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Petshop of Horrors: FAQ
Dec. 1st, 2006 02:41 pmThis is a collection of my answers to some questions that keep cropping up.
Please note that this page is rife with spoilers.
Q: Why does the female D in "Donor" turn into a monkey? Is D a monkey? Why is his sister a monkey?!
A: Since Matsuri lists D's species as "unknown", and his father, when he is killed, explodes in fantastical phantom animals plus a vine that bears a human baby, the Ds are probably not monkeys, no. The monkey is not necessarily biologically related to him at all (indeed, cannot be, given what D-dad says about reproducing without any outside DNA mixing--that is, asexually; asexual reproduction does not produce mixed genders). Recall that both Japan and China use the custom of using family terms (grandmother, sister, etc.) as respectful references to people who are not related, as well as those who are.
Q: Okay, but then why was she basically D's twin?
A: Given the fluidity of human-animal appearance in this story, and D-dad's apparent emphasis on how the donor-monkey was being raised to give her parts to D, this should not be surprising. Form follows function to an extent, with the animals' anthro-shapes, and her function was to parallel D and supply any physical deficiencies he might have.
Q: So Leon was right, in "Dragon", about D having a bad heart?
A: Since the context of "Donor" is that of monkeys being heart-transplant-donors, that certainly seems likely, yes.
Q: Okay, but then what are the Ds?
A: We don't know. We know they originated in China. We are told his kind used to have male and female, could always communicate with animals including mystical ones, brought prophecies to the village (presumably of humans) they lived near, and were regarded as seers, mystics and sorcerors once they were brought to the Imperial court to fortell for the Emperor. We are also told that, after they are massacred, only one male survives. We are given a scene in which he, dying, is surrounded by animals who are most likely spirits themselves given the variety who are not native to China, and in which we see what appear to be words spoken by the animals lamenting how there were exterminated just the same way that man's people were.
D's people might have been human to start with, perhaps of a tribe/group separate from those that constituted the Empire at the time. They might have been spirits of the land, or half-spirits, all along. Chinese (and Japanese) folklore and mythology certainly provide lots of precedent for humans becoming spirits or gods, or for spirits/gods interacting with humans in a remarkably quotidian manner.
Given the way the voice/spirits of animals emerge from D's and his father's blood, the animals we see gathered around the dying man may have merged with him in some way, making the whole amalgam into a single spirit of vengeance for those who have been extinguished. Or perhaps the man, or his spirit, were simply made avatars of that drive.
D is clearly material, but this does not rule out his being a spirit. Whatever his composition, he is shown to heal and regenerate remarkably quickly. This appears to extend to what happens in death, eg the vines that appear and the human baby that D-grandad indicates is D-dad reborn. D-grandad even says that rebirth is the natural life-cycle of their species.
D's line, starting from that one survivor, appears to be something new and singular, though not unprecedented. In other words, don't try to match him up exactly to any existing spirit/species/whatever. Look instead for general similarities.
Q: When did the massacre of D's people happen? Was the survivor his grandfather?
A: Based on the clothing styles shown when the story is told, it happened either during the Tang Dynasty or else in Ancient Times (tm). In either case, the survivor was unlikely to be D-grandad.
The clothing the people in the story are wearing appears to be of the Tang period--other dynastic periods do not feature sleeves that long and wide. However, this does not necessarily mean that the events happend during the Tang period. Tang is held to be the golden age of China, a high point of culture, beauty and sophistication. And it is not unusual for any culture to dress its ancient or mythic heros up in clothing that is nowhere near the actual time period in question, but is rather drawn from the most colorful period of that culture's history. (Case in point: Arthurian legend.)
There is, of course, nothing specifically stating that the survivor was not D-grandad. But the Tang Dynasty was in the 7th century C.E. and China's Mythic Past (tm) starts almost three thousand years ago. Given the short lifespans demonstrated within the actual confines of the Petshop story, it seems unlikely that D-grandad is at least fourteen hundred years old.
Q: So what did D-dad mean about reproducing without any DNA mixing? Do they bud or what?
A: We don't know that, either. Clearly they do replicate in some way, and that way does not appear to be part of the death-and-rebirth cycle. The individual, in that case, does carry on, while three generations of Ds are shown all co-existing and claiming a lineal descent, one to another. As animals they might bud, or regenerate like starfish. Or, given the way they seem to break out in vines when fixing to die, maybe they put out a runner or drop leaves. Actually, their mode does bear the most resemblance to vegetative reproduction.
Q: So, is D actually male, then? Or... what?
A: Also unknown. The Ds do not have any secondary sexual characeristics at all, male or female, so it's hard to tell by looking. That could, in itself, indicate that they do not have sex, possibly not even sexual organs.
On the other hand, they seem to self-identify as male. It's brought up several times that the Ds do not like being mistaken for women. The best example might be in "Duel", when Wan Kuo Wen mentions that he mistook D-grandad for a girl and proposed, and D-grandad was annoyed. D mentions that D-grandad thought Wan was gay, so maybe they're even. This suggests that the Ds are, indeed, structurally male. If they are clonal decendants of the final survivor, who was definitely male, this makes some sense. They started out as a sexual species, with male and female, and only switched to asexual later on.
Q: Whose kid is it that we see Chris meeting at the end of the first series?
A: We don't know that either, but, since the precedent seems to be one offspring to each individual, we can probably assume that he is D's son fairly safely.
Another common theory is that it's D-dad, having been reborn. Points of note on this issue are that D-grandad says, in "D...", "my son, you have given birth to a human child" and D, later in the same story, tells Leon "Humans cannot travel on this boat", speaking of the petshop in its ship form. The combination of these things makes it seem unlikely that D-dad, now apparently a human, would be the one in charge of the petshop that Chris meets.
Q: Ha, so that means D and Leon do have a kid together!
A: No, it doesn't. See above, re asexual reproduction and not mixing in anyone else's genes. Whether Leon catches up with D or not, the fourth generation that Chris meets cannot be their offspring.
Q: Why would D-dad want to be reborn as a human?
A: Any answer to this, as most of the others, must be speculative; Matsuri doesn't give us a direct one. Consider, though, the ways D-dad is shown to act, especially in "Donor" and "Diamonde". In "Donor" he provides a monkey to die for D's sake, which seems to horrify D; he attempts to reject what his father has arranged, at first. In "Diamonde" the wife-bird so objects to D-dad's plans to artificially impregnate another bird with her dead husband's sperm that she charges D to stop the thing from going forward, even if it means her species will become extinct. In both cases, the measures D-dad takes are explicitly paralleled with the measures humans take, measures which D considers insupportable impositions on the animals involved. Consider, too, that D-dad seems to be estranged from the other two members of his family, and that D-grandad did not trust him to raise D, and that D always says he is minding the store for his grandfather, not for his father; D-dad does not seem to be involved with the petshop at all.
Given all of this, it seems likely that D-dad finds himself considerably in sympathy with human mindsets, perhaps too much in sympathy to do his family's job properly. This would make sense of D-grandad's words "No matter how many you betrayed and killed, it was your wish to be reborn as one of them." This desire would explain why D-dad, apparently, bluffs Agent Howell (and, in the end, Leon) into killing him, taunting Howell with a "virus" that turns out to be a fake, urging him to shoot. Both D-dad's desire to retrieve his son from straying and preserve him from the conflict of heart D-dad seems to suffer, and the opportunity to resolve that conflict for himself, come together in his death.
Q: Is D gay?
A: Keep in mind that "gay" is a socio-cultural construct of the past century or so, and until very recently has been specific to the West. D's cultural continuity, such as it is, appears to be Chinese and pretty firmly divorced from human mores and social categories. So that question might not be one that we can apply to D. That said, D is presented as living in countries that currently subscribe to the concept of gayness (the US and Japan), and D, as Leon notes for us, exhibits some behaviors that match with those marked as gay in those cultures, such as makeup and long nails and a "dress" on someone who seems to be male and is not part of the Idol Industry.
However.
It does to remember that all of those things are also consonant with various periods of Chinese aristocratic fashions. The "dress" in particular is of the older fashion that falls straight rather than being tight and clinging, and was worn by men and women both. See cheongsam.
In addition, D is not human. His people may or may not have been human at one time, but D's line, in their current form, clearly and repeatedly identify with the not-human animal and plant world. In other words, he might not be sexually attracted to humans (or anything else) at all, male or female.
It is made fairly clear over the course of the stories that D is perfectly capable of affection. Sexual attraction, however, is never evidenced or even hinted at except in jest.
Q: Well, but what about Wong?
A: What, you can't spot when the mangaka is having us on? D tells us that he recognizes Wong as a totetsu immediately, and he thinks, when annoyed by Leon's interruption, that he wanted a totetsu for the shop badly enough that he wouldn't mind losing an arm for it. He reacts to Wong's attempt to chop him up in very much the same way he reacts to Wong kissing him: not at all. He allows both in order to secure a rare animal he wants.
In fact, he reacts to Wong's kiss rather the same way he reacts to Anessa's kiss, earlier in the same issue. Matsuri often parallels two stories within a chapter so that one can emphasize or shed light on the other, as in "Donor" and "Diamonde". In "Dessert", she gives us someone kissing D quite early on and shows us that he does not respond to the overture; instead he appears compliant in order to get Anessa where he can deal with her. Given her account of her experience, he seems to take her to one of the shop's rooms where she wanders in the wild, just the same way he takes the drug-stealing thugs to a room where they will be eaten (again with the paralleling). Similarly, he appears compliant for Wong in order to get Wong where he can deal with him.
As for the floating hearts, Wong makes him dessert, and we all know how hearts-and-flowers D gets about good dessert, no matter who provides it.
Q: Okay, then, is Leon gay?
A: We don't know, but I consider it doubtful. He has pin-ups on the walls of his appartment and only ever reacts to or pursues women. It is possible that he is in denial, but pasting naked women all over his bachelor apartment seems to be a bit too far to go for ordinary denial.
It does seem slightly more possible that he finds himself drawn to D, in particular. One of the women he reacts to is D's "sister", and he remarks on how much of a difference it makes to see D with breasts. However, I would take this as an indication that he cannot, in fact, find D attractive without an overtly feminine body. Intense as his relationship with D is, and much as they act like the proverbial "old married couple", Leon never does anything that indicates a sexual awareness of D himself. Indeed, on those occassions when D twits him with innuendo, Leon takes himself off with an attitude of annoyance, not the panic we might expect if he were attracted and in denial. I am happy to entertain the suggestion that he loves D, but the idea that he's sexually attracted, much less gay, has no substantiation in the text.
Please note that this page is rife with spoilers.
Q: Why does the female D in "Donor" turn into a monkey? Is D a monkey? Why is his sister a monkey?!
A: Since Matsuri lists D's species as "unknown", and his father, when he is killed, explodes in fantastical phantom animals plus a vine that bears a human baby, the Ds are probably not monkeys, no. The monkey is not necessarily biologically related to him at all (indeed, cannot be, given what D-dad says about reproducing without any outside DNA mixing--that is, asexually; asexual reproduction does not produce mixed genders). Recall that both Japan and China use the custom of using family terms (grandmother, sister, etc.) as respectful references to people who are not related, as well as those who are.
.
Q: Okay, but then why was she basically D's twin?
A: Given the fluidity of human-animal appearance in this story, and D-dad's apparent emphasis on how the donor-monkey was being raised to give her parts to D, this should not be surprising. Form follows function to an extent, with the animals' anthro-shapes, and her function was to parallel D and supply any physical deficiencies he might have.
.
Q: So Leon was right, in "Dragon", about D having a bad heart?
A: Since the context of "Donor" is that of monkeys being heart-transplant-donors, that certainly seems likely, yes.
.
Q: Okay, but then what are the Ds?
A: We don't know. We know they originated in China. We are told his kind used to have male and female, could always communicate with animals including mystical ones, brought prophecies to the village (presumably of humans) they lived near, and were regarded as seers, mystics and sorcerors once they were brought to the Imperial court to fortell for the Emperor. We are also told that, after they are massacred, only one male survives. We are given a scene in which he, dying, is surrounded by animals who are most likely spirits themselves given the variety who are not native to China, and in which we see what appear to be words spoken by the animals lamenting how there were exterminated just the same way that man's people were.
D's people might have been human to start with, perhaps of a tribe/group separate from those that constituted the Empire at the time. They might have been spirits of the land, or half-spirits, all along. Chinese (and Japanese) folklore and mythology certainly provide lots of precedent for humans becoming spirits or gods, or for spirits/gods interacting with humans in a remarkably quotidian manner.
Given the way the voice/spirits of animals emerge from D's and his father's blood, the animals we see gathered around the dying man may have merged with him in some way, making the whole amalgam into a single spirit of vengeance for those who have been extinguished. Or perhaps the man, or his spirit, were simply made avatars of that drive.
D is clearly material, but this does not rule out his being a spirit. Whatever his composition, he is shown to heal and regenerate remarkably quickly. This appears to extend to what happens in death, eg the vines that appear and the human baby that D-grandad indicates is D-dad reborn. D-grandad even says that rebirth is the natural life-cycle of their species.
D's line, starting from that one survivor, appears to be something new and singular, though not unprecedented. In other words, don't try to match him up exactly to any existing spirit/species/whatever. Look instead for general similarities.
.
Q: When did the massacre of D's people happen? Was the survivor his grandfather?
A: Based on the clothing styles shown when the story is told, it happened either during the Tang Dynasty or else in Ancient Times (tm). In either case, the survivor was unlikely to be D-grandad.
The clothing the people in the story are wearing appears to be of the Tang period--other dynastic periods do not feature sleeves that long and wide. However, this does not necessarily mean that the events happend during the Tang period. Tang is held to be the golden age of China, a high point of culture, beauty and sophistication. And it is not unusual for any culture to dress its ancient or mythic heros up in clothing that is nowhere near the actual time period in question, but is rather drawn from the most colorful period of that culture's history. (Case in point: Arthurian legend.)
There is, of course, nothing specifically stating that the survivor was not D-grandad. But the Tang Dynasty was in the 7th century C.E. and China's Mythic Past (tm) starts almost three thousand years ago. Given the short lifespans demonstrated within the actual confines of the Petshop story, it seems unlikely that D-grandad is at least fourteen hundred years old.
.
Q: So what did D-dad mean about reproducing without any DNA mixing? Do they bud or what?
A: We don't know that, either. Clearly they do replicate in some way, and that way does not appear to be part of the death-and-rebirth cycle. The individual, in that case, does carry on, while three generations of Ds are shown all co-existing and claiming a lineal descent, one to another. As animals they might bud, or regenerate like starfish. Or, given the way they seem to break out in vines when fixing to die, maybe they put out a runner or drop leaves. Actually, their mode does bear the most resemblance to vegetative reproduction.
.
Q: So, is D actually male, then? Or... what?
A: Also unknown. The Ds do not have any secondary sexual characeristics at all, male or female, so it's hard to tell by looking. That could, in itself, indicate that they do not have sex, possibly not even sexual organs.
On the other hand, they seem to self-identify as male. It's brought up several times that the Ds do not like being mistaken for women. The best example might be in "Duel", when Wan Kuo Wen mentions that he mistook D-grandad for a girl and proposed, and D-grandad was annoyed. D mentions that D-grandad thought Wan was gay, so maybe they're even. This suggests that the Ds are, indeed, structurally male. If they are clonal decendants of the final survivor, who was definitely male, this makes some sense. They started out as a sexual species, with male and female, and only switched to asexual later on.
.
Q: Whose kid is it that we see Chris meeting at the end of the first series?
A: We don't know that either, but, since the precedent seems to be one offspring to each individual, we can probably assume that he is D's son fairly safely.
Another common theory is that it's D-dad, having been reborn. Points of note on this issue are that D-grandad says, in "D...", "my son, you have given birth to a human child" and D, later in the same story, tells Leon "Humans cannot travel on this boat", speaking of the petshop in its ship form. The combination of these things makes it seem unlikely that D-dad, now apparently a human, would be the one in charge of the petshop that Chris meets.
.
Q: Ha, so that means D and Leon do have a kid together!
A: No, it doesn't. See above, re asexual reproduction and not mixing in anyone else's genes. Whether Leon catches up with D or not, the fourth generation that Chris meets cannot be their offspring.
.
Q: Why would D-dad want to be reborn as a human?
A: Any answer to this, as most of the others, must be speculative; Matsuri doesn't give us a direct one. Consider, though, the ways D-dad is shown to act, especially in "Donor" and "Diamonde". In "Donor" he provides a monkey to die for D's sake, which seems to horrify D; he attempts to reject what his father has arranged, at first. In "Diamonde" the wife-bird so objects to D-dad's plans to artificially impregnate another bird with her dead husband's sperm that she charges D to stop the thing from going forward, even if it means her species will become extinct. In both cases, the measures D-dad takes are explicitly paralleled with the measures humans take, measures which D considers insupportable impositions on the animals involved. Consider, too, that D-dad seems to be estranged from the other two members of his family, and that D-grandad did not trust him to raise D, and that D always says he is minding the store for his grandfather, not for his father; D-dad does not seem to be involved with the petshop at all.
Given all of this, it seems likely that D-dad finds himself considerably in sympathy with human mindsets, perhaps too much in sympathy to do his family's job properly. This would make sense of D-grandad's words "No matter how many you betrayed and killed, it was your wish to be reborn as one of them." This desire would explain why D-dad, apparently, bluffs Agent Howell (and, in the end, Leon) into killing him, taunting Howell with a "virus" that turns out to be a fake, urging him to shoot. Both D-dad's desire to retrieve his son from straying and preserve him from the conflict of heart D-dad seems to suffer, and the opportunity to resolve that conflict for himself, come together in his death.
.
Q: Is D gay?
A: Keep in mind that "gay" is a socio-cultural construct of the past century or so, and until very recently has been specific to the West. D's cultural continuity, such as it is, appears to be Chinese and pretty firmly divorced from human mores and social categories. So that question might not be one that we can apply to D. That said, D is presented as living in countries that currently subscribe to the concept of gayness (the US and Japan), and D, as Leon notes for us, exhibits some behaviors that match with those marked as gay in those cultures, such as makeup and long nails and a "dress" on someone who seems to be male and is not part of the Idol Industry.
However.
It does to remember that all of those things are also consonant with various periods of Chinese aristocratic fashions. The "dress" in particular is of the older fashion that falls straight rather than being tight and clinging, and was worn by men and women both. See cheongsam.
In addition, D is not human. His people may or may not have been human at one time, but D's line, in their current form, clearly and repeatedly identify with the not-human animal and plant world. In other words, he might not be sexually attracted to humans (or anything else) at all, male or female.
It is made fairly clear over the course of the stories that D is perfectly capable of affection. Sexual attraction, however, is never evidenced or even hinted at except in jest.
.
Q: Well, but what about Wong?
A: What, you can't spot when the mangaka is having us on? D tells us that he recognizes Wong as a totetsu immediately, and he thinks, when annoyed by Leon's interruption, that he wanted a totetsu for the shop badly enough that he wouldn't mind losing an arm for it. He reacts to Wong's attempt to chop him up in very much the same way he reacts to Wong kissing him: not at all. He allows both in order to secure a rare animal he wants.
In fact, he reacts to Wong's kiss rather the same way he reacts to Anessa's kiss, earlier in the same issue. Matsuri often parallels two stories within a chapter so that one can emphasize or shed light on the other, as in "Donor" and "Diamonde". In "Dessert", she gives us someone kissing D quite early on and shows us that he does not respond to the overture; instead he appears compliant in order to get Anessa where he can deal with her. Given her account of her experience, he seems to take her to one of the shop's rooms where she wanders in the wild, just the same way he takes the drug-stealing thugs to a room where they will be eaten (again with the paralleling). Similarly, he appears compliant for Wong in order to get Wong where he can deal with him.
As for the floating hearts, Wong makes him dessert, and we all know how hearts-and-flowers D gets about good dessert, no matter who provides it.
.
Q: Okay, then, is Leon gay?
A: We don't know, but I consider it doubtful. He has pin-ups on the walls of his appartment and only ever reacts to or pursues women. It is possible that he is in denial, but pasting naked women all over his bachelor apartment seems to be a bit too far to go for ordinary denial.
It does seem slightly more possible that he finds himself drawn to D, in particular. One of the women he reacts to is D's "sister", and he remarks on how much of a difference it makes to see D with breasts. However, I would take this as an indication that he cannot, in fact, find D attractive without an overtly feminine body. Intense as his relationship with D is, and much as they act like the proverbial "old married couple", Leon never does anything that indicates a sexual awareness of D himself. Indeed, on those occassions when D twits him with innuendo, Leon takes himself off with an attitude of annoyance, not the panic we might expect if he were attracted and in denial. I am happy to entertain the suggestion that he loves D, but the idea that he's sexually attracted, much less gay, has no substantiation in the text.
