Considering the frightening times we’re living in, entertainment – certainly not excluding anime – is a more important escape than ever.  I’ve found a couple different ways this has worked for me.  For example, Runway de Waratte has been a chance to get emotional over something besides the news, and Mairmashita! Iruma-kun has been a source of pure positive escapism.  But Pet, on the other hand, just isn’t hitting the spot for me at the moment.  That’s not the series’ fault, obviously, but it’s relentlessly bleak and nihilistic narrative just has me feeling more exhausted than anything else.

I can say that if nothing else, I don’t feel indifferently towards Pet, and that’s ultimately the worst place you can go when watching a series.  I mean, I’m racking my brain to think of a character I hate as much as I’ve come to hate Tsukasa, and there aren’t a lot of them.  As to whether we’re “supposed” to feel that way or not, that’s not a simple question.  Clearly the story knows Tsukasa is a bad person and expects us to see that, but there’s not any sense of judgment here.  The tone is detached to the point of being almost documentary-style, which is interesting given the nature of what’s happening.  That’s the whole point, I suppose.

At this point it’s really just a matter of Tsukasa’s lies holding out long enough for him to execute the final stage of his plan, which he’s convinced will give him enough leverage over the CEO to get whatever he wants.  Hayashi has foreseen this, giving Meiling a coded message to pass along to Satoru if he ever visits her peak – a warning about a “carrier pigeon” (she garbles it but Satoru pieces it together eventually).  Satoru initially believes Tsukasa’s lie about Hiroki being the one to crush Hayashi (in anger over his creating Meiling) and, ever careful, he’s tweaked Katsuragi’s memories to give his cover story credence.

Meanwhile Hiroki is hiding out in the apartment of a young woman he’s hypnotized into not being able to see him.  As he gets nibbled on by her pet bunny and listens to her squabble with her live-in boyfriend, Hiroki agonizes over Tsukasa.  He knows the truth of course – intellectually he can’t escape it – but the emotional dependence on the peak-giver is so powerful that someone (at least Hiroki) can’t prevent it from manipulating him.  You really have to feel for Hiroki – he’s in a total no-win situation, especially as Tsukasa has set him up to take the fall for Hayashi’s crushing.

There seem to be a couple of key questions here.  First, will Satoru figure out Hayashi-san’s warning in time to turn his ire from Hiroki to Tsukasa, where it belongs?  And second, will it matter even if he does?  Tsukasa seems to have the upper hand, given that he has an ability that Satoru is unaware of.  But I haven’t totally discounted the possibility that Satoru has already figured out Hayashi’s message through Meiling and it putting on an act himself, trapping the one who thinks he’s trapping him. That’s probably wishful thinking though – Satoru doesn’t seem like the type to dream up and pull off a stratagem like that on the fly.