, it was a great one-off
viewing to have regardless.
 |
| From http://www.vendadeanimes.net/imagens/vendadeanimes.net/produtos/pet_shop_of_horrors_2.jpg |
* I have yet to read the manga,
but something that is ten volumes long as it was after it ended either went to
a major narrative by its end or at least added to the backgrounds and the
natures of the main characters within it. The four episodes of this anime
adaptation are one shot tales only.
 |
| From http://i.animecrazy.net/q-chan.jpg |
No comments:
Post a Comment