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kagemajaya · 4 years

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pet - A beautiful and tense journey through the peaks and valleys of memories

Winter 2020, Geno Studio - 7/10

Hiroki appreciates the idyllic imagery of the landscape of memories

This season has been bountiful for me and pet was one of the main contributors to this success. Despite my avoidance of tense and emotionally exhausting topics, going through pet was easy. First and foremost, pet was a champ in the department of visual storytelling and I expected nothing less from my favorite director Oomori Takahiro. Whilst I don’t always fall in love with all the stories he adapts into anime, I know that he will never make a show that underestimates its audience and that the story will always have heart. And pet didn’t disappoint.

The main attraction of the show for me is the depth of emotion and the psychological struggles it portrays in characters I actually care about. Of the main foursome, Hiroki was an immediate favourite with his sweet, naive and just nature, followed by an interest in his “boyfriend” Tsukasa, mostly because of the creepiness he exuded but also because he still wasn’t unlikeable - he did really care for Hiroki. Their relationship, of course, was a big draw in itself - immediately intimate and full of innuendo, much like the rest of the narrative around the co-dependency between image users who give and receive peaks from each other (peaks represent the best memory that make up the entire psyche of a human being.) This almost surface-level subtext never disappointed despite all the drama surrounding each other’s value in each of these four characters.

I’m not one to say no to an intense bout of connecting in memories.

In some cases the relationship drama made me sad - because why couldn’t Hayashi prioritise Tsukasa? Why was it always Satoru who came first? It gave me a dark pleasure in some - Tsukasa’s intense need for Hiroki to be with him drowned out his need for Hiroki to be okay. He just needed him around no matter what. In others, it made me stray away from the emotional core a bit - who cares about this supernatural Chinese mafia and their politics? I’m not one for the gangster stories. I need beauty and elegance in my crimes rather than grit. I was also a bit suspicious about the extremely over-the-top vibe in some dramatic scenes. Tsukasa confronting Hayashi felt almost hammed up to me.

At the end of it all, pet delivered a finale that made the uninteresting bits suddenly interesting and made the interesting but confusing bits all the more deep. A lot of the drama was actually caused by the limited emotional capacity of these four, who had a different developmental period than normal people. They couldn’t create their own memories and they didn’t feel their own emotions until someone else came to save them. The nicer, more naive and newer pets like Hiroki and Satoru felt exactly like that - pets. They were not treated as equals and were clearly tricked into all sorts of situations they didn’t want to be in. More importantly, they didn’t even want to think, they didn’t know how to form their own opinions, but despite the lack of basics in emotions, they still grew those. It was easier to see that they were indeed limited in their capacity to not feel (because they felt a GREAT deal) but in their capacity to make sense of it and control it.

The older, cleverer characters like Hayashi and Tsukasa looked well-adjusted on the surface until past halfway, where we could see the cracks in their armor. Hayashi prioritised his younger “child” Satoru, not because he didn’t love Tsukasa but because he thought Tsukasa could have been a lost cause in the hands of the Company, whereas he had been able to take care of Satoru till recently. Thinking back on it, this fact didn’t make me feel relieved for Tsukasa because in the end he was relegated to a secondary position, but it made sense. Hayashi was not cruel, he only had the capacity to prioritize one particular feeling (or person in this case.) He had even thought of Hiroki and wanted to bring him out despite not even having met him but more than anything he had to get Satoru out.

Hayashi’s protective feelings for Tsukasa were more hurtful than warm. After all, he was always the “too.”

Tsukasa, himself, was acting in a lot of scenes but this was not true for all scenes where he was emotional - despite giving the impression. The confrontation scene with Hayashi was as hammed up as the scene where he was putting on a performance for Satoru, but the truth is he was just unable to express himself in a way that was genuine. His emotional baggage was of course far bigger than this. After all, he even groomed himself a perfect pet after he was betrayed by his peak giver. He wanted someone to trust and he could only trust someone who would be on his side unconditionally. His actions (and thoughts) made it obvious that he didn’t see Hiroki as an equal, but the question is was that also his feelings? If anything, Hiroki (and Hayashi) were put on a pedestal and he could not live without them. However, he didn’t really understand how to go about keeping them without thinking about himself first. He had been self-centered for so long that it was impossible to think of anything other than himself. He’d never learnt to.

Tsukasa’s perfect world.

And the Company - I didn’t care about this plotline until the last episode where the connection between Katsuragi and LianLian was revealed. And what a way to end it! Suddenly I was emotionally connected to the evil goon, doing the bidding of his superiors and nothing else the whole season (and he had no gay storyline to boot, so a tough sell for me :)).

The sad ending was coming from miles away - but pet also surprised me in that regard. The ending could be viewed in two different ways. The source material had been a completed manga for a long time until recently, in which case, it looked like the “stupid” ending of the naive pets, looking optimistically into the future, never likely to have what they want. We do now know that a sequel is starting that focuses on the lives of Tsukasa, Hiroki and Satoru after this point, and I, for one, am excited to see a somewhat happy follow-up to this tense but strangely sweet psychological drama. We might end up finding out about more rules surrounding how memories and images work (though that plot itself is not necessarily my main concern.) And who knows? Maybe Hiroki and Satoru will really bring Tsukasa to their peak and Tsukasa will relearn how to make memories and they will live happily ever after. A girl can dream... Though I still must add, the conclusion is a perfect one as it is, not entirely sad, but really just two fool’s dream that we can also choose to believe in.

The peak that bestows hope on all who is destitute

Putting aside the story elements, the show itself is crafted superbly both visually and narratively. The imagery was almost never outright explained but always visible and giving a pleasant rush to me when I noticed them.

Don’t kill the innocent pets! They understand nothing about the evils of the world they live in.

The dissonance between thoughts, feelings and actions of the childish but equally deep main four was showcased well in all dialogues, but especially in the confrontation scene between Tsukasa and Satoru in episode 12. Both characters didn’t suspect they were wrong despite both of them being half-wrong. The pacing of the dialogue allowed both their thoughts and actual words to be conveyed but also showed us in great detail how underdeveloped they were emotionally. Their understanding of those external to them was somewhat complex, it’s not like any normally raised human being can figure out all the things that were happening in that situation, so it was realistic that they wouldn’t understand it all. More importantly, their self-awareness levels were way below the threshold that would allow them to flourish in a cruel environment, surrounded by people who were hellbent on taking advantage of them and seeing them merely as pets. It made for a fascinating watch - the cleverness of it all was the depth of the characters who I’d classify as idiots in a lot of ways. As someone who very rarely enjoys idiot characters, I’d call this experience an orgasmic pleasure.

Takes one to know one.

One last word about Ueda Keisuke, the seiyuu of Hiroki. The genuineness and sweetness portrayed in the character hugely owed to the great voice work of the actor. I had heard him in Oushitsu Kyoushi Heine before as the titular character Heine and noticed his distinct tones, but hadn’t felt anything beyond that. Hiroki’s performance, however, affected me to my core. Looking back on Heine now, I really appreciate the sense of distinctiveness he can grant the characters he plays. Heine was not an attractive character for me, so I didn’t care at the time as his voice fit him perfectly - it was not particularly attractive. With Hiroki, he put on a performance with a completely different range of emotions that retrospectively, I can put Heine together with Hiroki, and see what a great voice actor he is. Here’s hoping for more roles for Ueda in the future! (Apparently he is a stage actor as well, but selfishly, I hope he becomes a full time seiyuu.)

Ask me again in that voice, you sweet little child.

The overall tension and the focus on two young men and their relationship, in addition to the matter of their survival within a gangster world remind me of Banana Fish but I must caveat that I intensely dislike BF for failing to do all the things pet did perfectly - from a genuine relationship and real characters other than the very main character, tragedy as a harrowing storytelling medium rather than the sake of having it there (and without respite,) drama that is not cheesy despite being over-the-top in places (with good reason) and imagery that served the narrative which closed the loop, without leaving any threads untouched.

As the pull of the show is the emotional co-dependency between the male cast for me, I have a hard time narrowing down my actual recommendations for pet. There are so many of them, and they are not necessarily similar to the show in other respects. I will name a few of my favorites here if you are up for gay love/obsession as a theme in tense, non-romantic anime, with characters who aren’t quite in touch with their emotions: Shigurui, Saraiya Goyou, Kenpuu Denki Berserk, and 91 Days might do the trick. Let me know your thoughts!

#anime #anime rec #seasonal anime #series review #anime review #pet #pet_anime

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