Need to keep myself from having a terribly-timed nap, so here's another #PetShopOfHorrors reread thread.

This is the first point where Tokyopop and Seven Seas have different chapter orders. SS volume 5 started with all the chapters from TP volume 7, but now we're jumping back to the bonus story that was at the end of TP volume 6: Flowers and the Detective 3.

Opens with D getting an airmail package from Japan, sent by Grandpa D. (...Considering this opening splash page, I'm still convinced Akino hadn't decided on a certain little mascot critter's Secret Backstory yet.)

Erin Reads: Pet Shop of Horrors, Collector’s Edition (volume 5, chapters 27-28)

Reread thread for the middle of Pet Shop of Horrors volume 5 (Seven Seas edition), which is the back half of Volume 7 (TokyoPop edition).

This question comes up in the post, but I’ll front-load it here too: Somebody with the original Japanese manga on hand, can you poke through the “Duty” chapter and find out what the “Scorpio’s Children” group was originally called?

Originally liveblogged on Mastodon / Bluesky. Collating it all together here. Affiliate links for the whole Collector’s Edition, in case you want your own!

Also: the first chapter of a fluffy Little Sister D fic is up. With illustrations:

Chapter 27: Duty

Different orders for the opening pages in this one! Tokyopop: a 2-page sequence of our “customer” for the chapter (a teenage hustler/assassin) killing someone, then 2 pages of D and Chris at the shop hearing a commotion outside, then D finds the customer bleeding all over his front steps.

Seven Seas: 2-page sequence of D and Chris, cut to the kid doing the assassination, cut back to the kid on D’s front steps.

I’m guessing TP is right; it’s the police-procedural “dramatic opening scene from the crime/mystery, then cut to the main characters” setup that PSOH uses a lot. But it uses the “light flashback for exposition, then cut back to the present” technique too, and the SS sequence is still perfectly readable.

—

In the Chris-and-D sequence, the pets chat about the noise outside, but there’s also a “sirens” sound effect that SS translated, and TP missed. Don’t skimp on your sound effects, translators!

Part of the chatter:

TP:
(Unattached dialogue bubble): You didn’t sneak out again last night, did you, T-chan?
D (next panel): Well, it’s a little early, but I think it’s time to shut down for the day.

SS:
(Unattached): I suppose the detective will be busy all day.
D (next panel): In that case, perhaps I’ll close up shop for a while, even though it’s a bit early.
(Non-bubbled incidental text, not translated in TP): Why “in that case”?

The improv’d flourish of blaming T-chan is funny…buuut it deprives us of the very important information that D thinks “what even is the point of running my business when the Human I’m Definitely Not Overly Attached To isn’t going to visit?”

—

Voiceover from the police radio describing the murder. TP adds a lot of detail to this, none of which is super-interesting tbh. Target was George Caprione in TP, Giorgio Cabrione in SS.

About the suspect:
TP: Estimated age is between 15 and 18 years old.
SS: Age, roughly fourteen to sixteen.

Are the numbers actually ambiguous in Japanese? Or is TP choosing to age the kid up for some reason? (He is Too Young For This either way…and with Akino’s art style, he could be any of those ages)

—

Jill and Leon discuss the kid being part of a secret underground group that grooms children to be assassins: “Scorpio’s Children” in TP, “Cor Scorpio” in SS. (They all get prominent scorpion tattoos, which seems counterproductive to the whole “secret” thing.)

Cops are staking out Chinatown, and…

TP:
Leon: I’m gonna check on our friend the Count.
Jill: Right.

SS:
Leon: I’ve gotta check on someone.
Jill: Doting much?

…okay, Jill’s unimpressed face here is very cute for shipping reasons, but: Leon’s little brother also lives at the shop! And Jill knows it.

—

Assassin/customer is doing a hostage situation in the shop, asks if D and Chris are “the only people here.” Cut to human-form Pon-chan putting her hands over Chris’s mouth, scolding him not to argue.

Leon spots the blood on the steps, has the sense to do a phone call instead of banging on the door. D tells the customer it would be suspicious for a business not to answer the phone, has a nice pleasant conversation which ends with him calling Leon “Orcot-san.” SS turns it into “Mr. Orcot.”

Weirdly, TP leaves the Japanese suffixes in. They left a couple in the Xiao Mei chapter, too (she and Leon call each other “Nue Ehr-chan” and “Leon-san”.) I don’t think they’ve actually done this before. Editorial slip with TP volume 7, maybe?

(To be clear, I’m a fan of leaving these suffixes un-localized…if they’re what the manga characters would actually be using in context. Doesn’t apply with English-speaking characters in the US.)

—

Anyway, the “Mr. Orcot” (instead of “my dear detective”) is all Leon needs to hear to know that D is in some kind of trouble. Which kinda makes me want to do a whole re-reread just to make notes about “every way these two address each other throughout the series.”

…except I’m sure there are nuances that haven’t come through in either translation! Which of the 83 different ways to say “you” is D using in this or that speech bubble? I sure don’t know!

—

Oh, good, Leon’s co-workers do ask if he’s worried about his brother.

Leon counters that he’s worried about the assassin, actually. The overdone wordiness of TP this chapter is still happening (it’s even longer than this, I’m just grabbing one representative speech bubble), so the SS version lands harder:

TP: If that kid so much as looks at D wrong, our perpetrator becomes a victim.
SS: If that kid makes one wrong move, D’ll shred him!

—

More backstory. SS explains that “Cor Scorpio” is Latin for “Scorpion’s Heart”, thus the scorpion chest tattoo. TP, calling it “Scorpio’s Children”, says it’s on the chest without saying why. The Ruthless Night scan agrees with TP. Are the SS translators inventing, here?

Made-up group, but it originated with the real-world use of child soldiers in Cambodia. Presumably Akino was inspired by reading about the IRL demobilization/rehab efforts that were happening in the ’90s.

…So why give them a Latin name?

Cambodia was under French control for a while, that’s why the Khmer Rouge are called that — if you’re trying to adjust the name in translation to be more culturally-accurate, why not make it Coeur Scorpio?

Sidenote: A lot of earlier chapters have involved made-up countries. At least once, TP inserted a real country where it looks like Akino wrote a fake one. But like with the Inca chapter that used IRL Peru, complete with real historical details, this is definitely about IRL Cambodia.

—

D invites the customer to live at the shop forever. Customer tries to escape out the back…and, like Chris, runs into a pet version of his mother. Flashbacks to his indoctrination, including “be angry and vengeful b/c your mom abandoned you.”

Customer pulls a gun on her. Chris intervenes! The lead-up shows off more of TP being extra-wordy this chapter:

TP: Don’t do it! Killing your own mother…believe me, you don’t want to do this!
SS: Don’t! You can’t kill your mom! You just can’t!!

But I like Chris’s finisher in TP better than SS:

TP: You’ll never be able to forgive yourself!
SS: If you do, God will never forgive you!

Presumably the reference to “God” reads as more neutral in Japanese (and/or in Shintoism)? But since the Orcots are culturally Christian, and canon never shows them being particularly devout or practicing about it, it’s weird for one of them to suddenly bring up “what God would approve of”. This would not be a regular factor in Chris’s thought process!

Meanwhile, “do I forgive myself for the idea that I killed my mother” has to be on Chris’s mind all the time.

—

As the customer has a bit of a breakdown about whether his mom would even accept him, what with the whole child-assassin lifestyle:

TP: I can’t live a normal life anymore. Any chance of that died long ago.
SS: God could never let me have a happy, normal life.

…okay, I can’t claim to know anything about religiosity in Cambodia in general, but: since these fictional child soldiers were raised in near-isolation with brutal indoctrination that doesn’t mention any religion, I don’t buy that this kid spends any time considering what “God” wants, either.

—

Customer tries to commit suicide. Somehow, D has set this up so the effect is that he “kills his old self,” waking up with no memories and no scorpion tattoo, free to get a fresh start on a better life.

(The story Leon and the other cops get is a simpler “I put sedatives in his tea, so he’s asleep now, you’re welcome.”)

D’s lines on the final page seem to be another case where TP just completely replaced the original dialogue. This time, I don’t like it at all:

TP: The life of a scorpion is never an easy one. They inspire fear in all animals, but most of all, within themselves.
SS: Oh, but I got what I wanted, see? I have this lovely crimson scorpion, safe and sound.

The faux-deep poetic stuff just…doesn’t have anything to do with the themes of the chapter. Not only that, I’m pretty sure that I didn’t actually register “D got to keep the assassin-self at the pet shop after all, now in the form of a scorpion” before I read the SS version! And that’s a really good, clever ending!

—

Chapter 28: Diet

A little 3-part anthology of a chapter. Savvy thing to do when you have 3 ideas, and not enough material to make a full-length chapter out of any of them.

High schooler Emeralda “Em” (TP)/Emerada “Eme” (SS) just got dumped by John (TP)/Jan (SS), in favor of a skinny girl. Meets D at a bakery, where they both go for the same tart! He introduces her to Dorothy, a purrrrsonal trainer.

(Possible Oz reference, with the Dorothy+Emerald names? Not seeing any other obvious callbacks, though. Unless you count “our heroine goes on this whole journey for a guy who turns out to be not worth the effort.”)

—

Customer 2: Irene, a supermodel whose colleague Clarisse (TP)/Clarice (SS) told her to visit the shop for a miracle weight-loss secret.

When she comes in, D says it’s time for Chris’s bath, and Pon-chan drags him away:

TP: Come on, Romeo.
SS: Come on, then!

No particular indication of “Chris thinks this woman is hot” in the art. It’s not a contradiction, either, but I wonder if it distracts from the point of “D is selling something dangerous, and wants Chris out of the way.”

—

D presents the model with a pearl-shaped supplement. There’s a plot point that’s either spoken by D or Irene, depending on translation:

TP: Just one dose each day should suffice.
SS: I really only have to take one?

Oof, some editor at TP should’ve caught that. It’s a major plot point that Irene just needs one (1), total.

—

Third customer is Nash McKinley (in both translations!), an old friend Leon brings over. Recently lost a pet bird, looking for a replacement.

I have to take a second to highlight Leon’s entrance, though:

TP: Yo, Count! Who’s the babe?! I noticed she didn’t leave with a pet. So what kind of business were you two transacting, eh?
SS: Yo! D! I passed a major hottie coming in! She a customer of yours?!

—

Nash’s deal is that he’s a boxer, trying to keep himself from going up a weight class. (Both translations have Leon brag that Nash made it to the Olympics once. TP upgrades him to a silver medalist.)

D sells him a parakeet, which motivates him by trash-talking him about all the tasty food he should be eating. It’s extremely Talkie Toaster.

Samples:

TP: I got it. Fried chicken! I have the Colonel’s number…/Hey Nash…Can I just say one word more? Just one word. Cheesecake.
SS: Want some fried chicken? / Hey, Nash. Feel like some carrot cake? Loads of cream cheese frosting?

TP puts some more variety in the bird’s dialogue. It’s clever, and since this is one of D’s pets, it’s not like that’s unrealistic. On the other hand, the repetitive rhythm of the SS version…feels more like a boxing match.

—

Em’s exercise-and-self-esteem routine worked! She’s skinny enough that her ex wants to dance with her, and confident enough that she finally notices he kinda sucks.

There’s a clever transition where Em socks him in the jaw, and the TP translators think the next dialogue bubble is hers, but in SS it’s clearly a smash-cut to Nash’s boxing match:

TP: The only thing you’re worthy of is a busted lip!
SS: And he’s down! A left jab straight to the jaw!!

(Nash made the weight, but lost the match. To celebrate his retirement, he and his bird have a drink.)

—

Sad ending for Irene: her “diet pill” was the egg of some kind of bodysnatching tapeworm.

Happy ending for Em: instead of paying her last coaching bill, she repays Dorothy by taking home a cat! Whose name is also Dorothy. Howzabout that.

—

Bonus from the endnotes (this is volume 7 for TP, 5 for SS):

TP: Don’t worry. Scorpio’s Children doesn’t exist. I made it up. That’s not to say there isn’t an organization of this name working for Pol Pot’s government, just that I have no knowledge of it if there is…
SS: Cor Scorpio is Latin for “scorpion’s heart.” It’s also another name for the star Antares. And during Pol Pot’s reign in Cambodia, a secret organization of that name may or may not have existed. Don’t ask me!

Huh, that really is true of Antares, since it’s in the middle of the constellation Scorpius.

And the RN scan invokes both terms, though with no mention of Antares:
RN: Scorpio’s children comes from the latin ‘Scorpio’s heart’. I made it up. There might have been an organization of this name working for Pol Pot’s government, but I don’t know anything about it…

Somebody with the PSOH raws, please solve this mystery by telling us what the original kana were!

Starting another #PetShopOfHorrors reread thread. But first, a pitch that it's got me writing PSOH fic again:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/87216746/chapters/230998571

With illustrations!

Works roundup, 6/22 (Moon Knight/Marvel, Pet Shop of Horrors, His Dark Materials, Madoka Magica, webcomics)

Leif & Thorn
Kale – Blushing Faces Meme (art meme | Kale(/Thorn) | worksafe)
Leif and Thorn Rainbow Readers (art | Violet, Rowan, Pascentia | worksafe)

His Dark Materials
Lyra Silvertongue and Bonita Eldorado (art | Lyra, Pan, OC | worksafe)
The Silver and Golden Commonwealth (fic outline | Lyra, Pan, OC | G)
Lyra and Bonita, Pots and Pan (art | Lyra, Pan, OC | worksafe)

Moon Knight
5+1 times Marc was maybe technically having a foursome? , chapter 1 (fic | Marc/Steven/Jake, Marc/Steven/Layla | M)

Moon Knight/other Marvel
Business of Witch, chapter 20 (fic | Wanda, the Minimoffs, assorted witches | T)

Pet Shop of Horrors
No Leon at Pride (comic | D, Chris, Leon, T-chan, Jill | G)

Puella Magi Madoka Magica
The symbol of a teardrop (art | Madoka | NSFW ish)

This Week in Leif & Thorn:

Archie is living a writer’s worst nightmare: having an experience that would be great material for a story, and yet unable to take notes.

Follow-up bonus for the “Donor” reread post

Collecting a bunch of new thoughts I’ve had while trying to write some Little Sister D fic.

(As mentioned in the original reread post. Yeah, at least one fic of this is happening. I’m even starting with the fluffy fixit version.)

—

So I’m looking more deeply into contextual meanings and nuances of Chinese endearments, as you do, and it looks like “哥哥 gēgē” and “妹妹 mèimei” are the more generic terms for “big brother” and “little sister”. (They can also be used more broadly, to address older men/younger women who aren’t literal relatives. They’re warm and friendly without being over-familiar, as long as you get the age dynamic right.)

Meanwhile, “大哥 dàgē” is more specifically “eldest brother.” It’s the version you would use for an older male boss (and, in pop culture, a mob boss). The same site doesn’t say “小妹 xiǎo mèi” is “youngest sister”, just that it’s a more-affectionate diminutive of “little sister,” which in practice gets used for the youngest a lot.

In related news, “宝贝 bǎobèi” (“precious treasure”) is an intimate term for a loved one, especially a spouse or child…but it’s also used for favorite pets. And there’s a modern-day trend on shopping sites to use it for products, as a playful way to convey what a great valuable deal this is.

I’ve gotta have D use that one for Leon.

—

This article about Chinese terms of endearment made a point of “by the way, you’re probably here looking for translations of an affectionate thing you want to say, but it’s more common in Chinese culture to express affection in indirect ways.”

One of the specific examples was “Thoughtful actions, such as cutting fruit.”

…anyway, here’s D slicing apples for Leon after the first time he got shot. Just saying.

—

Little Sister D’s arc ends when she attacks D, while having a crisis about “maybe if you were gone, Father would love me best instead.” T-chan and a couple other pets counter-attack. D ends up cradling her fatally-wounded body as she dies, reassuring her that Papa D really did love her.

In the TP translation, he addresses her as Xiao Mei, like he’s been doing all chapter. In the SS version, for the first and only time, he calls her 女儿 nǚ’ér, what Papa D called her, a plain straightforward word for “daughter.”

I pulled the Ruthless Night scan (all the images here are those scans), and that says Nu Er too:

I assume the TP translators figure this was a mistake Akino didn’t notice in editing, so they fixed it. Honestly, on first reading of the SS version, I didn’t notice the switch either.

But now that I stop to think about it…D has successfully passed as his father before. In an on-the-fly situation where he didn’t have any prep time, even. (The Diamande chapter, stealing those genetic samples and talking to a guard.)

I bet that’s what he’s doing here. Setting it up so the last words she hears aren’t just “it’s okay, little sister, our dad loves you,” but “it’s okay, daughter, it’s me, your dad, I love you.”

…I was not prepared to have this many new feelings about a story I first read 20 years ago.

—

Comparing Akino’s endnotes for this chapter, and this is the first time I realized TP adds flourishes to those, too. Oof.

The relevant passage:

TP: According to ancient Chinese myth, China was once swarming with orangutans. I mean, it was like “Planet of the Apes” without Charlton Heston. They’re all gone now. After writing “Donor,” I got a lot of letters asking if this meant Count D is actually an ape. The answer is no, he’s not. But he’s played one on TV.

SS: A xingxing is a mythical species of monkey said to have lived in ancient China. It is not a present-day orangutan or baboon. I’ve received a few fan letters asking “Wait, does this mean the count is actually a monkey?” Uhhh… No.

It’s one thing within the text of the comic. Especially considering how much TP is localizing a foreign interpretation of characters from their IRL language/culture! But when you’re translating the author speaking to her readers directly…don’t insert your own made-up movie references, c’mon.

At least SS gives me an explicit pointer toward the “xingxing as an orangutan-inspired Chinese cryptid” interpretation, instead of “xingxing as the normal Chinese word for orangutan.”

(…In retrospect, I’m surprised TP never put a “monkey see, monkey do” pun in here.)

—

There’s a little gag in these endnotes about Akino being a director, with the characters she draws as actors, who don’t always want to do what she tells them.

In this one, the artist tells D he’s being double-cast as both sibling roles! He just has to do cute shy smiles while he’s playing the sister!…And then he’s terrible at the cute shy smiles.

You’d never know from the final cut. They came out great in the end.

Welp, I'm writing at least one Little Sister D fic for #PetShopOfHorrors. (Not even the darkfic version, either! I'm starting with the fluffy fixit version!)

I know it doesn't *need* a D-word title, but I really *want* a fitting D-word title...

Erin Reads: Pet Shop of Horrors, Collector’s Edition (volume 5, chapters 25-26)

I’m at the start of PSOH volume 5 in the SS re-release, which is the start of volume 7 in the TP original.

There’s a bonus story at the end of TP v6 that we skipped, because SS doesn’t have it at the start of v5, but in the middle. More on that later.

As usual, originally threaded on Mastodon / Bluesky. Having a weird situation where my phone gave me reply notifications for Bsky posts, but I can’t see the replies themselves. It’s not that they were deleted — some of the posts (here’s an example) still list 2 replies — I just can’t see any other than mine, either on desktop or mobile. Can any of the rest of y’all read them?

Anyway. Affiliate links for the whole Collector’s Edition, in case you want your own.

Chapter 25: Doom

Good chapter to open a new book with! And a good title: “Doom” as in “downfall”, but also as in “fate.”

Leon shows up after hours, in rough shape. A criminal who died that night was a childhood friend: Harry Seals in TP, Shields in SS.

TP: I knew what needed to be done, but I couldn’t shoot someone that I’d…
SS: If I’d known it’d turn out this way, I…

Both fit the way Leon is struggling with more complicated feelings than he knows how to articulate. But props to SS for making it double as ironic foreshadowing.

—

Another one where D sends Leon home with a pet. Where TP includes a quip that I understand, SS has a joke that I don’t:

TP: It’s just a little something to help get you through all of this. And it’s house-trained!
SS: Something sure to restore your spark. No, it’s not an urn.

Not sure if that’s a failure to convey a pun that made sense in Japanese, or if I’m just missing something.

Instead of the usual “please cherish your new pet” send-off, D just adds “sweet/pleasant dreams.” (Also, important information: He’s been in pajamas this whole time. Peak “they’ve never even dated, but they are So Married” energy.)

—

Dream-flashback to baby Leon, looking exactly like a slightly-taller Chris, with baby Harry.

Next day, Leon’s partner (early on TP calls him Max Wellford, then both call him Max J. West at the end) has gone from “killed” to “in hospital, recovering.” Leon’s reaction is…I figured there was a TP flourish here, but it’s way less than I expected:

TP: Oh, thank God, Buddha, Krishna, and that beautiful brunette I saw on TV last night and said a prayer to just for the heck of it! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!
SS: Thank God! And Jesus! And Mary! And the Buddha and the stars and everybody else!!

—

More Leon-and-Harry flashback/dreams, more changes. College Leon (in reading glasses?!) explains he’s rethinking his childhood dream of becoming a cop:

TP: It’s dangerous, hard work, and the pay sucks. Most people hate you. And have you seen the girls on the force? Yeesh!
SS: It’s risky! Plus, long hours and crappy pay. Barely any time off! And the ladies don’t like it!!

Point to SS. Even with the memory weirdness Leon’s going through, I don’t believe any version of him would slander our girl Jill like this.

—

Forgot to say, the pet is a butterfly! Because it keeps butterfly-effecting Leon’s past! The pet species aren’t always meaningful, but this one is perfect.

Leon gets butterflied all the way into a timeline where he works at a bank. I do like this one TP flourish when he confronts D:

TP: I want to know what you’ve done to me. I’m wearing a tie, for Christ’s sake! I didn’t even think I *owned* a tie!
SS: You dumped something freaky on me again! What the heck is up with this world?!

D also says there’s no Chris, and Leon’s mom is alive. So the butterfly isn’t just unmaking the deaths of Max and Harry, but *every* death Leon feels bad about.

…although for all we know, AU Chris is still asleep in the next room, and D is just trolling. (Why would AU Leon have made regular visits to D at all? Maybe he suspected the pet shop of bank fraud or money laundering…?)

—

Next timeline, Leon finds himself with a group of bank robbers. Someone at the TP office must have just watched Ocean’s 11 or something, because that version has a ton of extra dialogue about Plotting Out The Heist. Complete with nicknaming Leon “White Collar.”

Back to the pet shop — except now “there’s never been a pet shop around here.” (In TP, they call it a restaurant, and the owner gets offended thinking Leon making a crack about the food.)

Circles all the way around to a timeline where Leon is the bank robber who dies, while Harry is the cop. Next time he wakes up, he’s back in reality — but he’s made a little more peace with it.

Especially since Chris wakes him up, and tells him D is making him breakfast!

In both versions, Chris reports D said “…if he’s still alive” instead of “if he’s awake”, and wasn’t that a funny way to say it? The implication I’m getting here is “when the Count is being this casual, Chris knows there’s a 0% chance Leon is in any real danger.” Super sweet.

—

26: Donor

The “secret sister” chapter!

Leon is at the pet shop for breakfast. Not the scheduled breakfast from last chapter — a whole new one. Asks about D’s cooking choices — in SS he points out “you’ve never served meat before,” which seems pretty plot-relevant, and I’m sad TP missed it.

In both versions, D replies that Chris is a growing boy who needs protein. Leon’s reaction:

TP: High blood pressure already runs in the family…
SS: Discrimination! I’m a growing boy too!

I like a lot of the TP flourishes, but this is a case where I don’t think you could improve on the original.

—

It’s another “leader from a made-up foreign country” chapter. The vibe of this one is “South American dictatorship.” SS calls it J Republic, TP renamed it Corona. Okay, I could imagine “K Republic” somehow sounding like “Morocco”, but there’s no way you get “Corona” out of “J Republic”.

Leon, cementing this as a 1990s period piece by reading about this leader in the newspaper:

TP: If you’re gonna have an organ transplant, I’d feel much more comfortable in the hands of an American doctor than a Coronan one.
SS: J Republic is mega-Catholic. They’re not so keen on stuff like organ transplants.

I looked this up to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, and, no, the Catholic church doesn’t seem to have anything against organ transplants. There are rules about how to do it morally, but most of those are Basic Doctor Ethics, like “the organ donor has to consent to it.” Here’s at-the-time-Pope John Paul II making a whole speech about it in 2000.

JPII even mentions “transplants from non-human species into humans” as not-inherently-immoral!

We could chalk this up to Leon not being well-informed about Catholicism…but he’s getting this info from reading a news article, and the reporter should know better.

—

D uses the Chinese phrase “rú é fù huǒ”. SS leaves that as-is. There’s a plot point later about Jill learning Chinese, so eventually Leon asks her what it means, and she explains it’s basically “like moths to a flame.”

TP just has D say “like a moth to a flame” in the first place, so later on Leon has to be confused about what the English expression means.

…That’s not necessarily out-of-character for Leon, but I like the version where Jill gets to flex a bit more skill.

—

The visiting General (Goran in TP, Golan in SS) is here for an experimental transplant of a baboon heart. The baboon goes missing. Obviously Leon is heading to the pet shop.

Which is when he meets Hot Girl D, who looks exactly like Normal D except with the tiniest bit of curve, and who’s having a sexuality crisis? Definitely not Leon! Hahahaha nope why would you even think–

Tangent that has nothing to do with the translations: This whole chapter was so…gender affirming??…for me in high school. Queerness-affirming, maybe is a better term? Sister D herself is a conventionally-attractive femme woman, but her presence in comparison with Our D just highlights and underlines how femme he is, how zero-effort it would be for either of them to step across the gender line. There’s just something so nourishing for the soul about seeing characters do that. While being dazzlingly stunning about it, no less.

—

Fan scanlation, I just desperately needed to share the full visual experience of Leon being Extremely Normal and Completely Secure In His Heterosexuality about Hot Girl D:

—

Sister D uses some Chinese words that TP has to leave as-is. SS goes the extra mile with diacritics:

Da geh/Dà gē (Big Brother, what she calls D)
Nue ehr/Nu er (Daughter, what she calls herself)
Xiao mei/Xiǎo mèi (Little Sister, what D calls her)

She refers to Papa D as Diēdiē, which TP just turns into “Daddy.” Okay, fair.

There’s a kerfuffle over Leon thinking he’s finally found out some real family names — I was probably excited about it too, tbh — until Jill comes in with the translations.

—

SS has Leon say Sister D is the “identical twin sister.” TP has Leon use the phrase “you’d think they were twins,” but he calls her the “little sister.” Which fits better with the explicit age difference in how they address each other.

Jill and Leon also quietly agree that Sister D seems much more innocent and childlike than her apparent age.

(Jumpscare with the R-slur in the TP version. I know it’s period-accurate for the ’90s — and to be fair, Leon doesn’t say it to anyone, just thinks it — but it’s still jarring. SS uses “She doesn’t seem to have adult mental faculties” in the same panel.)

—

Sister D has been told “you need to live for your brother’s sake.” D tries to convince her that he’s not counting on her to fix him:

TP: I didn’t even know I had a sister until a day ago.
SS: I don’t want that at all!!

Unforced continuity error for TP, since this is the translation that had D say “my sister” several chapters ago. Also, given how D reacted as soon as she showed up, it really seems like he knew “who this is, and what Papa D plans to use her for” already. (Unless we think he insta-deduced it the moment he saw her?)

—

More specifically, Sister D has been raised with all the rhetoric of a donor baby/savior sibling — a younger child who is specifically conceived to be a compatible donor for something a sick older child needs.

I wish this had a bit more setup in earlier chapters. We don’t have any sense that D is suffering from a chronic condition in the first place, let alone one that he can’t get any other treatment for.

Closest thing I can think of is, the El Dorado chapter moment of “I used too much blood to summon that condor.” But that was an emergency situation without a lot of resources. We haven’t seen him suffer from anemia back at the shop, where he’s able to eat regularly and stay hydrated.

And none of the characters ever specify what Sister D is supposed to donate. In flashback, Papa D just tells her D was born “incomplete” (TP) or “lacking something important” (SS). She, in a very “little confused, but she got the spirit” moment, tries to offer D literally any body part she can think of.

—

Over a few pages, Sister D goes from “you really don’t need me?” to “so, you don’t love me?” to “then what’s the point of me?” to Canon-Typical Violence.

The TP team gives her outburst an extra line that’s so on-theme, it feels like it should’ve been there from the start:

TP: Well, if Da Geh doesn’t need me…then I don’t need Da Geh! With Da Geh gone, maybe Daddy will like me the most!
SS: You’re Diēdiē’s favorite! But if you were gone…Diēdiē would love me best!

She hasn’t shown any sign of feeling unloved or less-valued up to this point! The problem is that her sense of love and value has been tied to “your brother needs you”. Her breakdown should focus on “trying to cope with the loss of that.”

—

Leon, Chris, and some critters arrive at the shop just in time to hear the commotion.

Leon orders the pets to stay behind and watch Chris! Our guy has gone so much more native than he wants to admit.

The other shop creatures (led by T-chan) have already come to D’s defense, so Leon walks in on the pet reveal: like the baboon whose heart was prepped for transplant into a human, Sister D is a primate whose [unknown substance] was prepped for transplant into [D’s species].

Both translations have D call her an orangutan from “ancient China”, and SS also has him use the term “xīng xīng”.

First search results I got for that were…well, a celebrity Tibetan macaque who just has that as her name.

Then for a Himalayan Mountains cryptid, although this wiki does acknowledge it might just be a regular orangutan spotted outside its known range.

But searching the Chinese characters on that second link did, in fact, lead me to Chinese Wikipedia for regular orangutans.

—

Later: D tells Chris and Leon that his sister went home, and, unrelated, he’s drinking some new “medicine.” Sure looks like it’s implied to be her blood — although it’s not specified, and I don’t think it ever comes up again.

When he reflects on why he’s taking it, SS makes the phrasing an explicit callback to his earlier advice to Chris about eating meat. Nice touch. (Not sure if that was added in translation, or if they were parallels in the Japanese and the TP team missed it.)

Final thoughts: I’m genuinely surprised there’s no Sister D fic on AO3. This is so weird and dysfunctional, but not in a way fandom wants to write about? Nobody’s gonna pull together a single “Leon and Hot Girl D have an extremely ill-advised hookup” one-shot? Not a single flash of interest in sibling Dcest?

…I know, I know, “write some yourself, then.” I’m thinking about it, I promise.