James Nicoll Reviews

1995’s Pet Shop of Horrors, Volume One is the first tankōbon of Matsuri Akino’s horror manga series. Pet Shop of Horrors was first serialized in Ohzora Publishing’s Apple Mystery, then in Bunkasha’s Horror M; it ran from 1994 to 1998. The most recent English-language edition is 2025.

Pet shops can be found throughout Los Angeles, but those craving truly exotic pets seek out the mysterious Count D’s Chinatown establishment. Or, if they have any sense of self-preservation, they stay well away.

Cheerfully eccentric Count D. always seems to have just the right animal for patrons, no matter how unusual their desires. The odder animals are not kept on display, but rather in a special storeroom reached via a corridor whose length is hard to reconcile with the store’s dimensions. Customers bold enough to follow the Count to the back storeroom are always rewarded with a pet that is precisely what they asked for.

Count D. is well aware the animals he sells often have very particular needs. Therefore, each pet owner is given three instructions, different for each animal, that must be followed without fail. The customers are also informed that the store takes no responsibility for the consequences should the instructions be ignored.

Detective Leon Orcot notes a common element in recent spate of mysterious deaths. Shortly before dying, the victims — if they are victims — bought a pet from Count D. To Orcot’s immense frustration, he can find no basis to charge Count D. or to have his pet shop OF HORROR closed down.

But perhaps this will change. Grieving parents buy a rabbit that most curiously looks exactly like their late daughter¹. The instructions provided are clear. The instructions are (of course!) eventually violated. Result: an existential threat to all life in North America². Surely this will give Orcot justification to close Count D.’s store!

~oOo~

I did not care for the art in this manga.

Nearly reducing North America to a lifeless desert covered in dead rabbits is in fact not sufficient to close down Count D.’s store. The Count is adept at staying within US law. No matter how horrifying the results, the Count can never be found culpable.

Furthermore, the manga treats Chinatown as effectively sovereign. It is a community to which conventional American law is hard-pressed to apply. Did the author take Chinatown’s final line too literally?

The manga establishes the rules almost immediately, as Count D.’s abjuration of a soon-to-be former customer’s failure to follow simple instructions is interrupted by the sounds of the customer being eaten alive by the pets³. Each customer will be given clear guidelines, almost every customer will choose to violate them, and consequences will follow.

This formula leaves ample room for variation, apparently sufficient that the series is remembered as a classic from the old Tokyo-pop era⁴. It’s not my thing — I am certainly not going to read ten volumes of people failing to follow instructions when I get that for free at work — but clearly the series appeals to other readers.

Pet Shop of Horrors, Volume One is available here (Seven Seas), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Bookshop US), here (Bookshop UK), here (Chapters-Indigo), and here (Words Worth Books).

1: For some reason, the Count’s more exotic pets look human or at least partially human.

2: USA delenda est. Or at least it needs to greatly expand its animal import regulations.

3: It’s a clear reference to 1984’s Gremlins.

4: A publisher that went bankrupt.