Somewhere in Chinatown is a shop that sells love, hope, and dreams... unless of course you break the contract. Then the owner simply can't be responsible for the repercussions...Naturally as one could expect from such a premise, Petshop is not a happy little series. Only ten volumes in length, the series is mainly episodic, settling into a series of mini-dramas on the fallibility of human nature. A typical chapter begins with a pet being bought from the shop, where upon the buyer is given a contract containing three seemingly simple conditions. As can be expected it nearly always proves impossible, due to greed or other human fault, to hold to these rules and (often rather bloody, particulary in the early volumes) tragedy occurs. Blessed comedic relief comes in the form of Detective Leon Orcot, a rather crass American police officer obsessed with bringing in the shop's owner, Count D. Of course he's never able to prove anything-who's going to believe that D possess beasts seen only in stories, that often the pets he sells are human in appearance? And is it all a trick brought on by the mysterious incense of the Count's shop, or true magic? Well, much like Leon the reader isn't always satisfied with the answers. But answers aren't really the point here anyway. Mostly they take a backseat to Akino's eerie, beautiful art and the series' odd philosophy on humanity. Not to mention the wonderful love-hate relationship of Leon and D, which strings these seemingly unrelated incidents together and gives the reader something constant to hold to. The ending may not have the answers, but it has something more, something bittersweetly satisfying--possibility.
Final Verdict: 5Q, 3P
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