- Anvilicious:
- The original manga drops Anvils about animals in general. In general, there were a number of heavy-handed Aesops about human/pet relationships and how people need to see their pets as companions to be loved rather than stupid animals to be exploited or abused, as any animal rescue show can attest.
- A particularly harsh one was dropped with the chapter "Dreizehn", which ends with a short passage in the back reflecting upon the fact that some people refuse to acknowledge Dobermans with natural ears because they don't look like real Dobermans.
- Shin Pet Shop of Horrors on motherhood, so much.
- D delivers a Character Filibuster to Alice's mother. He confronts her for breaking the rules and feeding sweets to the rabbit he sold them. When Alice's mother admits she didn't want to make Alice sad, he says, That's how you killed the real Alice, didn't you?. As Leon reacts with confusion, D reveals that he knows Alice was a Spoiled Brat who eventually became a drug addict because her parents would never refuse her anything. When she was hospitalized and sent to rehab, Alice's mother slipped her cocaine when her daughter begged. This would lead to her overdose. All her mother can do in the present now is say that she didn't want Alice to ever hate her, but D remains cool. It's quite a heavy-handed but necessary message that you don't enable your children, and you don't give them addictive drugs!
- The original series revolves around love of some form (romantic, family, friends, etc.).
- Designated Hero: For a given value of "hero". D's attempts at teaching people a lesson might be justified as Laser-Guided Karma... except he's also been known to get innocents killed as well, such as that fiasco with the rabbits. Leon has certainly called him out for this, saying that his pets are dangerous.
- Esoteric Happy Ending: Many stories in Shin Pet Shop of Horrors.
- Epileptic Trees: These have spawned like weeds all across the Fandom over both copious amounts of Fridge Logic and Mind Screw, and the thickest forest is around D's family.
- Fandom-Specific Plot: Due to the sad ending, 90% of the fanfics have Leon finding D after the latter casts him off his boat, and this time D lets him stay.
- Fan Nickname:
- Harsher in Hindsight:
- D is sympathetic when telling a grandmother that her father made a deal with his grandfather to be spared from the horrors of the Holocaust by erasing her memories and giving her a new identity, so foolproof that she was never arrested and sent to a camp, telling her the truth before she died. We find out in the finale that D's own ancestors were wiped out, leaving himself, his father and grandfather as the only survivors. D knew exactly how Elizabeth was feeling.
- One chapter features an aquarium enthusiast named Jody being murdered. The fish tell D that Mellow, a fish on a digital computer, witnessed the killing; Mellow is also the name of a woman who visited Jody, according to neighbors. Thanks to a hint from D, Leon realizes that Jody was trans and Mellow was the name for their alternate identity as well as their digital fish, hence the motive for the murder being a date who was a transphobe. Note that the killer is portrayed as completely in the wrong. These days, the rise of trans women being murdered is quite sobering with how Pet Shop of Horrors treats the topic seriously.
- Ho Yay: Leon and D. In fact, Leon's partner Jill teases him about getting dumped when D foregoes getting a special dessert mouse from Leon in favor of talking to a chef who made a childhood dessert.
- Macekre: Tokyopop's first four volumes especially, but the rest of the volumes also suffer from mistranslations and additions that weren't in the original.
- Nightmare Fuel: You know it.
- Replacement Scrappy: Some fans are less than enchanted with Leon's replacement in Pet Shop Of Horrors: Tokyo, Wu Fei. Many fans seem to agree that even if they like Wu Fei, they'd still rather have Leon back. Judging by what a Chew Toy he turned out, either Matsuri Akino disliked him too, or she was just pleasing the audience that missed Leon so.
- Sequelitis: Pet Shop Of Horrors Tokyo is seen by some as a lackluster followup.
- Spiritual Successor: Has one in the form of Dolls (1995). Both manga revolve around mysterious merchandise (pets in Pet Shop of Horrors, living, life-sized Plant Dolls in Dolls) that are sold by enigmatic shopkeepers who issue warnings on how the customer needs to treat their new family member. Both series are episodic and focus on a new customer each chapter (although PSOH also has an overarching plot). The stories in both manga range from horrific and depressing to heartwarming and uplifting. And finally, both manga are gorgeously drawn, featuring lots of Costume Porn.
- Values Dissonance:
- Pet Shop of Horrors runs into a lot of values dissonance, as many of its episodes have an odd, twisted kind of moral to them. They often come off as Count D being a bloodthirsty bastard rather than an Aesop-dispenser. Sometimes, it's unclear if this is dissonance between Western and Japanese values, Count D's and the other characters' values, or the readers' and the mangaka Akino's values. But in most cases, we're clearly supposed to find Count D's values unconventional and shocking.
- A good example is one episode where the man who has "vengeance" visited on him is implied throughout to have murdered his wife by pushing her over the railing of a cruise ship. Turns out she jumped, because she overheard him talking to the woman he was actually in love with. It seems that she was a huge bitch who always had to have whatever she wanted, and she decided she wanted him and railroaded him into it. She became "heartbroken" at their words and killed herself. The story still seems to treat him as if he's to blame, and his fate is treated as a Karmic Death.
- Things get really weird in Pet Shop of Horrors: Tokyo, which starts imposing the "rules" of the animal kingdom directly on to humans. Take the first story, "Domestic": A victim of domestic violence dies, and it's treated as a happy ending by Count D because she protected her son instead of using him as a human shield. The pet the woman gets is not to save her life, but to save her child and her status as a "good mother". The Count has no remorse for his actions letting her die instead of just saving both of them, because that is Nature's Way. It becomes increasingly difficult to tell if this is a strategy to dehumanize the Count after he becomes notably more compassionate in the first series (which would be in-universe Values Dissonance), or whether Akino herself supports this view. Men don't get off lightly either — see "Double-Booking".
- Also, our very first introduction to Count D in the manga chapter "Dream": Angelique's actions may have been seen as selfish and overly emotional to a Japanese audience, but to many Americans she seemed to be motivated by love for her pet, and her punishment came across as over-the-top cruel. Yes, she broke the rules. But even if she hadn't, her bird would still have been eviscerated, and Count D never even warned her.
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