Pet – 03

「仕事」 (Shigoto)
“Jobs”

Pet is like a slow-cooked meal. It’s been prepared with care and placed in the oven on low-medium heat. The build-up is slow, long but tender enough that you know the end result will be worth it (hopefully).

I am thoroughly enjoying this series. The production quality could be better if you ask me, but for once, it hasn’t affected my interest in the story or characters. The larger organization alluded to in the first two episodes now has a name but remains vague all the same: The Company. Its members include ‘crushers’, ‘handlers’, and other agents who contribute to a corrupt system of crime, bribes, murders, and more.

Managing an organization with people who can basically manipulate one’s reality can’t be easy, and it must be even more difficult keeping them in check. Something about how Tsukasa handles Hiroshi shows me that Hiroshi is most likely as powerful (or more) as Satoru. Tsukasa gives in to his every whim. At first, I thought it was a natural reaction between mentor and mentee, or love between two people who care for one another. But it seems that Tsukasa ‘treasures’ Hiroshi as an asset of sorts. So why not keep him happy as much as possible? In the short or long term, it causes the Company fewer problems and keeps its asset close. Essentially like keeping a ‘pet’ on a short leash.

Aside from Hiroshi and Tsukasa’s dynamic, there’s also the situation with Hayashi, the crusher who took Satoru under his wing. Apparently, he went AWOL without Katsuragi’s or the Company’s consent. What does it mean to desert such a powerful entity? What does that mean for Satoru? Tsukasa seems to have his own motives for finding Hayashi which in itself is suspicious.

I’m pretty focused on the functionality of this group more than I am on the various jobs they’re given. However, these missions can’t be ignored. It’s where all the psychedelic stuff happens.

Navigating a person’s psyche is like being on shrooms. There’s a good trip which leads you to someone’s peak, and there’s the bad trip, which drags you down into their valley. In this episode, we follow Tsukasa as he navigates the really harrowing life of a killer, Inui. As a boy, his masculinity was repressed by his mother over and over again. The anger in him built up and eventually turned him into a murderer.

This ability to ‘sense’ other people’s memories is actually a really nifty tool that helps move the plot along. The viewer becomes empathetic towards the person whose memories are being shared, and because of it, even after watching Inui brutally kill someone else, the viewer feels empathetic. So far, we’ve seen a few different stories, a few different backgrounds, all establishing the root of each person, their personalities, their values. And every time, we learn to release our resentment for those individual’s mistakes or vicious actions. I’m using a general we but feel free to disagree.

Either way, I wonder what else we’ll learn as the show progresses. What is the larger game being played? Or are these crimes (the body in the barrel, the suicide, etc.) not linked in any way? Only time will tell.