It would not be accurate by any stretch of the imagination to say that I love Pet.  I’m not even sure I like it.  But I can’t deny that it has an impact.  I feel stuff watching it – mostly anger and disgust, but that’s still stuff.  There’s talent on display here to be sure – in the writing, and of course in the direction from Oomori Takahiro.  I’m not sure if there’s any point to it, but I don’t suppose their has to be.  Basically Pet exists as a provocateur (at least for me), and a rather powerful one at that.

No question, this is one of the bleakest and most depressing anime experiences I’ve had in a while.  In part that’s because it isn’t throwaway material, easy to dismiss as torture porn or cheap drama.  Pet has an unerringly keen sense of human nature, which is why it plays so unsettlingly real despite being based on the paranormal.  Human beings manipulate each other all the time.  Many of our closest relationships are emotionally abusive, one partner manipulating the other for their own gratification.  Powerful monied interests work in the shadows, exploiting the unknowing for purposes of greed and perpetuating their own influence.  The only difference is that here, the limiters are taken off.

I can say this much – if Tsukasa ends up being successful in crushing Satoru, I’m going to consider the whole experience to have been pretty pointless.  Even in a story as nihilistic as this one it’d be nice to have at least some sense of cosmic justice at work here.  Tsukasa may be around the bend, but he’s still an expert manipulator – as witness his getting the CEO and Yang to buy in on his plan to fix things after Hiroki flies the coop (which is really a plan to crush Satoru).  His capacity to manipulate is seemingly endless, and by no means is Hiroki safe from his clutches.

Hiroki and Satoru are definitely the ones you have to feel something for here.  Hiroki is such a child that Tsukasa isn’t wrong, he might not be able to fend for himself.  But at least he has to courage to call a spade a spade – knowing what he knows, he sees the holes in Tsukasa’s latest attempts to spin his crushing of Hayashi and the need to crush Satoru.  My hope is that Hiroki will get to Satoru before Tsukasa does and the two of them will lay a trap for Tsukasa – but I’m still highly skeptical that Hiroki could go through with something like that when push comes to shove.

The thing is…  Even if that were to happen, then what?  The company has already targeted Hiroki for elimination and I see no reason to suspect they’d ever change their mind.  And I don’t think Hiroki would ever willingly go along on this darkest of paths that Tsukasa has chosen.  No, something has to give here.  And while the feeling is nothing new, it’s hard to imagine this ending well for anybody you’d like to see it end well for.