Anime Review: Pet Episode 1

Pet

Studio: Geno Studio

Genre: Mystery, Fantasy

Streaming: Amazon Prime

Pet’s first episode is rather confusing and doesn’t give a lot away to its watchers. We start off inside a hospital where a mother talks to a doctor about the issues her son has been having recently. A man enters the room and it quickly becomes apparent that this man has psychic powers and is able to enter into the mind of the boy. Fast-forward some time, and the series now deals with some criminal dealings between the leader of a mysterious organisation and the owner of a bar. When things take a turn for the worse, however, it’s clear that there is something supernatural going on to do with the barman’s old friend who also used to work for the mysterious organisation.

If my summary of the episode sounds vague, that’s because the episode itself was. This isn’t a series that reveals a lot and instead relies on the viewer piecing together what is happening. Whilst this can work well as a concept, unfortunately, the first episode of Pet, just isn’t intriguing enough to make you want to figure out what’s really happening. Apparently, the second episode in the series helps explain a lot of things that were missing in the first episode but as this was not aired back to back, it left a big question mark over how to take that first episode – if it wasn’t able to stand alone as it was, then it risked losing the audience from the get-go.

The character designs are un-colourful and extremely bland, and unfortunately none of the characters really stand out. Despite the cool theme of a group of people who can essentially mind-hack others like in the movie, Inception, this isn’t really shown in an interesting way and ultimately you don’t care one way or another about the characters who are being hacked or doing the hacking. It’s also worth pointing out that this episode dealt with some rather dark themes such as suicide and murder which sets a rather grim tone to the atmosphere. Clearly, there is an emphasis on psychology, which fits with the ‘thought-hacking’ premise but it comes across more as unpleasant rather than gritty. The opening animation feels rather lazy, but the songs for the opening and ending are genuinely good ones.

Pet is a series that tries hard but somehow manages to miss the mark on all accounts – the characters aren’t particularly likable or memorable, the plot seems vague and not told well, and it’s overall a rather bland experience. It’s a shame as the whole idea of thought hackers in the criminal underworld could be really interesting and make for some riveting storylines but this first episode is not a good indicator of it going this route. All in all, this is not an anime I’d recommend to someone based on first impressions.