#PetShopOfHorrors reread, chapter 11: Dessert

It's the Totetsu chapter!

...and the SS translation immediately has D refer to the "Taotie". Apparently "Totetsu" is the Japanese name for it, this is the original Chinese:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taotie

It makes sense for D to be using the Chinese word! But also, Tetsu or Tet-chan is effectively the character's name -- in the English-speaking fandom as well as the Japanese. How much is this going to mess with that?

Erin Reads: Pet Shop of Horrors, Collector’s Edition (volume 2, chapters 9-10)

Continued liveblog as I read Seven Seas’ new print edition of PSOH, and sometimes make comparisons to the original Tokyopop translation.

I’m posting the individual reactions on Mastodon and Bluesky, then rounding them up in the blog. Previous roundups in my PSOH fandom tag. You can pick up the books with my affiliate links here.

When rounding up this post, I expected it to be shorter than the last one…then I actually checked the word count, and it’s almost exactly the same. Commented about fewer panels, but I carried on for longer, so it balanced out.

8) Diamande

Another chapter with a foreign monarchy. The country is “Garuna” in both translations. Looking it up, there’s “Garuna/Galuna Island” in Fairy Tail, and “Mio Garuna/Myo Galuna” is a legendary beast (dragon?) in Monster Hunter Orange.

TP says the island has a king, SS calls him an emperor. Leon, while recapping their backstory for D:

TP: I mean, these royals…they’re tabloid fodder. [aside] No offense, Count.
SS: …they’ve got more time and money than they could ever use! [aside] Glad I’m a pleb.

I guess the “no offense” was more sensitive than Leon actually is, at this point. Still, cute.

TP has D dismiss the foolishness of “people,” SS uses the word “humans.” This is directly after the “meditation at the museum of extinct animals” chapter, and it showcases a nice shift in their relationship if this is when D starts dropping pointed comments about “humans, like you, Detective, but not like me, hint hint.”

–

Ominous older “dowager empress” type shows up, tells D:

TP: Then you know what I’m about to ask. And you know why it must be done.
SS: I would ask that you kill the child before it can be born.

TP translator: “Ooh, she’s mysterious.”
SS translator: “…but not THAT mysterious.”

–

Empress, telling D about her history with Grandpa D:

TP: He wanted to take me away, and show me the world. He knew that I couldn’t take him up on the offer, but he *did* make a promise to me. He assured me that if I were ever in need…I could turn to him for help. With anything.
SS: He spoke with such passion, trying to convince me to leave with him–leave the confines of the palace for the wider world. I rejected the hand he extended to me then. I suppose it was too much to hope for that aid to be offered now.

It’s the same basic plot point — our D being enjoined to help someone because of her past friendship with Grandpa.

But “he promised to help me if I ever needed it” and “I was really hoping he’d offer help again if I asked for it” are meaningfully different vibes! Wonder which is closer to the original intent.

–

Also! Backstory includes “she had a serious illness, which brought her closer to her husband, but left her infertile.” TP has Sofu D make friends with her *before* the illness, when she could’ve plausibly just run away from the husband. SS puts it *after* the illness, when the rest of the court was judging her for not coughing up an heir.

Again with the “same basic plot point, very different vibes.”

Leon picks D as a suspect, even though there’s a bombing and no animals involved. In TP it’s basically just “there was a smell that might’ve been incense, and he looked Asian.” SS adds “and he was moving like a martial artist,” which the art backs up. (Flashback of how D moved while they were stealing the dragon egg in the Christmas special.)

–

Weird resolution to this.

So the Empress’s request is 2 parts: “destroy the frozen sperm Papa D took from my husband” (insert your own fanfic about how Papa D accomplished this), and “stop a woman who already impregnated herself from having his baby.”

D for-sure breaks into a lab and destroys some samples. (Also, wears a lab coat and passes as Papa D.) Also, *somebody* bombs the hotel where the mom-to-be is staying, and she dies.

On the one hand: “just bomb a building and don’t worry about the collateral damage” has never been D’s MO. He would send in a poisonous snake or something, come on. And the non-Leon cops do catch a non-D suspect at the end.

On the other: Akino draws D sneaking away from the building after the explosion. And doesn’t bother giving any explanation for why this other guy did it.

A misdirect is fine, but it should add up to something in the end, you know? At least throw in a justification for why this random suspect is *also* trying to kill these people.

–

Tangent about the suspect: TP cops say he’s a crossdresser [not that politely, either]. SS cops just refer to him neutrally as a guy.

I’m guessing this was a TP innovation. It would explain the femme appearance and perfume-y scent…and by PSOH:Tokyo, Akino is very overt about including LGBTQ side characters…but there’s nothing femme about this guy in the one panel he’s in. And the SS dialogue has been more overt about “this character is being racist right now.” If you’re being this blunt about the racism, why soften the transphobia?

(“Well, why *add* the transphobia?” Because it’s the ’90s/early ’00s, when this is overwhelmingly treated as a low-stakes funny thing to joke about.)

–

The *very* end of the chapter gives us the obligatory “animal all along” reveal: The Empress wasn’t a human asking D to stop another human from having the artificially-inseminated baby of her deceased human husband, she was a rare bird asking him to stop a zoo from hatching the artificially-inseminated egg of her deceased bird husband.

Look, I’m fine with “the bird who needs D’s help” having an exactly-parallel situation to “the human case Leon is dealing with.” That level of coincidence is a twist PSOH runs on.

But if D is out stealing the artificially-inseminated egg, don’t show him sneaking away from the building where the artificially-inseminated human just got blown up! At that point it’s not a satisfying well-done misdirect, it’s just contrived.

(Would’ve given it partial credit for “D was sneaking away from the zoo with the egg, and just happened to be walking past the bombing”…but he’s not carrying anything, let alone anything egg-sized. I went back and checked.)

–

A thing I did like about the ending: D cooks breakfast for Leon. It’s (secretly) endangered bird egg on toast. Both translations specify “sunny-side-up.”

Look, this is a little incongruous after the last chapter. D was so upset about species going extinct because of humans, and now he’s sabotaging the endangered-species-restoration efforts of humans. But it’s funny enough that I’ll give it a pass.

–

Note from earlier in the chapter, the Empress describing her backstory:

TP: Then one day…I fell ill. For a week, I was fluttering between life and death.
SS: Then one day…I fell gravely ill. I was bedridden for days, on the verge of death.

Same meaning! But props to TP for adding a bird pun.

–

10) Desire

Most of the pet sales are about some kind of desire, I don’t think it stands out in this one…and the pet’s name is Daisy…but maybe Akino didn’t want to fall back on “dog chapter where the title is the dog’s name” a second time.

Leon is stopping some kids from picking on a dog, when he gets a call:

TP: What’s that? A 211? Where? I’m on my way!
SS: Armed robbery at the grocery on 17th?! On it!!

TP feels more natural. SS is doing the “we didn’t have a voice actor to play the person calling, so the person taking the call will say all the exposition as if repeating after them” trope…in a comic. Although maybe that’s the joke.

Props to TP for including the real CA police code for a robbery.

–

Leon telling D to handle the dog-harassing kids:

TP: Count, can you deal with this? Just give them a good lecture or something!
SS: Take it from here, Count!! Give them a lesson they’ll never forget!

SS is more dangerously open-ended, in a way that the chapter bears out.

Either way, I like that Leon is already back to “deep down I don’t seriously believe D is *that* scary, I trust him to give these kids a non-evil age-appropriate punishment.”

–

Since the customer is a kid, D doesn’t just have to talk her into “this human-looking creature is a pet, it’s not weird or illegal for you to take her,” he has to convince her family. Tells them she’s a refugee (“East Asia” in TP, “Eastern Europe” in SS…wonder if Akino just said “from the East”):

TP: She was placed in my care…with the understanding that I would find her a loving home. A home made up of kind people…much like you and your daughters.
SS: After all she’s endured, I want her to have positive experiences. I thought living with a *sophisticated* family would be ideal. Having seen your household’s…kindness, generosity, and refinement…

The angle of “this poor disadvantaged child should be raised by Superior People, like yourselves” is a much sharper commentary on the USian international-adoption industry, huh.

–

D pitches this as a fostering situation, so he doesn’t pull the “as long as you both shall live” blessing, he switches to “It won’t be for very long…but please take good care of her.”

So, okay, Maggie (the kid customer) traded in Daisy (the dog), on the grounds of “she’s not a cute fun puppy anymore, so I don’t want her.” Brings home a mysterious Refugee Girl, also names her Daisy, no prizes for guessing where this is going. Over the fostering trial period, human!Daisy has a glow-up, and when D comes back at the end, the parents hand over Maggie.

D explains:

TP: Your parents are only human, after all. You can’t blame them for wanting to replace their imperfect child with something better. Something cuter, and much less obnoxious. After all…you did.
SS: Ah, human parents. They ignore their own flaws and nitpick their child’s, judging them by what they can do. And should they have multiple children, they inevitably compare them…and prefer the one they find superior.

I think TP nails the point, here. Maggie has 3 older sisters, she starts off the chapter feeling like she’s being compared to them (and not measuring up), SS is just telling her what she already knew.

TP is explicitly pointing out “hey, remember how you also wanted to replace dog!Daisy with something cuter…? Karma, kiddo.”

–

Human!Daisy calls D to give Maggie back, reveals she was dog!Daisy all along, the family stays together. Back at the shop with the other dogs, D reflects on how confusing their loyalty to humans is, and also remarks:

TP: Well, guys, for better or for worse, I doubt anything will come between Daisy and Maggie now.
SS: I wasn’t going to go easy on her, child or not.

The meaning here is completely different, but they both have a format of “in X case or Y case, [definitive statement].” Was D saying something extra-vague along those lines, and both translators guessed at how to fill in the details…?

(Negative points to TP for the “Well, guys.” D would *never*.)

Whoops, let my #PetShopOfHorrors reread languish for more than a month while I was doing the Book of Dust liveblog.

Well, no more! Starting chapter 9 "Diamonde" now. With both the new Seven Seas (SS) and original Tokyopop (TP) translations on hand.

Pet Shop of Horrors Ending Creditless (4K AI Upscaled & Enhanced)

Anime/Cartoon: Pet Shop of Horrors
Song: Melody
Artist: LEGOLGEL
Year: 1999
Country: Japan

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Subscribe to my YouTube & Telegram channel to watch & download the full video, link in bio 😊 #Anime #Manga #PetShopOfHorrors

Pet Shop of Horrors Opening Creditless (4K AI Upscaled & Enhanced)

Anime/Cartoon: Pet Shop of Horrors
Song: Jikkou Ryoukou
Artist: LEGOLGEL
Year: 1999
Country: Japan

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Pet Shop of Horrors Promotional Video Creditless (4K AI Upscaled & Enhanced)

Anime/Cartoon: Pet Shop of Horrors
Song: Melody
Artist: LEGOLGEL
Year: 1999
Country: Japan

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Subscribe to my YouTube & Telegram channel to watch & download the full video, link in bio 😊 #Anime #Manga #PetShopOfHorrors

Erin Reads: Pet Shop of Horrors, Collector’s Edition (volume 2, chapters 7-8)

Continued liveblog as I read Seven Seas’ new print edition of PSOH, and make sporadic comparisons to the original Tokyopop translation.

I’m posting the individual reactions on Mastodon and Bluesky, then rounding them up in the blog. Previous roundups in my PSOH fandom tag. You can pick up the books with my affiliate links here. (I now have Collector’s Edition 1-4 on my shelf!)

Only 2 chapters this post. I got a little long-winded. It’ll probably happen again.

7) Delicious

Customer’s name is given as “イアソン” (iason), which seems to be the typical Japanese romanization for people called “Jason” in English, as in Jason and the Argonauts. A famous mythical seafarer whose journeys included an encounter with sirens — that’s a great namesake for a customer who falls tragically in love with a mermaid.

TP romanized it as “Ethan”. Honestly, if I was doing this translation in the ’90s and didn’t have easily-available cross-referencing options like this on Japanese Wikipedia, that would’ve been my guess too.

The licensed dub of the OVA, which adapted this plot for 1 of the 4 episodes, went with “Jason”.

…It also romanized Leon as “Leon Alcott.” And, wow, that was definitely the actual English-language name Matsuri Akino intended, wasn’t it? I’m glad SS stuck with “Orcot” — that’s his name in the hearts and minds of the entire English-speaking fandom at this point — but just imagine the timeline where he was “Alcott” to us all along.

—

A 3-panel sequence: (1) D asking Leon about Evangeline Blue’s death. (2) Image of Evangeline, with voiceover text doing some exposition about her. (3) D asking Leon why the LAPD is involved.

Absolutely peak comparative translation from the voiceover:

TP: The girl who put the ass back in classical.
SS: Known as a “gifted coloratura soprano” and a “bewitching siren with a five-octave range.”

I have to assume the TP translators couldn’t figure out how to handle the complicated opera jargon, so they just swapped in “something positive-sounding that Leon would say.” Meanwhile, SS gives me the impression that it’s actually D doing the speech! It makes more sense for Leon to have her backstory memorized, since she’s the victim in a case he’s investigating…but it makes more sense for D to remember the word “coloratura.”

That little reference to “she’s a siren” is some heckin foreshadowing. (Wonder if TP missed it, or SS came up with it.)

—

When D says Leon’s theory about Jason as a murderer seems far-fetched, Leon replies:

TP: Have you heard her sing?! The guy’s probably a humanitarian!
SS: Don’t you start! I heard all that from the chief!!

Okay, TP wins the foreshadowing game this round. Amazing double meaning with “person who acts for the good of humanity” versus “person who follows a humanitarian diet.”

—

Another nice little pun on the TP side, when D tells Leon he just sold a mermaid:

TP: Your damn stories are always fishy. ‘Bout time you actually made one up about fish.
SS: There he goes again. Yeah, sure it was a mermaid — not! Probably some giant goldfish.

—

TP has Leon convinced this is a murder because he’s following “his instincts.” Later, D mentions that legend that eating “the intestines” of a mermaid can bring immortality.

SS has Leon following “his gut,” and D referring to “the guts” of a mermaid. So there’s SS winning the callback game.

—

SS continues to take more care about translating sound effects and incidental text. It’s especially helpful this chapter when Leon barges in on D’s shop to confront him — Q-chan tries to fight Leon off, so there’s all kinds of “kee! kwee!” and “CHOMP” type of SFX.

Unrelated to the translation: Leon (ace detective that he is!) doesn’t clock it at all, but this is the first chapter where D actively helps him out, right?

Jason doesn’t just happen to wander into the pet shop. After Leon talks about the investigation, D actively tracks Jason down on the street, and uses a story of “your late wife ordered a fish from us, it’s already paid for, come pick it up” to maneuver him into getting the mermaid. Which leads to the whole chain of events that ends with the truth coming out.

—

8) Destruction

D thinking mournfully about species going extinct:

TP: Once again…another species disappears.
SS: As has happened so many, many times before…the last flame of another wild race has gone out.

I like SS making him more flowery and poetic about it.

—

D sneaks into a Natural History museum after hours, Leon is convinced it’s some kind of drug deal and sneaks after him, then Leon gets caught up in D’s incense-induced dream/meditation about a forest full of lost species. Props to SS for putting in the sound effects, now I can hear that Rainforest Cafe soundtrack as I look at the page.

Props also to SS for tracking down the correct spelling of Cervalces, an extinct genus of moose-deer that shows up in the dream.

—

Another species identification thing: there’s a saber-tooth cat that D addresses as “Kenshiko“, literally the characters for “saber, tooth, tiger.” TP leaves it as-is, like it’s a personal name. SS translates it as “Sabertooth.”

—

Leon charms D by bumbling around the dreamspace for a while, then accidentally sets D off with a reminder of how many species humans have driven to extinction. D isn’t openly saying “ugh, humans” around Leon yet, so he vents his frustration as “ugh, Americans” instead.

Having a lot of thoughts about these couple of panels:

TP:

D: You belong in a zoo under a sign labeled, “Average American.”
Leon: Ha! And what about you, Mr. Love, Hope and Dreams? People come out of your shop sad or dead. Who’s the savage?
Leon (next page): And why “Count”? You’re Chinese!! Count is a Western title!

SS:

D: Such a quintessential American should be displayed in a museum.
Leon: Wanna stuff me and mount me on a wall, huh?! Well, too bad! I got bullet scars from head to toe — I’d make a horrible display!
Leon (next page): And if we’re talking about stuff we don’t like, I’ve got a whole laundry list about you! To start with, you–

…It’s consistent to be talking about a museum, since their bodies are physically in a museum, but I really enjoy the mental image of D wanting to put Leon in a zoo.

More importantly, though! Leon’s response! TP has him going straight to counter-attacking D, with very specific points. A reference to D’s earlier quote that his shop sells “love, hope, and dreams,” an accusation about customer satisfaction, a complaint about the “Count” title — eventually we’ll get backstory for that, but it hasn’t even been raised as an issue before now, right?

SS has Leon start off talking about himself. Focusing on the fact that he has lots of scars (which, again, will be addressed in later chapters, but this is the first time it’s come up). He’s about to pivot to accusing D, but gets cut off.

In the other passages where the translation was dramatically different, I usually figured the SS one was being more faithful/literal, while the TP one was riffing more. But here, the TP one feels more “integrated with the ongoing continuity” than I’d expect from a riff.

And the TP one just…makes more sense to me, in context? When D is first starting to get worked up, he says (I’m giving both translations to be a completist, but this time, they’re effectively the same):

TP: If you knew that only one of the two castaways could live, would you kill the other without hesitation?
SS: If only you and one other person remained, and only one of you could survive, would you hesitate to take their life?

So the subtext from D is “if only humans and one other species remained, would you wipe out the other species?” When his pets go around killing humans (not the whole species, just individuals), he doesn’t see it as morally any different than a tiger killing and eating a deer. It’s just bringing humanity back into the natural balance. The circle of life.

But Leon just hears the surface-level question of “would you, a human person, kill another human?” And he still fully believes D is a member of his species, just a really eccentric one. Of course his reaction is “hang on, D, why are you getting on my case about that, when you are a human person, and you’ve killed other humans (via pets) (somehow) (evidence TBD, okay)?”

It’s sort of weird if that doesn’t come up!

I can see Leon’s scars being relevant to the argument here, but not in a way he would (currently) understand, or invoke on purpose. He’s just going “you don’t want to display me, I look horrible.” Bit of a self-own. Like telling a zombie “you don’t want to eat my brains, I’m a moron.”

—

The dream/meditation transitions Leon into a barren wasteland, not even D around to keep him company…then he gets woken up by museum security shining a flashlight in his face:

TP: Wait a minute! Who are you?!
SS: Aah! People!

Points to SS on that one.

—

Back in the waking world, D is being more closed-off and cryptic. Leon thinks to himself (across 3 panels):

TP: That smirk… / Surprise…anger…that smirk never leaves his face. / So why does it seem different now?
SS: That knowing smile…he’s got his usual mask locked back in place. / The surprise. The rage. The honest smile. / How long ago did he stop being able to show his real feelings?

Either way, you get the sense of Leon having a realization that D has hidden depths he didn’t appreciate before. Slightly different direction, though. In particular, the text “that smirk never leaves his face” / “the honest smile” is over a copy-paste of a “D smiling at something Leon did” panel from earlier in the chapter.

I hope SS is more on-point here. I really like the interpretation that D was genuinely happy in that moment, and Leon (ace detective!) picked up on it.

—

Last page. D invites Leon back to the shop for tea, then has a little internal monologue of his own, while looking sadly at the moon:

TP (the quotation marks are part of it): “Ah, Officer Orcot…what am I going to do about you?” / “I do enjoy your company.” / “One of these days, I may not let you leave.”
SS: Despite it all, you’ll keep moving forward, hmm? / Without a single look back. / Once again, I’m left behind. All alone.

Again, same general sense of “D being wistful about how he would be sad to lose Leon’s company,” different nuances.

Especially as foreshadowing for the eventual ending! TP implies a more self-aware “I want to keep you, but I know I shouldn’t, it wouldn’t be good for you,” a belief D carries through to the end. SS is more “I want you to stay with me, but I know you won’t, you’ll move on eventually,” and, whoo boy, is Leon ever gonna prove D wrong about that.

#PetShopOfHorrors

New #PetShopOfHorrors liveblog reread thread!

I have the new Seven Seas release, and will cross-reference bits with the original Tokyopop translation. Starting now at chapter 7.

Pick up the new books with my affiliate link here:

https://bookshop.org/lists/psoh-collector-s-edition