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grassbreads · 3 months ago

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I finished Pet Shop of Horrors: Tokyo, and I have some mixed feelings about it as a sequel.

On one hand, it was a lot of fun! I genuinely adore the choice to set it in Kabukicho and have Count D start befriending all the local queer people. I really enjoyed leaning a bit into D's cuter, goofier side, as well as his more benevolent and helpful side. Him running around giving magic pregnancy eggs to lesbian couples and having tea with drag queens is 10/10. Him clowning on Lau Wufei constantly is also 10/10. And I really don't mind that the series went in a more non-horror direction, as I really can see the appeal of that from a characterization perspective. Count D deciding to use his insight (and pets) to prod people in harrowing but helpful ways instead of just setting them up for Thematically Appropriate Death/Misery most of the time like he did in the pre-Leon-and-Chris days is a really interesting choice for him to make.

Also, some of the chapters were genuinely quite good as standalone stories! I loved Deathtrap, Decadence, and Dispatch, just to name a few. And the sphynx cat guy!! The sphynx cat guy is the pet of all time tbh.

All in all, I had a pretty good time reading Tokyo! If nothing else, I was quite consistently delighted by D, and most of the individual chapters' stories were compelling (though a few of the ~animals all along~ twists felt rather forced or contrived).

On the other hand, Tokyo did feel like it was missing big parts of the appeal of the original Pet Shop of Horrors. Some of what I loved about the original, murders or no, just wasn't in there.

To start with, I feel like Count D somehow managed to lose a big chunk of his depth from the original series. His family is barely mentioned at all! I can remember one brief reference to his father (and his father's death), and his grandfather comes up relatively rarely as well (mostly just to hammer home why Lau Wufei can't kick D out of his building). And that's wild! Because D's relationship to his family and his family's purpose was a big underlying part of his character in the original. Even in early chapters when we knew nothing about what the Ds were or how their Whole Thing worked, the manga made that familial element feel ominous and important. But now it's all out in the open, now the audience knows what D is and how his family works, and the thread just. gets dropped.

How does D feel about the death of his father? How does he feel about knowing that his grandfather was secretly observing him the whole time he was in L.A. (and possibly for a long time before then)? Is he still in contact with his grandfather while in Tokyo? How is their relationship now? How does he feel about knowing that his grandfather is raising his new brother/son/reborn dad/whatever the hell you want to call the new D? I get that this is a new series in a new magazine, so D's feelings about the original series were never going to be the centerpoint, but leaving out his connection to these events entirely just feels like SUCH a glaring omission. And if he's purposely avoiding thinking about these things, then show us that!

And as an expansion of that, what about the whole revenge mission D is supposed to be carrying out? In the original series, D dreams of extinct animals and wakes up crying. Masses of animals dying on the other side of the world in a wildfire gives him nightmares and makes him feel like he can hear their screams. He nearly collapses and gives everything up while he's on the run close to the end, but he has a vision that prevents him from doing so. His family's purpose isn't just something pushed on him by his grandfather—it's something he is constantly haunted by. The Ds are not allowed to forget the suffering that drives them.

So like, I am absolutely down for a D that chooses to embrace some small measure of hope and move away from a search for vengeance. I love that, actually. I think it's a great way to show the impact Leon and Chris have on him. But Tokyo gives us absolutely nothing in terms of D actually making and dealing with the fallout of that choice. We see him seeking to help out and protect endangered native species, and he's generally compelled by sole survivors and dying embers of every kind, but that's really all we get from this angle of him.

How does D deal with the pain and sadness and anger that runs in his veins? Does he struggle to justify his shift in methods? Both to his grandfather (if they're talking) and to himself? Does he struggle to reconcile his fondness for individual people and his hope for a redeemed humanity with the continuing degradation of the natural world throughout the 2000s? Does he view himself as a helper of humanity now? Human-neutral? Does he see himself as a guide? It's almost impossible to say, because PSoH: Tokyo just does not tell us.

The suffering of the whole natural world runs in D's blood, and D in the original absolutely does struggle to reconcile that fact with his growing care for humanity and humans. He's still conflicted even at the very end, loving Leon enough to let him onto the ship for a moment, but knowing despite the tears he sheds that he cannot let him stay. But Tokyo!D seems like that contradiction has just ceased to be a problem for him. If he's learned to set aside the fear and pain and rage that runs in his blood, it would be nice to see that development. If he feels he's somehow doing right by his mission as he helps the human and animal denizens of Kabukicho, it would be nice to see that justification.

Overall, in Tokyo, D just never seems to struggle with anything. He seems to have no real problems! He's rarely upset, especially late in the series. He has no difficulties bigger than "can't find a kappa when he wants to" or "passes out after Lau Wufei makes him do too many blood tests." I do really enjoy D's sillier side, and I'm happy to see a version of him that seems happier overall, but taking away all of his struggles just makes him feel like he's had all of his depth sucked out.

The original PSoH has whole chapters where D himself is the "victim" of the supernatural happening of the week (the orangutan in Donor, and to an extent the mermaid in Deep and reincarnation in Dynasty). In particular, though Donor has a tie-in plot for Leon, the chapter's story and themes ultimately all center around D and his painful relationship with his family. Dynasty centers on the Counts' disconnect from humanity and our D's emotional struggle to deal with that despite caring for people more than his ancestors did. Can you imagine getting a chapter like that in Tokyo? A whole chapter about inflicting D with complicated emotions, about making him feel yearning, regret, and grief? There's just nothing like that.

There's the very occasional moment in Tokyo that hints a bit at D's deeper, more serious feelings, but for the most part, he feels like he's been fully reduced to Funny Playful Magic Animal Guy. Even when he's letting darker things happen, handing out brood parasites or giving people nightmares to teach them lessons, his violence is handled as glibly as his dessert shopping is.

And beside my issues with what the change to Count D's writing does to him as a character, I do think Tokyo overall loses a lot of the appeal and atmosphere from the original series with its refusal to take him seriously. If there's one thing the original PSoH is good at, it's creating a sense of intrigue and mystique around the Count(s). We spend a lot of time in the pet shop, exploring its back hallways with customers and seeing D in his element there, and it always treads the line between enchanting and unsettling. The back of D's shop is a seemingly infinite labyrinth of hallways and curtains and ornate doors, and some of the "rooms" he has back there aren't even rooms at all. Customers find themselves in dim, impossible spaces lined with incense and heavy curtains, and they are somehow talked into buying "pets" that they never would have wanted in another circumstance. Even when D really does end up helping his customers rather than hurting them, people are off-kilter in the depths of the pet shop. They're unsettled, and yet they find themselves seduced. D himself is hypnotic and enticing in his voice and mannerisms, the avatar of the pet shop's seduction. It's really compelling on an aesthetic level.

The horror element expands on this, adding that knife-edge tension where we never know whether D is going to fix his customer's life or ruin it. Even as he gets more consistently helpful toward the end of the series, helping a customer may still mean breaking them down emotionally or enabling them to kill somebody else. But even if Tokyo wanted to commit to D getting less murderous, even if the creator no longer wanted the audience to worry D might kill half his customers, that doesn't mean we had to lose all the tension in his store. We get lots of "oh, this is strange" when people enter D's twisting back hallways in Tokyo, and Lau Wufei keeps grumbling to himself about how he has to check the blueprints because nothing makes sense, but almost nobody ever seems frightened by that strangeness.

And when people are unsettled by D, when we do get a brief moment where he's allowed to be enticing and ominous once again, it's always played off. He always returns to the happy silly animal guy again, almost like the thought he could still be truly dangerous is just a self-referential joke. D walks past a suicidal man on the street, senses his desire for death, and entices him back to the pet store, but it's so he can make him dress up as santa. D's ability to conjure up tangible afterimages of a long-extinct past—once used both as a way to maim or kill threats and as a way to cope with the immense grief he carries—is now used mostly as a way to replicate a video game for the side characters.

And speaking of those side characters, I feel like the pet shop itself almost gets sidelined along with D's more serious elements. How many of the chapters in Tokyo center on local wildlife (or local monsters) not actually tied to the store at all? How often is D just a friendly outsider that intervenes a bit to help events along? How often do the supernatural beings causing trouble simply visit D at his shop for a helping hand or a friendly chat, rather than originating from him? And of the stories that do hinge on him selling a pet or "pet" to someone, how many of those are centered on mundane animals?

It's not like D never causes trouble or sells supernatural creatures anymore in Tokyo, and it's not like the original didn't have cat and dog stories or stories where D just happened to stumble on the mystery of the week, but even the chapters centered on mundane animals in the original managed to be quite unsettling at times. Again, for myriad reasons, the pet shop just loses so much of its mystique in its Tokyo portrayal, and I think that's a real shame. The shop begins to feel like a fun curiosity, rather than the story's enigmatic beating heart.

It feels like there's a lot less imagery in Tokyo of D with the pets in their humanoid forms. Those panels were always so unsettling, between the almost-but-not-quite humanity of the designs and the uncomfortable sensuality of them. It was a reminder that the animals filling up the background shots in the shop were all quite sentient and potentially dangerous. It added to that air of heavy, seductive mystique I keep talking about. Leon hears D speaking to others through the shop's door, and he's unsettled when he enters and finds nobody but animals inside. Is Lau Wufei or anyone else in Tokyo ever properly unsettled by the strangeness of the animals in D's shop? For more than a few panels?

Where are Tetsu and Pon-chan? They're there on the sidelines sometimes, making faces and reacting to things, but they hardly ever get to do anything. They have no character development, no real bearing on the plots of any of the chapters. In fact, the only pet that ever gets to be important for more than one chapter is the Egyptian cat kid, and I'm pretty sure that kid is just a cameo from one of the creator's other manga. Why does he get to be more important than the original PSoH's menagerie? Where the hell is Honlon?? And it's not like we ever get a hint that D's setting up shop has coincided with an increase in deaths around Kabukicho, so what does the Totetsu eat?

There's a brief scene of humanoid Ten-chan lounging in D's bedroom with a few other pets and chatting about the problem of the month with D in one of the late Tokyo chapters, and I was honestly shocked when I got to it, because until that point it seemed like Tokyo had forgotten those types of scenes could even be done. Just a small handful more of those moments could have really helped create more interiority for D and the pets and make Tokyo feel a bit more like the original, but instead, moments focused solely on D and the pet store's denizens are few and far between.

The original Pet Shop of Horrors was an episodic, atmospheric series of horror stories and haunting moral tragedies, and those individual stories were tied together and given momentum by the over-arching mystery of Count D and the pet shop, as well as the growing emotional bond between D, Leon, and Chris. It's the story of Leon Orcot trying to understand the secrets of the dangerous, enigmatic Count D.

What is Tokyo the story of? It's not the story of Lau Wufei trying to understand the enigmatic Count D, or it does a bad job of being that if it's intended, because Wufei never actually come close to understanding him. D and Wufei become friends of a sort, but they don't seem to actually have an emotional bond. They're work friends! D cries when he leaves Leon behind, and Shuko, an echo of D, cries when it's time for Chris to move on. D sure as hell doesn't shed tears over Wufei. And Wufei, though he seems to acknowledge that D gets up to some weird mystical shit, never learns anything close to the truth of him.

Tokyo doesn't have the original PSoH's over-arching mystery (or any fleshed-out over-arching plot at all). It refuses to engage with D's more fraught, weighty character and story elements. It doesn't have an emotional core in the form of well-developed, caring relationships between the central characters. It doesn't have much focus on the key members of D's haunting menagerie, since the pet with the most screen time doesn't even live with him. It barely has any of the unsettling, enticing aesthetic elements that give the original so much of its ever-compelling mystique.

What does Tokyo give us instead of all that we're missing? Lau Wufei gets bits and pieces character development, and he has compelling aspects with his hunger for power, his hesitance around romance, and his fraught relationship with his dad, but Tokyo also seems afraid to commit too hard to treating him seriously as an emotional agent.

Wufei was never going to replace Leon, but I do think there's a potential version of Tokyo where he and D could have been allowed to bond in a deeper way. A real friendship with Wufei might have been a way to tease out the more serious sides of D. It could have been a way to flesh out Wufei, to put more emphasis on his character and growth, while also letting D talk about his feelings about Leon and his family with someone.

Wufei is probably the most dynamic, emotionally changed character in Tokyo, and I still can't say he changes that radically between the opening chapter and the end. Chapter 2 Leon would have reacted to the finale quite differently than chapter 37 Leon did. I'm honestly not sure how chapter 3 Wufei would have reacted to his finale with the Kirin. He might have taken the offer, but I don't feel like I have enough deep insight into his feelings on the matter to say. And if Wufei is bordering on static, then D, Chin, and the pets are also static to an almost unbearable degree.

Overall, Pet Shop of Horrors: Tokyo almost feels like a manga that's afraid of itself. It's afraid to dig too deeply into its characters, so everything stays happy and silly, and even the characters' inner conflicts and focus chapters are fairly surface-level. It's afraid of the blood and horror of the original series, afraid to let D be more than a little bit morally complex or get his hands dirty. All the violence has to come from outside sources and give him some vague deniability.

Some of the standalone stories in Tokyo are quite good, the happy new take on D is constantly delightful, and the addition of the culture of Kabukicho is genuinely quite a brilliant direction to take the story. But a ~fun~ character, a brilliant setting, and some good episodic elements do not an overall compelling story make. At least, not when you're writing a direct followup to something that managed to have an overarching emotional depth that worked in tandem with its episodic nature. Maybe I'd have fewer issues with the static characters and lack of overarching connection if the franchise hadn't already established its ability to do those things well, but as it stands, the absence leaves Tokyo feeling unsatisfying, incomplete, and empty.

I had fun reading Pet Shop of Horrors: Tokyo! I think it is, for the most part, a very enjoyable read, especially for a fan of Count D like me. However, despite my enjoying it deeply, I don't know I actually like it in the ways that matter. I don't know if it has much deeper worth as a whole story (setting aside the worth of the better standalone chapters). I don't know if I really approve of it as a followup to the original PSoH.

Tokyo is goofy and fun and intriguing, but I know there's so much more it could have been. There's so much more the characters could have been. D's lack of reuinion with Leon at the end is far, far from the only way in which it feels like it's lacking in any real resolution.

Fun or not, it's just hard to give a full two thumbs up to a story in which the beloved main character barely seems to change or increase in depth between the first and last pages, despite the fact that he has 43 chapters to do so. I know from the original that Akino has the ability to tell a story that's fun and also so much more on top of that, so it's frustrating that the sequel feels like a regression.

#this post was really REALLY not supposed to be this long #but apparently I had a lot more thoughts on this topic than I realized when I started writing #I think the secondary protagonists speak well for their respective psoh incarnations.#Leon Orcot is an annoying headstrong doofus that we love to watch get clowned on #he's also the symbolic embodiment of humanity and our species's will to survive no matter the cost #the crass gun-toting foil to everything Count D is and is supposed to stand for #Lau Wufei is an annoying self-assured doofus that we love to watch get clowned on #end of sentence #and I wish that he. and tokyo as a whole. were a little bit more #psoh #andie reads psoh #pet shop of horrors #pet shop of horrors: tokyo #shin pet shop of horrors

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