History Manga / PetShopOfHorrors

* CostumePorn: Pretty much every single [[PettingZooPeople anthropomorphized animal]] has a jaw-droppingly gorgeous outfit, sometimes based on real-world folk costumes, or designs by Erte, or pure fancy. Rich folds of embroidered cloth, ropes of pearls, elaborate hair or headdresses... it's a cosplayer's dream come true.

* ContemplateOurNavels: Don't get D started, whatever you do. You'll be there for years.

* CoolPet: D has Q, and arguably every single pet in the series is a CoolPet of some sort.

* CostumePorn: Pretty much every single anthropomorphized animal has a jaw-droppingly gorgeous outfit, sometimes based on real-world folk costumes, or designs by Erte, or pure fancy. Rich folds of embroidered cloth, ropes of pearls, elaborate hair or headdresses... it's a cosplayer's dream come true.

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: The idea and the title almost sounds a little like Film/LittleShopOfHorrors. Both works take a cynical look at human nature, and revel in characters being karmically punished by peculiar creatures.
* DotingParent: Viciously deconstructed in "Daughter". [[spoiler:The parents lacked any will to discipline their daughter Alice and could never say no to her, not even when she became a delinquent and a drug addict. This ultimately led to Alice's death by overdose when her mother caved in and gave her more drugs instead of helping her rehabilitate... and once they take home a pet from D's shop, they prove that they still haven't learned their lesson.]]

* KillerRabbit: With actual flesh-eating bunnies.

* NoEnding: The second manga leaves ''three'' plot threads hanging, namely [[spoiler:Leon's pursuit, Chris's framed drawing, and Wu-Fei's accidentally rejected kirin.]] The first two are from the first manga, making it more frustrating that Akino has, once again, ended up without a magazine to publish in, having to hurry to the end of the manga... The third was just a further kick on the face to the resident ChewToy.

* MayaIncaTec: A Peruvian terrorist group called the Hand of Quetzalcoatl.

** There's also Monica, a young girl who's already been reincarnated by a phoenix four times because the phoenix could not grant her what she truly wants, which is Count D's heart. D is genuinely upset that he can't return Monica's feelings, because unless he can she's doomed to keep reincarnating in a vain effort to get his love. [[spoiler: Monica dies at the end of the story, which fills D with grief and regret. However, the phoenix informs him that he broke the cycle because this time Monica ''did'' get his heart. This makes D smile.]]

* WhatIsThisThingYouCallLove: D. Although it's never explicitly stated whether he genuinely doesn't understand it, or whether he doesn't want to ''admit'' he understands it. Evidence points to the latter.

When Leon's traumatized and mute little brother Chris arrives to stay with his sibling, D becomes the boy's babysitter. Along with the animals of the pet shop, Leon and D become the boy's new family, and they gradually open up to each other. The cast additionally consists of Jill (Leon's detective partner), Tetsu (a teenaged Tao Tieh goat-demon with a crush on D), Pon-chan (a little raccoon girl), Hon Long (a three-headed dragon girl) and Q-chan (D's bat familiar). However, D's affection for Leon and Chris doesn't stop the pet shop's body count from increasing -- and when D's EvilutionaryBiologist father turns up after many years, Leon finds himself drawn into a desperate attempt to save all of humanity.

** [[spoiler:The phoenix was a gift to that human in her earlier lifetime, when she was a princess in a foreign country. D's grandfather Count D gave it to her as a wedding present, to grant her a wish. All the girl wished for though was the heart of D's grandfather. Since the phoenix couldn't grant that wish, she was stuck reincarnating and dying until her wish was granted. Still doesn't excuse it for not telling D about the early death clause though.]]

** All of the dogs in the dog chapters, really. Dreizhen, the doberman-turned-bodyguard, takes a bullet to save his mistress [[spoiler:from her evil uncle Edward.]] Anastasia, the borzoi in SPSOH, is at first so loyal to her servant handler rather than her wealthy owner that this threatens to get her in trouble. At the end of that story, Anastasia even complies with the handler's wish [[spoiler:to save his girlfriend at the cost of his own life... then leaps off the cliff after him.]]

* PetTheDog: Although D dislikes humanity as a whole, he ''does'' have a soft spot for genuinely kindhearted people, especially if they like and are kind to animals. Chris is the biggest example in the series, to the point where D practically becomes a SubstituteParent.

* DotingParent: Viscously deconstructed in "Daughter". [[spoiler:The parents lacked any will to discipline their daughter Alice and could never say no to her, not even when she became a delinquent and a drug addict. This ultimately led to Alice's death by overdose when her mother caved in and gave her more drugs instead of helping her rehabilitate... and once they take home a pet from D's shop, they prove that they still haven't learned their lesson.]]

** The translator probably didn't realize that like Leon, Chris and Jill, agent Howell is also named after a ''ResidentEvil'' character, Wesker. He ended up romanizing his name as "Vesca".

{{Tokyopop}}'s translation of the first few volumes [[CutAndPasteTranslation added swears, mistranslated many names and sound effects, included many typographical errors, and generally altered the source material]]. After four volumes, a new translator was hired, who ''immediately'' asked the manga's fan translation community on Yahoo Groups for help. As a result, the remaining six volumes of the series have a more accurate translation, although they, too, are riddled with flaws and egregious mistranslations. Much of the manga's text is also full of untranslatable jokes: D's speech in Japanese often states one thing in hiragana (ex. "innocent bystanders"), but something ''quite'' different in kanji (ex. "mere mortals"). Finding an annotated fan translation is still highly recommended to fully enjoy the series.

*** This "taming" reference is lost for anybody with the TokyoPop version of the manga; it's simply ''not there''.

* WeAllLiveInAmerica: The setting is in Chinatown of Los Angeles, but the original manga and anime has people speaking Japanese. In one case, Leon is able to get beer from a vending machine, which is ''does not'' not exist in America.

* WhatNowEnding

* ActuallyThatsMyAssistant: Despite serving as the caretaker of Count D's Petshop D's not the owner Count D. The ''actual'' Count D is D's grandfather.

* AntiHero: Count D and his grandson D

* AgentPeacock: D
* AgentScully: In spite of the steadily increasing volume of evidence, Leon simply refuses to believe that there are supernatural forces at work, instead trying to come up with "realistic" explanations

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: When one of Leon's friends goes rogue and shoots himself during a criminal raid, Leon says he wishes he had died instead. Count D via a magical butterfly shows Leon how empty his life would be with that scenario, since Chris wouldn't have been born, the pet shop wouldn't be in its usual spot, and Leon would have nothing to look forward to except a bullet in his head. Leon wakes up from the "dream" shaken but able to handle his guilt.

* BittersweetEnding: The first series ends with [[spoiler:Leon looking for D all around the world after the latter vanishes, but Chris having become a successful FBI agent. Leon also saved humanity from a deadly plague and survived his serious injuries. He then talks with D's heir, a younger "clone," and offers him cake to go with tea.]]

* BlueAndOrangeMorality: D demonstrates this due to his preference for animals over humans, not batting an eye when humans die but caring when the animals do. In the second volume a queen comes to him and asks him to destroy a "bastard" that we are led to believe is a human fetus conceived in a runaway princess's womb, and says it's because of the promise his grandfather made. D does the deed with disgust, with Leon assuming that he murdered the ''human'' princess. What he actually did was [[spoiler: steal the last two eggs of an endangered bird species, destroy the sperm sample, and let it enter extinction.]]

** EvenTheGuysWantHim: Direct result of the above; happens to his father too back when he was a university student, in a [[HilarityEnsues hilariously obvious way]]; and then grandpa and that wedding proposal...

* [[FairytaleMotifs Fairy Tale Motif]]: Eva's storyline parallels to the Creator/HansChristianAndersen's TearJerker FairyTale, "Literature/TheLittleMermaid".

* FriendlyLocalChinatown: Averted.
* GenerationXerox: D's whole family, with some pretty grim implications. All of them are mistaken for the ''real'' Count D(D's grandfather) [[spoiler: Chris eventually falls into this trope too.]]

* HumanityOnTrial: The pet shop clients [[spoiler:And, friendship with Leon notwithstanding, D's the prosecution...]]

* InterspeciesRomance: Robin Hendrix and Medusa to the point where even D is surprised when [[spoiler: Medusa takes her own life after Robin's suicide]].

** [[spoiler:The phoenix was a gift to that human in her earlier lifetimes, when she was a princess in a foreign country. D's grandfather Count D gave it to her as a wedding present, to grant her a wish. All the girl wished for though was the heart of D's grandfather. Since the phoenix couldn't grant that wish, she was stuck reincarnating and dying until her wish was granted. Still doesn't excuse it for not telling D about the early death clause though.]]

* SecretTestOfCharacter: Kelly Vincent, [[spoiler: in a rare subversion of the prevalent {{Downer Ending}}s in the series, passes with flying colors when he asks the Kirin to ensure the happiness of his best friend's wife over ambition. His reward? He wins the girl AND gets to be President of the United States.]]

** Really, you could argue that D is putting most of his customers through such Tests. Selling their "pets" is a chance for them to come to terms with their grief, or their guilt, to have a new beginning of some kind or another. It just so happens that most of his characters fail.

* UncannyFamilyResemblance: Played for both comedy and drama with D's sister in "Donor" - she looks so much like him that Leon mistakes her for D at first. She turns out to be [[spoiler: a modified ape, created by D's father as a heart donor for D, and raised to believe that she was a genuine person]].

* WeAllLiveInAmerica: The setting is in Chinatown of Los Angeles, but the original manga and anime has people speaking Japanese. In one case, Leon is able to get beer from a vending machine, which is ''not'' an American invention.

* ChristmasInJapan: Alluded to in chapter 5, ''Dragon'' where D (correctly) guesses that Leon is loitering in the petshop on Christmas Eve because he has no girlfriend to spend Christmas with.

* LaserGuidedKarma: One orphan, a rich heiress, has gone blind from the trauma of losing her parents [[spoiler:especially on realizing she had seen her uncle Edward murdering them]]. D offers her a seeing eye dog named Dreizhen, who protects her when the killer returns and takes a bullet. She in the meantime treats Dreizhen kindly and is pleased when her friends say he is cute, as he blushes. She regains her sight in time to see a normal, injured German shepherd, and they end up becoming friends for life.

* DotingParent: The parents in "Daughter" doted a little too much. [[spoiler:They lacked any will to discipline their daughter Alice and could never say no to her, not even when she became a delinquent and a drug addict. This ultimately led to Alice's death by overdose when her mother caved in and gave her more drugs instead of helping her rehabilitate... and once they take home a pet from D's shop, they prove that they still haven't learned their lesson.]]

* DotingParent: The parents in "Daughter" doted a little too much. [[spoiler:They lacked any will to discipline their daughter Alice and could never say no to her, even once she became addicted to drugs. This ultimately led to Alice's death by overdose when her mother caved in and gave her more drugs instead of helping her rehabilitate... and once they take home a pet from D's shop, they prove that they still haven't learned their lesson.]]

* ReplacementGoldfish: "Daughter", the first animated story, involves a rich family taking a very rare species of rabbit home that looks just like their lost daughter. Things go well, but then they break one of the rules...

** All of the dogs in the dog chapters, really. Dreizhen, the doberman-turned-bodyguard, takes a bullet to save his mistress [[spoiler:from her evil cousin Edward.]] Anastasia, the borzoi in SPSOH, is at first so loyal to her servant handler rather than her wealthy owner that this threatens to get her in trouble. At the end of that story, Anastasia even complies with the handler's wish [[spoiler:to save his girlfriend at the cost of his own life... then leaps off the cliff after him.]]

* CostumePorn: Pretty much every single anthropomorphized animal has a jaw-droppingly gorgeous outfit, sometimes based on real-world folk costumes, sometimes made of pure fancy. Rich folds of embroidered cloth, ropes of pearls, elaborate hair or headdresses... it's a cosplayer's dream come true.

* DotingParent: The parents in "Daughter" believed they were this. [[spoiler:The truth was that they lacked any restraint to discipline their daughter. They never chastised her for anything she did wrong, especially when she was hooked on drugs. It was even worse when the mother gave Alice more drugs rather than help her rehabilitate.]]

* ButForMeItWasTuesday: Subverted; Leon when a woman kidnaps D and Chris lies to his superior that he doesn't remember shooting her husband in self-defense, but he has a flashback to her grief.

* AdultFear: D's pets seem to bring this out in more than a few stories:
** In "Daughter" two parents, the Langfords are mourning the loss of their child Alice to [[spoiler: drug addiction that Mrs. Langford enabled]]. When D offers them a ReplacementGoldfish claiming it's a rabbit, Mrs. Langford sobs and insists that it's Alice brought back to them. In the anime this is taken further, where they thank D for bringing Alice back to life.
** In another story, a girl sees her family fighting all the time, only settling down when getting a pet that pleases all of them. This makes her upset, and she keeps begging for them to stop arguing. It turns out that [[spoiler: the "girl" is a ghost dog, and her original family left her and drove off a cliff]]. In the fire that ensues, D has to remind the family that at least they are all alive and have each other, though [[spoiler: he [[BlatantLies couldn't save]] their pet.]]
** Chris's situation. He blames himself for his mother's death and feels that his sisters do the same, which is why Leon takes him in, despite not having a child-friendly apartment until D cleans it. Chris also can't talk, although thanks to D he can communicate telepathically with Leon and with the animals in the shop. ThereAreNoTherapists, though there is magic.
** In one manga chapter a woman kidnaps Chris and Count D, meaning to kill them in revenge for Leon killing her criminal husband in self-defense. Leon lies to the officer that [[ButForMeItWasTuesday he doesn't remember that day]], but he confronts the woman and says that if she wants to kill him, then go ahead, but leave Chris and D out of it. D is only able to stop her by revealing [[spoiler: that she's pregnant and would be a criminal mother as well]].

''Pet Shop of Horrors'' is the story of a peculiar shop in Chinatown, and the clients that visit it. The store's proprietor is an effeminate and sinister man only known as "Count D". He sells both normal animals and mythical creatures to people who visit his DysfunctionJunction. These animals and creatures can appear human to clients who are searching for something in life -- a pet to help them get over the loss of a child, for example, or to cope with unrequited love. Count D uses his pets to teach their human caretaker a lesson, making them sign a contract stating they'll take good care of their new friends. Almost inevitably, they don't. The outcome is rarely pleasant, although some stories (especially those involving pets given to children) do have very heartwarming endings.

''Pet Shop of Horrors'' is a {{Horror}}/[[SpeculativeFiction Fantasy]] manga by Matsuri Akino, which was later developed into a four episode anime. Its demographic is {{josei}}. Despite the title, the manga rarely focuses on horror, instead slowly building up the relationships between its characters in a magical setting. It has the occasional gore scene, though, and whole lot of terrifying monsters. Despite having some EarlyInstallmentWeirdness, the manga is generally considered to be much deeper than the anime, which mainly focused on the horror aspects.

''Pet Shop of Horrors'' is the story of a peculiar shop in Chinatown, and the clients that visit it. The store's proprietor is an effeminate and sinister man only known as "Count D". He sells normal animals and mythical creatures to people who visit his DysfunctionJunction, and the animals and creatures can appear human to clients who are searching for something in life -- a pet to help them get over the loss of a child, or to cope with unrequited love. Count D uses his pets to teach their human caretaker a lesson, making them sign a contract stating they'll take good care of their new friends. Almost inevitably, they don't. The outcome is rarely pleasant, although some stories (especially those involving pets given to children) do have very heartwarming endings.

When Leon's traumatized and mute little brother Chris arrives to stay with his sibling, D becomes the boy's babysitter. Along with the animals of the pet shop, Leon and D become the boy's new family, and they gradually open up to each other. The cast additionally consists of Jill (Leon's detective partner), Tetsu (a teenaged Tao Tieh goat-demon with a crush on D), Pon-chan (a little raccoon girl), Hon Long (a three-headed dragon girl), and Q-chan (D's familiar, who is ''much'' more than he seems to be). However, D's affection for Leon and Chris doesn't stop the pet shop's body count from increasing -- and when D's EvilutionaryBiologist father turns up after many years, Leon finds himself drawn into a desperate attempt to save all of humanity.

{{Tokyopop}}'s translation of the first few volumes was widely disliked by the fans. It [[CutAndPasteTranslation added swears, mistranslated many names and sound effects, included many typographical errors, and generally seemed disrespectful towards the source material]]. After four volumes, a new translator was hired, who ''immediately'' asked the manga's fan translation community on Yahoo Groups for help. As a result, the remaining six volumes of the series have a more accurate translation, although they, too, are riddled with flaws and egregious mistranslations. Sadly, however, much of the manga's text is full of untranslatable jokes: D's speech in Japanese often states one thing in hiragana (ex. "innocent bystanders"), but something ''quite'' different in kanji (ex. "mere mortals"). Finding an annotated fan translation is still highly recommended to fully enjoy the series.

The manga currently has a sequel in the works, ''Shin Pet Shop of Horrors'' (New PSOH, or PSOH:Tokyo, in English), with the action moved over to Shinjuku's Red Light District in Tokyo.

Not to be confused with Theatre/LittleShopOfHorrors. Nor Hasbro's ''Franchise/LittlestPetShop'' toys. Nor the ''Music/PetShopBoys''. Nor ''WesternAnimation/DrZitbagsTransylvaniaPetShop''. Though Google will kindly do it for you anyways.

* AnimeChineseGirl: The Kirin chooses this form. It's approriate, considering the Kirin is a Chinese mythological creature.

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: The idea and the title almost sounds a little like Film/LittleShopOfHorrors.

* BlueAndOrangeMorality: D demonstrates this due to his preference for animals over humans. In the second volume a queen comes to him and asks him to destroy a "bastard" that we are led to believe is a human fetus conceived in a runaway princess's womb, and says it's because of the promise his grandfather made. D does the deed with disgust, with Leon assuming that he murdered the ''human'' princess. What he actually did was [[spoiler: steal the last two eggs of an endangered bird species, destroy the sperm sample, and let it enter extinction.]]

* SanitySlippage: It's safe to assume that Jason was slowly losing it when he was spending time with his mermaid.

* WeAllLiveInAmerica: The setting is in Chinatown of Los Angeles, but the original manga and anime has people speaking Japanese.

* AttemptedRape: [[spoiler:D is saved by his pets]].
** [[spoiler:Xiao Fua fights back against her Boss/attacker. She doesn't get raped, but she dies]].

* GayBravado: D's behaviour can easily be interpreted this way, considering how all of his flirting is intended as mind games and manipulation -- and his heartfelt confession in book 9 that he [[spoiler: is incapable of understanding love]].

* WillTheyOrWontThey: D and Leon. [[spoiler: They won't.]]