Pet Shop of Horrors pseudo-review-thing
Nov. 22nd, 2007 05:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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cheloya and ficcentricity: I gave in on whatever I was supposed to have been doing at the time and read through those Pet Shop of Horrors scans you linked me to. Which is to say, all of them in one giant binge-read. So here's some blather on what I took away from the series at the end of it all.
To start off with: Haha, I knew I recognised that title, I *have* seen some of the series before! More specifically, I saw one episode of the OAVs at our local anime club years and years ago - shown minus subtitles as dinner-break background entertainment, back when I was in my mid teens somewhere. It was the episode with all the rabbits - yeah that one. Fortunately, I wasn't really paying enough attention at the time to be too badly traumatised by the sight of a litter of babies eating their way our of a little girl's stomach and calling 'mummy' when they emerged, but I have no particular desire to ever see that scene animated ever again.
So, moving on to more general impressions, I spent the first couple of volumes going, "wait, this isn't just like Vampire Princess Miyu? OMG THANK YOU WORLD!" ....okay, so that one is going to need a little clarifying, right? Vampire Princess Miyu was another of those series our old anime club introduced me to. The premise involves the title character hunting down demonic creatures called Shinma every episode - just generally not before each Shinma has found some poor, flawed human to manipulate into causing their own ruin. At the end of the day, Miyu's there to protect people, but no-one who gets personally involved with a Shinma ever comes out on top. The actual plot episodes had some interesting content, but the filler became repetitive and so depressing that by the end of the series I found it very hard to care much about it anymore.
At the outset, Pet Shop of Horrors looked like it was going to be a similar format - every chapter, some human gets given a pet which has been chosen specifically to expose their own flaws and punish them for their bad behaviour (often as not involving their death). So I was incredibly relieved when chapters came up when D's customers actually *did* learn from their mistakes and redeem themselves, or simply weren't horrible to begin with - or chapters with no customer at all. Better still, we had Leon hanging around, introducing a much needed regular outsider perspective on just what D does for a living. That added *so much more* variety and life to the stories chapter to chapter that it came as a fantastic relief.
And then, about mid way through, I started getting kinda bored anyway. The point had been hit where it was starting to feel like nothing was advancing - we were just stuck in episodic storylines which (even given their improvement over most of the Miyu episodes) didn't really seem to go anywhere. Leon had clearly known that there was a very real aspect of the magic of D's shop since the first volume, but he still seemed determined to hang on to his skepticism no matter *what* evidence he got to the contrary, and it was getting a little old. We'd had hints about D's past, but not very illuminating, and by volume seven or so, I was thinking we were well overdue for some plot.
And we got it - there were scenes in the last couple of volumes that I really loved, but after so many volumes of not much happening, a lot of the ending felt overly rushed. I'm seriously wondering whether there might have been pages missing from those scans during some of the final scenes, because I finished the book feeling like I had no idea what the deal was supposed to have been with anyone in D's family. Then I rememberedcheloya had posted about all that a while back and went to read through it. And while (even allowing for all the crazy and the added speculation) it cleared up a lot, I didn't get half of that information out of the manga itself. So I have to ask, was any of that stuff which wasn't clarified until the Shin PSOH series that followed? Or maybe there really were some crucial pages missing in the scans I got hold of. -_-
Speaking of those scans, they turned out to be low quality versions of the TokyoPop translations, done by someone who didn't want to damage the spines of their books and didn't really give a damn whether the speech bubbles near the centrefold were readable or not. >< Worse still, ye gods, I think I *recognise* that translator - the whole style is this horrible, overly-Americanised version where the characters are constantly spouting random things which it's painfully obvious would never have been put that way by the original Japanese author. I get only too well that often you have to translate for effect rather than literal accuracy if you want the result to sound remotely like English, but there comes a point where they're just so obviously making random crap up that they just happen think sounds good - screw accuracy. I've seen them do much worse, but it still makes me feel like I've gone the whole way through without getting any good idea what the characters' voices are supposed to sound like at all. Grr.
Initially, I did like how fast Leon went from trying to arrest D to showing up at his pet shop regularly for tea, cake and a chat. Thing is, several volumes further in, the situation still didn't seem to have advanced past that - only by that stage, D wasn't just putting up with Leon eating his food, he was also pretty much single-handedly taking care of Leon's disabled younger brother - and yet it's still Leon's stated goal to arrest D just as soon as he could find a charge that would stick to him. It's the kind of fundamental contraction that *can* make for interesting character dynamics when done right, but here, there just seemed to be some crucial spark missing that would have justified such blatant hypocrisy. Maybe it's my inner slasher making me want to see more to a relationship than was meant to be there, but the dynamic between Leon and D just never seemed to go anywhere beyond vague distrust and very limited understanding, right to the end of the series. Although it's quite possible the shoddy translation wasn't helping much there on that account. For which matter, the running gags about Leon's skirt chasing tendencies got old fast for me too, and I can hardly blame TokyoPop for that aspect.
And here we're right back to my problems with the ending again - it didn't really feel like anything important had been resolved. For most of the series, D is this mysterious, barely human character who likes animals more than humans, and at the end it's revealed... he's a member of this mysterious, inhuman race that doesn't like humans. Lots of new information, but nothing that really seems to matter very much. I didn't come out of it feeling like I understood his father or his grandfather's motivations at all, not to mention other assorted points of confusion. Like, D's grandfather ran the shop before D did, and he's connected to every important person in the city, and yet we're told D moves the shop to a different city every three years? Huh? Maybe it could fit somehow, but it's certainly not the impression I was getting for the rest of the series. And did I somehow miss all the build up to the revelation about the virus that could wipe out all humanity, or was it just that there *wasn't* any (beyond vague information that D's father was messing around with genetics)? And just *why would* D's grandfather want to disguise himself like that and hang around under his grandson's nose while pretending to be on the other side of the planet?
There were things I really liked - particularly in some of those last chapters. I loved how Leon never even seemed to notice that he was hearing his (supposedly) mute brother's thoughts in his head. I loved the scene where he charges into D's petshop and starts interrogating his animals for information in front of everyone as if talking to animals is nothing out of the ordinary. Loved both his and Vesca's confusion over which D was which too. A few more of those sorts of little suggestions that Leon had gotten used to D's world would have gone a long way. It just felt a bit once I'd finished like a lot of potential in the series had gone unrealised, that neither D or Leon had had any real lasting impact on the other, and that even D's reunion with his father and grandfather at the end wasn't really that important. And that seemed like a bit of a shame.
So, uh, am I missing anything here? Is there more you pick up on a second read through, or in the Shin Pet Shop of Horrors sequel which I haven't looked at yet? There were enough bits and pieces I liked to leave me curious, it just hasn't really made much of an impression on me so far.
cheloya and ficcentricity: I gave in on whatever I was supposed to have been doing at the time and read through those Pet Shop of Horrors scans you linked me to. Which is to say, all of them in one giant binge-read. So here's some blather on what I took away from the series at the end of it all.To start off with: Haha, I knew I recognised that title, I *have* seen some of the series before! More specifically, I saw one episode of the OAVs at our local anime club years and years ago - shown minus subtitles as dinner-break background entertainment, back when I was in my mid teens somewhere. It was the episode with all the rabbits - yeah that one. Fortunately, I wasn't really paying enough attention at the time to be too badly traumatised by the sight of a litter of babies eating their way our of a little girl's stomach and calling 'mummy' when they emerged, but I have no particular desire to ever see that scene animated ever again.
So, moving on to more general impressions, I spent the first couple of volumes going, "wait, this isn't just like Vampire Princess Miyu? OMG THANK YOU WORLD!" ....okay, so that one is going to need a little clarifying, right? Vampire Princess Miyu was another of those series our old anime club introduced me to. The premise involves the title character hunting down demonic creatures called Shinma every episode - just generally not before each Shinma has found some poor, flawed human to manipulate into causing their own ruin. At the end of the day, Miyu's there to protect people, but no-one who gets personally involved with a Shinma ever comes out on top. The actual plot episodes had some interesting content, but the filler became repetitive and so depressing that by the end of the series I found it very hard to care much about it anymore.
At the outset, Pet Shop of Horrors looked like it was going to be a similar format - every chapter, some human gets given a pet which has been chosen specifically to expose their own flaws and punish them for their bad behaviour (often as not involving their death). So I was incredibly relieved when chapters came up when D's customers actually *did* learn from their mistakes and redeem themselves, or simply weren't horrible to begin with - or chapters with no customer at all. Better still, we had Leon hanging around, introducing a much needed regular outsider perspective on just what D does for a living. That added *so much more* variety and life to the stories chapter to chapter that it came as a fantastic relief.
And then, about mid way through, I started getting kinda bored anyway. The point had been hit where it was starting to feel like nothing was advancing - we were just stuck in episodic storylines which (even given their improvement over most of the Miyu episodes) didn't really seem to go anywhere. Leon had clearly known that there was a very real aspect of the magic of D's shop since the first volume, but he still seemed determined to hang on to his skepticism no matter *what* evidence he got to the contrary, and it was getting a little old. We'd had hints about D's past, but not very illuminating, and by volume seven or so, I was thinking we were well overdue for some plot.
And we got it - there were scenes in the last couple of volumes that I really loved, but after so many volumes of not much happening, a lot of the ending felt overly rushed. I'm seriously wondering whether there might have been pages missing from those scans during some of the final scenes, because I finished the book feeling like I had no idea what the deal was supposed to have been with anyone in D's family. Then I remembered
cheloya had posted about all that a while back and went to read through it. And while (even allowing for all the crazy and the added speculation) it cleared up a lot, I didn't get half of that information out of the manga itself. So I have to ask, was any of that stuff which wasn't clarified until the Shin PSOH series that followed? Or maybe there really were some crucial pages missing in the scans I got hold of. -_-Speaking of those scans, they turned out to be low quality versions of the TokyoPop translations, done by someone who didn't want to damage the spines of their books and didn't really give a damn whether the speech bubbles near the centrefold were readable or not. >< Worse still, ye gods, I think I *recognise* that translator - the whole style is this horrible, overly-Americanised version where the characters are constantly spouting random things which it's painfully obvious would never have been put that way by the original Japanese author. I get only too well that often you have to translate for effect rather than literal accuracy if you want the result to sound remotely like English, but there comes a point where they're just so obviously making random crap up that they just happen think sounds good - screw accuracy. I've seen them do much worse, but it still makes me feel like I've gone the whole way through without getting any good idea what the characters' voices are supposed to sound like at all. Grr.
Initially, I did like how fast Leon went from trying to arrest D to showing up at his pet shop regularly for tea, cake and a chat. Thing is, several volumes further in, the situation still didn't seem to have advanced past that - only by that stage, D wasn't just putting up with Leon eating his food, he was also pretty much single-handedly taking care of Leon's disabled younger brother - and yet it's still Leon's stated goal to arrest D just as soon as he could find a charge that would stick to him. It's the kind of fundamental contraction that *can* make for interesting character dynamics when done right, but here, there just seemed to be some crucial spark missing that would have justified such blatant hypocrisy. Maybe it's my inner slasher making me want to see more to a relationship than was meant to be there, but the dynamic between Leon and D just never seemed to go anywhere beyond vague distrust and very limited understanding, right to the end of the series. Although it's quite possible the shoddy translation wasn't helping much there on that account. For which matter, the running gags about Leon's skirt chasing tendencies got old fast for me too, and I can hardly blame TokyoPop for that aspect.
And here we're right back to my problems with the ending again - it didn't really feel like anything important had been resolved. For most of the series, D is this mysterious, barely human character who likes animals more than humans, and at the end it's revealed... he's a member of this mysterious, inhuman race that doesn't like humans. Lots of new information, but nothing that really seems to matter very much. I didn't come out of it feeling like I understood his father or his grandfather's motivations at all, not to mention other assorted points of confusion. Like, D's grandfather ran the shop before D did, and he's connected to every important person in the city, and yet we're told D moves the shop to a different city every three years? Huh? Maybe it could fit somehow, but it's certainly not the impression I was getting for the rest of the series. And did I somehow miss all the build up to the revelation about the virus that could wipe out all humanity, or was it just that there *wasn't* any (beyond vague information that D's father was messing around with genetics)? And just *why would* D's grandfather want to disguise himself like that and hang around under his grandson's nose while pretending to be on the other side of the planet?
There were things I really liked - particularly in some of those last chapters. I loved how Leon never even seemed to notice that he was hearing his (supposedly) mute brother's thoughts in his head. I loved the scene where he charges into D's petshop and starts interrogating his animals for information in front of everyone as if talking to animals is nothing out of the ordinary. Loved both his and Vesca's confusion over which D was which too. A few more of those sorts of little suggestions that Leon had gotten used to D's world would have gone a long way. It just felt a bit once I'd finished like a lot of potential in the series had gone unrealised, that neither D or Leon had had any real lasting impact on the other, and that even D's reunion with his father and grandfather at the end wasn't really that important. And that seemed like a bit of a shame.
So, uh, am I missing anything here? Is there more you pick up on a second read through, or in the Shin Pet Shop of Horrors sequel which I haven't looked at yet? There were enough bits and pieces I liked to leave me curious, it just hasn't really made much of an impression on me so far.
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no subject
Date: 2007-11-22 01:02 pm (UTC)The OAV was beautifully and eerily done, but what I liked about the manga was the D/Leon interaction (and uh, because I'm an inner slasher myself). I'm not really a HUGE fan, but the fandom is amazing. The slash fics influenced my love for Pet Shop of Horrors, actually.
My favourite authors here (http://nym.amplexus.org") and here (http://telanu.thirteenblackbirds.net/).
no subject
Date: 2007-11-22 02:03 pm (UTC)Pretty much like I said above, I *did* like the D/Leon interaction initially - but then the series dragged on and it never really seemed to *go* anywhere concrete, even right up until the end, and I got left just sort of wondering what the point of it all was. >.> And I'm afraid that's likely to sort of mess with my ability to enjoy fic for the series although that does sometimes mean I just need to find fic good enough...
Hrm, so is it one of those cases where the series is okay, but it's in the fanfic that really makes the most of it?
no subject
Date: 2007-11-22 04:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-23 04:22 am (UTC)And to answer your confusion re. D's family...... look, no, you probably weren't missing pages. A LOT of the stuff I 'know' is merely distilled speculation. A LOT of distilled speculation, and discussion, and mulling over. I bought and read the whole series inside a fortnight, and then spent the next six months reading it two or three times a week, thinking about it constantly, so. XD;
That said, it could have been done a lot better - particularly the relationship aspect - and hell YES the translation was CRAP. Also, there wasn't any buildup to the virus that could wipe out the world. I have theories about that, but, hell, I can't pretend the series didn't leave me with a lot of questions, and I'm hoping to have them answered in Shin Petshop but it's not looking likely at the moment.
There's so much to talk about in this post and I just don't have time. XD ARGH. Um, um. I think there is DEFINITELY more stuff you pick up on the second read-through - sometimes the animal stories that accompany the D/Leon aspects of a chapter are a little bit obscure. I couldn't believe how long it took me to understand Papa D, because now I read through and go, "Jesus, how did I MISS THAT," but I certainly didn't get it on my first readthrough. Hell, I'm pretty sure I hated Papa D for the first few months I had that manga.
But, all that said, it's not for everyone. XD And admittedly, I am off with the minor characters a lot. <3 <3 <3 I want to AIM you about it some time, though, in our imaginary free time.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-23 05:05 am (UTC)it was a good way of procrastinating over what I was supposed to be doingit did come recommended very enthusiastically. And this way I could read that NaNo story that kept taunting me from my f-list Which I may in fact have just inhaled every chapter of at high speed. HAVE I MENTIONED HOW YOUR WRITING IS MADE OF AWESOME?So now I just need to make you go through all those GG links I sent your way! ...er, once some of that free time stuff actually starts surfacing again, anyhow. >.>A LOT of the stuff I 'know' is merely distilled speculation.
In that case, I must commend you, because your speculation made an awful lot of sense, and filled in a lot of giant, glaring holes that had left me doing the overhead question mark. But we should definitely talk about it over chat sometime!
I should have free time again by... mid December? How about you? ;_;Anyway, going for one of my bigger remaining questions, what is the Shin PSOH series actually like so far? I'd heard it was supposed to be set after D moved his shop to Tokyo, but that's about all I know - and I presume there must be something more to it than that.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-25 04:35 am (UTC)Shin Petshop is basically exactly the same as PSOH, in a new city (Tokyo), with a new Leon-figure, Lao Wu Fei, who appears to be the owner/owner's son of the Neo China Town building that D's shop is now in. Obviously I cannot read Japanese, but it's more of the episodic-style stuff, with side-stories that so far pertain to Sofu and Papa D, and have, like, two panels of Leon slowly but surely catching up with D.
We're up to volume four so far, and Leon isn't actually closing in, but given the twenty year gap we're shown at the end of PSOH (and god, Chris's drawing makes me cry every goddamn time, because I am a pansy), and given that Leon was officially MIA at that point, I'm sort of hoping for Leon to actually come in again.
And maybe board the goddamn ship this time. *glares at D*
no subject
Date: 2007-11-25 05:39 am (UTC)Flashback sidestories and a very real chance of Leon catching up with him, huh? That does sound promising, but I don't know how far I'd get without translations. I found scanslations for the first couple of volumes (http://nightexile.cjb.net/), but it looks like they're only available via IRC, which is always a pain to work with. >< Anyway, I shall have to pester you for details at some point - still curious about just where canon and fanon meet in this series.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-25 01:27 pm (UTC)Hypothetically, those will be going up at Happenstance when I get my act together. Hoping to do it all before I go back to uni, though.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-25 02:02 pm (UTC)BTW, do you know if there's anywhere I can get the second volume that is scanslated online, other than IRC?
no subject
Date: 2007-11-26 01:54 am (UTC)*nodnod* Yeah, I have friends with more experience, but... heh, that's what I meant about the dedicated. |D; I'm going to be doing some actual Japanese study next year, too. And I'm definitely going to have warnings up saying that these may not be 100% accurate. And I'm definitely going to update scans if I discover my translation went a little pear-shaped with any new knowledge. :3 It'll be fun, and better than nothing, I think.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-24 10:46 pm (UTC)Petshop of Horrors always seemed really interesting. I need to look for some scans.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-25 07:32 am (UTC)The scans I was reading from came from here (http://www.megaupload.com/?f=K0XGUAMA). Not the best quality, as I mentioned above, but they cover all of the original series.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-06 03:25 pm (UTC)(I'm extremely fussy when it comes to LQ scans, as well. That and poor translation can put me off altogether.) I know the ones I managed to get before were okay, so I'll poke around for you some more, if you'd like.
Like you, I was introduced to the series via the OAV, though I liked the manga better--it was shown by a local tv channel late at night, and I cannot even tell you how creeped out I was. The OAV really emphasized the scarier aspect of the series.
Oh, I see! I thought the D/Leon dynamic was very cute, though, so I was more inclined to put up with it, though I do see your point on how it gets a little static, after a while. Though I think that the series in itself has a lot of potential.
Finally, recs! Dangerous, by Telanu, and Distant, by JMTorres. The fandom did a huge part in giving me a more satisfying closure, IMO.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-07 12:06 am (UTC)Tell me about it. :/ Is there anything better out there though? I got the impression only the first volume ever got scanslated, and for everything else we only had the TokyoPop version (badly scanned or otherwise).
I wouldn't say I was introduced to the OAV - it was more like we were both just randomly at the same party a few years back and didn't talk to each other, but he was creepy enough to stick in my memory. Some scenes are probably better off *not* animated.
Oh, I see! I thought the D/Leon dynamic was very cute, though, so I was more inclined to put up with it, though I do see your point on how it gets a little static, after a while. Though I think that the series in itself has a lot of potential.
They may well have been cuter without the lousy TokyoPop translations, there were a few points where I found Leon genuinely obnoxious. It probably doesn't help that I don't have much tolerance for episodic storylines in manga, which made up most of PSOH. The series did have potential - it just seemed to leave it a bit late to do much with it. That said, I am quite willing to give the sequel series a chance if I can get hold of it, and I loved