Does anyone remember Tamagotchi? Or maybe you had a Giga-Pet growing up? Whatever the case a virtual pet goes by many brand names and today we read one story that is both inspired by the virtual pet craze of the 90’s and the lore behind hermaphrodites (that’s intersex people for those in the know). We also have one story inspired by Dracula and another involving race horses. This is gonna be a fun one! Skip synopsis @ 9:44
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129: Petshop of Horrors vol. 4
By Akino Matsuri
Translation by Tomoharu Iwo and James Lucas Jones
Lettering by Nunu Ngien
Synopsis:
When the only witnesses to a murder seems to be to fishes, detective Leon Orcot has D, the mysterious and bohemian Petshop manager take care of them. During the investigation they hunt for one suspect a woman who perhaps dated the murder victim. As things develop D works the case with Leon as an advisor and they soon come across a new witness. A cyber-pet in the form of a digital fish, they learn that like the fishes the murder victim themself was a hermaphrodite, someone capable of changing their gender or at the very least be able to pass as both genders. It becomes clear that the murderer was possibly transphobic. But luckily the cyber-pet had cameras connected and was able to record the crime, although Leon finds it hard for a pet’s words to be admissible in court. D assures him that machines are valued in court, because machines do not lie.
In Dark-Horse, Leon and D are on a film set and witness one of the stunt women, Betty, having an accident.
The horse breaks its leg, meaning that it will need to be put down, which upsets Betty. D comforts her and learns that she is working part time as a stunt woman, with plans of becoming a jockey and using her own horse to compete in a derby. Betty takes D to her stable and finds she has one horse named sudden death, much to her surprise D recognises that the horse is deaf as well as very calm around the man.
Not long after this Betty’s father ends up in hospital, and to pay for his hospital bills she goes to visit D and see what horses he can make a deal with. Of course, it is no surprise D has one called Nightmare, but Betty is taken back to see that the horse that broke their leg is now recovered and being looked after by D.
In the end Betty decides not to sell her horse, and instead use Sudden Death to compete in the derby. D promises to help her win and plans to make a miracle happen.
On the day of the race, D attends with Leon to support Betty and Sudden Death. He gives Leon a whistle to cheer on Sudden Death. And Leon, because he is an idiot uses the whistle. Because of this Sudden Death wins the race. And in turn it proves D’s theory that the horse is a thoroughbred descendent of Matchem, and thus recognises the legendary and somewhat enchanted whistle.
Leon finally has a reason to arrest D since he rigged the game. However, D makes it clear, since they both placed a generous bet on the horse and Leon did blow the whistle, this means Leon is an accessory to the crime.
The last story of this volume is a sort of ‘X-files’ meets ‘Murder She Wrote’ style chapter called ‘Dracula,’ which tells the story of a vampire on the loose in America who is specifically targeting east Asian men that fits the description of D.
Leon is assigned to protect D as he is partnered with FBI profiler, Norma Langley. She protests the theory of a vampire and explains the cause of death is poison made to look like a vampire attack. But things get tense when leaves Leon to look out on D whilst she decides to catch their unsubdued vampire by herself. Leon gets into a fight with one man, suspecting him of wanting to poison D with his gifts of cake and wine.
But the two make up and Leon gets him a beer, he learns that the man is named Alex, still mourning the loss of his dead lover.
In the climax of the story Leon decides that the safest place to hide D is by locking him up in a cell at the police station. Leon then investigates D’s home and finds a photo of what appears to be D, Norma, and Alex in the same room. Even if one denies the existence of vampires the correlation is too strong to be coincidence.
In a twist of fate. Norma shows up at the station and mortally wounds D, then she waits for the vampire to show. And he does show, Alex flies in and comes just in time to protect D but first he drinks the blood from D’s wound, “ending the contract” as he claims. By drinking D’s blood Alex turns into vapor and dies leaving no corpse. Norma tells D she lost the bet, thinking that Alex would move on the from the death of his lover and instead reunite with her, but Alex chose to reject Norma and unite with his lost love in death.
When Leon makes it back to the station, he finds the coffee pots are laced with tranquilizer and sees that D is accompanied by a bat within his prison cell. The bat flies out through the bars and out the window. D is the last person to see Norma, who turned out to be a fake FBI agent after all. Leon refuses to believe that she was a vampire.
· The chapters “Flowers and the Detective” will be talked about in a separate episode since these chapters share one continuity and act as a lore building side story to the plot. Having three parts and an additional chapter or two.
Context:
· Cyber-Pets (or Virtual-Pets) are pocket sized electronic toys that can be carried on a key ring. They were popular in the mid to late 90’s with Bandai’s Tamagotchi being the most famous (itself a portmanteau of the Japanese words “egg” and “watch”). Tamagotchi were also a precursor to Pokémon’s rival Digimon, Whilst Giga-pets were a western competitor to Tamagotchi, released by Tiger Electronics with licensed deals to make Giga-Pets tie-in merchandise for existing franchises, such as Rugrats™ for one.
Historical, scientific, and cultural references:
· The term “Hermaphrodite” has origins in Greek mythology. Hermaphroditus being the child of Hermes and Aphrodite, whose story is told in Ovid’s metamorphoses.
· There are two types of hermaphroditism, Sequential and Simultaneous, the most common in fish is sequential, meaning it can only be one gender at one time. A Clown Fish, (think of titular character of Finding Nemo) will become male first, even becoming sexual but since these fishes exist in a hierarchy, they serve the sexually dominant female. If the female dies, the sexual male, becomes a female. So, it is male first, then maybe it will become female when it gets higher up and become the alpha of the group. They are not polygamous; males tend to stick by one female.
· Humans do not experience hermaphrodism like animals. They do not change sex as some sort of Darwinist response to their environment or their age. However, intersex people do exist. At birth you either have male or female sex organs but some are born with both sex organs. Studies have claimed that in terms of fertility the biology of intersex people favoured motherhood more than fatherhood, (although fatherhood could be possible, the studies show it is rare) [Peculiar in that it supports that women are the “default” gender, with males having nipples develop in the womb before they develop gonads, women too may have an enlarged clitoris which may be mistaken for male genitalia, of course this is supposition. – James]
· Although not mentioned by James and Will, a person defined as an intersex person could be someone whose puberty is halted or interrupted by underlying conditions, such as, Turner syndrome, Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS) or XYY (Klinefelter) Syndrome to name a few.
· The coronation of Victoria as Queen of the United Kingdom took place on Thursday, 28 June 1838, she was 19 years old at the time. According to Lucy Worsley’s book, ‘Queen Victoria - Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow’ the coronation was a bit messy as far as coronations go; the royal treasurer threw silver medals commemorating the event at the crowd which caused quite a ruckus.
· Matchem is a famous thoroughbred horse who was used for breeding between 1758 and 1781. Eclipse and Herod are also famous horses for the same reason.
· His many offspring, include Pumpkin, won up to 1,000 racing matches. And another of Matchem’s offspring, Conductor, gave off a good family tree of winners, including Trumpator who begot, Sorcerer, who then begot Smolensko and Wizard. Why do horses have crazy cool names?
· One of D’s horses is a clear a reference to Henry Fuseli’s 1781 painting of the same name. The image of the horse in the manga is based on the same horse in Fuseli’s 1791 rendition, because of its popularity Fuseli made multiple versions of the painting. All of them depict a woman sleeping, with a demon resting on top of her and a horse peering into the room behind a curtain. A lot do consider it the first depiction of sleep paralysis in an oil painting.
· Alex has a bottle of Tokaj (Tokay) wine as a gift to D. Named after its vineyards in Hungary. It is the same wine that Dracula gives to Johnathan Harker in Bram Stoker’s famous novel!
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