So here’s where I am with Pet.  I pretty much have no idea what’s going on, but I’m mostly hooked.  It’s funny which things bother us more, and which less.  Eizouken is the darling of the anime roundtable but its shallow characterizations and flimsy story keep me from fully embracing it.  Dorohedoro was my #2 expectations series of the season and has a great reputation, but I just can’t seem to figure out what the hell it is.  But with Pet it’s different – I can see the things that should annoy me perfectly clearly, but they just don’t bother me as much as they should.

It’s been my assumption, given that the manga is only 5 volumes, that the anime is tackling it pretty faithfully – there’s simply be no reason to make any drastic pacing changes.  So this opacity is presumably 100% intentional on the part of the mangaka.  It may just be me overthinking it, but I suspect the idea is to give the audience a sense of disorientation to match the generally unsettled mental state of the characters.  This is a world where you never know what’s real and what’s a fantasy planted in your head for nefarious reasons, so it makes sense that we on the other side of the screen should have an unsure footing ourselves.

In the end, Pet simply has “it” – that certain something that some series have, and others don’t.  Its premise is intensely interesting even if the execution is confusing as hell, and the characters feel real in a way they don’t in less well-written series.  It has a supremely talented director and adapting screenwriter.  The budget certainly isn’t lavish but Oomori Takahiro’s talents are regularly on display, as he frames every shot in an interesting manner and has a talent for enhancing the sense of disorientation that springs from the plot.  It works, plain and simple.  At least for me.

There’s a lot of cat and mouse going on here, both with the audience and between the characters.  Hayashi turning up has set the cat amongst the canaries as far as the company is concerned, but the reason he’s been found now is that he wanted to be found.  It seems clear Hayashi has a genuine, paternal affection for Satoru (along with Hiroki’s feelings for Tsukasa, the two most seemingly genuine elements in the story) and didn’t separate from him by choice.  For whatever reason it seems the company offed Satoru’s father and then crushed his grandmother, leaving Hayashi no choice but to take the boy under his protection, and that seems to be why he’s back.

This whole notion of carrier pigeons is just another brick in the unsettling wall this premise represents.  Even the “good guys” use them – and I wonder if even seemingly good people like Hayashi (though we don’t know that in his case) and Satoru can possibly be trusted with the power they hold over others (short answer: no).  I don’t know just who the company is, but I’m starting to think they’re more than just a yakuza outfit that got their hands on the golden esper goose.  And they at least understand – and fear – the power present in those they “employ”.

No one here is as they seem – maids, apartment managers, delivery men.  Tsukasa seems to be the spider at the center of the web but who does he answer to, if anyone?  Pet definitely has me doubting myself, wondering if the things I’ve been assuming were true (like Hiroki being a naive man-child) are actually true.  And that’s exactly its intention, surely.  I want there to be sympathetic characters here, people that are easy to root for, but I just don’t know yet if Pet is that sort of series.  Some of these people are manipulators, some manipulated – but everyone, seemingly, has an agenda.