Adventures in Japanese Television

I am a big fan of Asian Dramas. So far I seem to enjoy soap operas from Taiwan the best, but I seem to be most weirded out by the Japanese shows.

A while back I wrote an entry about "Princess Princess D" the show based on a popular yaoi manga that centers around a all male boarding school where the three cutest freshman are forced to dress in drag in order to help school spirit. I don't really know how they justify that one but continuing on.

This week I have managed to stumble across a show that may be even weirder. It is called "Kimi wa Peto" which apparently translates to "You are my Pet." Apparently it was also based off of a popular manga.

The story begins with a somewhat bitchey, high powered, woman names Iwaya who works at a newspaper. She is smart, beautiful, tall, and quite successful; which is why her last boyfriend dumped her. He felt too threatened by her success so he go another chick pregnant.

Anyway, Iwaya is walking home from work one day and she hears some strange noises coming from inside of a box. She opens the box to fin an injured young man. It begins pouring outside so Iwaya decises to take the poor fellow inside instead of calling an ambulance. Iwaya ends up taking care of him through the night. The young man is still asleep but in stable condition, so Iwaya leaves a note for the guy telling him that there is food in the fridge and that he can let himself out whenever he wakes up.

When Iwaya gets home she is surprised to see that the young man is still in her apartment. He essentially beggs her to let him stay. Iwaya is quite lonely and she suddenly gets an idea, she will let him stay if he is her pet. He will have to obey all the rules she has for him, but in return he gets a place to live and a food. Surprisingly he agrees to the deal. She names him Momo after a golden retreiver she had when she was little.

I'm not going to lie this whole premise creeped me out a bit. I mean she suddenly comes up with the idea of having a human pet, and somehow it's ok with both of them? I have got to admit the whole premise of having a human pet creeped me out a bit. However it's not the full reason I stopped watching.

Nope I stopped watching because of a very tedious love story going on between Iwaya and a former classmate of hers. Even more tedious is the psycho from the newspaper who is so desperate to get Iwaya's boyfriend (not to be confused with her Pet) that she not only sabbotages dates, makes very mean threats to Iwaya, makes up stories about an ex-boyfriend beating her so she can stay at the mans apartment, she also hacks into the mans computer so she can get to know him better. All I know is that if this happened in an American soap opera the psycho stalker would have had her ass kicked when she confronted Iwaya in the ladies room detailing her evil plan to break them up by any means nessicary.

Even if they didn't have the stalker Iwaya would have a pretty complicated relationship with her boyfriend. Trying to keep your boyfriend from finding out that your pet is really an attractive guy of dateable age is no easy task. I mean most sensible people would run away if they found out they were dating someone who had a pet human. To be fair Iwaya's relationship with Momo is not sexual (at least not from her side), but it still falls under the category of frickin weird.

The series explores how hard it is to be a modern woman on the dating scene, and how hard it is to find something like unconditional love. The show is kind of fun as a novelty, but after a few episodes I just couldn't handle the love story. Granted it probably began to get resolved in the few episodes after I started watching. But I hate watching things that you know are going to end up in disaster, and it certainly seems as if "Kimi wa Petto" is going to have more then it's fair share of things going horribly wrong.