In Pet, certain individuals have the ability to enter people’s hearts, and the first episode lets us glimpse two sides of the same coin. You can either use this power to heal a fractured mind or use it to further your own nefarious aims. Unfortunately for all the do-gooders out there, the majority of the episode is devoted to the latter. When Kenji threatens to expose the bad guys, his mind gets fucked with. He seems to have gotten off lucky, though. Only his memories have been rearranged. His buddy, on the other hand, was convinced to drive off a cliff. So as you can imagine, one might be able to do all sorts of damage when they have free reign of someone’s heart. Kenji should count his blessings… for now, anyways.

So alright, that premise seems pretty neat, right? Yeah, I guess. But Pet doesn’t exactly have the best animation nor the most inspiring vision. The first episode is very flat and unexciting. Its storytelling also… well, it leaves something to be desired. If this is our introduction to the world of mindfuckery, this is not the most scintillating first impression. I’m neither hooked nor repelled. I just feel meh about the whole thing. No creative storyboarding, no charismatic characters stealing the show, no anything really besides one short sequence where a man slowly loses his mind in a not-so-confusing fashion. Sorry, but you gotta do better than a giant eyeball and one pretty boy licking another pretty boy’s nipple. I’m not expecting a visual feast on the level of Paprika, but Pet feels a little safe and bog standard. I am not calling it quits yet, though. I’ll give the show at least another episode now that it has settled in a bit.

Then we have Murenase! Seton Gakuen, which gave me the best laugh of the night… not intentionally, of course. It’s probably your typical harem romcom, but with a twist! Y’see, we’re at an academy for animals. MC-kun is a human and you might balk at that, but humans are animals too so it all works out!

Except for the fact that we have animal animals…

…and animals that us humans might not feel too guilty about fucking. Yeah, that girl is supposed to be a zebra, but she doesn’t really look like one. Not to me, anyways. But don’t worry, her hair’s in a ponytail and she has on a pair of striped panties, ’cause y’know… zebras and stripes? Man, it’s like I’m watching National Geographic!

You wouldn’t fuck a dog, would you? Naw, dogs are our friends!

But would you fuck Ranka, the pink-haired lone wolfu? So yeah, bog standard as hell harem setup. MC-kun and the dog even butt heads initially ’cause cliches never die. He then uses patented animal training techniques to pacify her:

MC-kun and Ranka even had a childhood encounter from way back when. She begins to tell him a story about a human that saved her.

This is the point where I had to pause the anime and laugh and laugh and laugh. A while ago, I remember seeing a trailer for a film about a hunter-gatherer kid being separated from his “pack,” one might say. He eventually befriends a wolf and (I can only assume) through their trials and tribulations, the wolf becomes the very first domesticated animal. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to watch the movie while it was in theaters. But here we have the next best thing! But anyways, back to the story… MC-kun protected her from a bunch of murderous bears, so ever since then, lone wolfu has wanted to create a pack of ALL animals. Y’see, animals are speciest, but MC-kun’s kindness rubbed Ranka the right way.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that she licked his half-naked ass back then, she doesn’t really know what her savior looks like. Ah well. That’s about as interesting as this show is gonna get.

I’m gonna stop here.

There’s a t-rex for the dino lovers out there. Also, how do the herbivores feel about the carnivores getting raw meat — stuff that probably came from their own kind — to eat in the cafeteria? Gosh, that’s gotta mess with your head.