Join Irina for her latest musings on Pet. Episode 13.
via PET episode 13 – Kissing Gourami — 100 Word Anime
I don’t know why I chose such a grim picture for my header. I spent my whole post saying how surprisingly positive and bright this episode was. My inner troll is turning against me!
Pet is a show with visuals that suffered from lack of focus and mostly a very low budget. It had a plot and premise that almost demanded impressive imagery but it simply didn’t have the resources to follow through. But I wouldn’t say there was a lack of talent.
Look at the character designs for instance. They’re not striking, and some might argue not interesting but there’s quite a bit of thought put in. Hiroki with his huge eyes and spiky teenage hair looks like the innocent kid he is but those yellow pupils and cat shaped eyes that recall a lion betray his tremendous strength as an image wielder. Satoru on the other hand is huge and had this yankee look going but he’s softened by rounded features and relatively small wide set eyes and ends up looking more comforting than menacing despite it all.
We see all characters as kids at some point and they really de-age their designs well. But the bast in that regard is Tsukasa. In many ways, Tsukasa is just a basic every man sort of design but he was the most visually striking child and it’s meaningful that he became progressively less distinctive looking as he lost himself to his bitterness and thirst for revenge.
This episode we even saw Katsuragi as a younger man and once again, the transformation was simply fantastic.
Like I said, the production lacked focus. There was quite a few good elements but they never came together in a cohesive way and the whole became less than the sum of it’s parts. I’m going to assume that this may be a failure of the director.
But the director isn’t unskilled either. There have been several sequences with great camera work and wonderful dynamic framing. The soundtrack was very light but atmospheric noises or lack of music was judiciously used for mood. I’m saying there was skill involved. Better than I could do!
I think that with a bit more resources and maybe better source material (actually the Pet mange might be amazing for all I know…) this production team could really create something impressive.
Unfortunately, this time they just made something o.k.
