REVIEW: DVD Release: Pet Shop Of Horrors

Film: Pet Shop Of Horrors
Release date: 2nd August 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 100 mins
Director: Toshio Hirata
Starring: Toshihiko Seki, Masaya Onosaka, Satsuki Yukino
Genre: Anime
Studio: MVM
Format: DVD
Country: Japan

Based on Mari Akino’s popular Manga of the same name, Mad House’s 1999 OVA is a series of broadly creepy, occasionally gory fables set in a pet shop like no other.

In Los Angeles’ Chinatown, there is a ‘Pet Shop’ run by the mysterious Count D - but this androgynous, possibly malevolent individual is positively mundane next to the creatures on sale in his establishment. Across loosely connected episodes, Count D is visited by customers, each with a unique problem that has driven them to him…


Low on narrative, but high on surreal creepiness, and chock full of genuinely arresting images, Pet Shop Of Horrors is a sporadically effective series of horror shorts that should certainly delight anyone who likes their spooks.

If the stories themselves carry little in the way of surprise - never straying too far from a basic cautionary tone relating to big themes such as grief, guilt, vanity and power - the source material’s bag of tricks can always be relied upon to etch into the viewer’s mind the odd creepy tableaux, such as a house-full of newborn toddlers with red eyes morphing into hungry, cannibalistic bunnies; or a mermaid cradling a severed human head, looking serene with plaintive music on the soundtrack.

Such visual ‘oddness’ may be considered ‘typical’ of Japanese anime, but there is still an effective surprise factor for western audiences, and to glory in such an off-the-wall visual imagination, presented in such a cavalier fashion, remains one of the purest delights of contemporary movie or television-watching. Indeed, the visuals work much better than some of the narrative gymnastics the storytellers attempt - episode 3’s ‘Medusa’ plot being somewhat garbled, for example, and episode 4’s late soul-swapping twist feeling an unnecessary complication aimed at enlivening an otherwise sluggish story. But it may be that by episode 4 the premise has begun to wear a little thin.

The standalone, episodic format - repeated forty times over in the original Manga, not counting the recent sequel series Pet Shop Of Horrors: Tokyo - does not translate especially well to a one-sitting, DVD experience. Watched together, the episodes become slightly repetitive, going through the same problem-purchase-warning-mistake-consequence narrative.

There is an attempt at a through-line in the shape of Count D’s enterprise coming under LAPD scrutiny. The investigation is led by a Detective named Leon - surely the hippest law enforcer in all of fiction - who aims to bring Count D to justice, only to become alternately horrified and fascinated by the truth that he uncovers.

Leon’s pseudo-friendship with Count D, developing as he begins to understand - if not especially like - the Pet Shop owner’s unique moral code, is one of the more interesting aspects of the set-up; however, with the episodes lasting twenty minutes apiece, and obviously aimed at not alienating newcomers, it is never really given time to blossom, and in the end only serves to underline the general lack of thematic weight to the stories. Indeed, scenes of the two characters sitting side-by-side while Count D fills in the expository holes in the plot, with Leon listening, at once enraptured and repulsed, would probably play very well as a live-action, independent film; within the wider imaginative parameters of animation, though, the conversations appear slow and ponderous. Pet Shop of Horrors aims for hit-and-run scares - any substance is merely a bonus.

This should not take away from the abundance of pleasures there is to be had in a viewing. The series is genuinely creepy, at times, and there is perhaps no other format to rival anime as a platform from which teams of breathtakingly talented artists and writers can deliver work of such originality. Though the episodes have clear, classical reference points - such as The Little Mermaid, Medusa or Narcissus - on which they can occasionally offer new takes, it is the ‘first-run’ elements, the things you haven’t seen a dozen times before (the house of murderous toddlers/bunnies, the Kirin/mystical princess-cum-genie) that truly stand out.


Not one of the classics of the genre, but well worth checking out for the abundance of increasingly mental visuals. In the end, Pet Shop Of Horrors is entertaining but not essential. One for the collectors, and those looking for something a little different. JN