Kimi wa Pet
きみはペット
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
An elite woman keeps a young dancer as her 'pet' — a fantasy of care that sidesteps romance's rules.
Sumire Iwaya, twenty-eight, is a newspaper journalist, a Tokyo University graduate so serious and capable that her colleagues keep their distance. Just after a break-up with her boyfriend, she loses her temper and hits her department head. On the way home she finds a young man asleep in a cardboard box outside her building, and takes him in. When he asks to stay, she tells him, half joking, that he can stay as her pet, and he agrees. She names him Momo, after the dog she had as a girl. He is Takeshi Goda, twenty, a gifted dancer, and he gives her what no one else does: a cheerful welcome home, company without conditions, and someone in front of whom she can be weak.
Then Shigehito Hasumi, a senior colleague she has admired for years, asks her out. Sumire hides Momo, passes him off as a dog, even borrows a dachshund when Hasumi asks to meet him, and fends off Shiori Fukushima, a young temp who wants Hasumi for herself. Momo grows jealous, and on a company trip he sees Hasumi kiss her and walks away. Her old friend Yuri tells her she cannot keep a man as a pet while dating another. Momo's mother arranges for him to study dance in Germany, and Hasumi asks Sumire to marry him.
On Momo's last night Sumire asks him not to go, and they sleep together. In the morning, embarrassed, she slips out; later they say a brave, cheerful goodbye outside the building where she found him. Sumire tells Hasumi the truth. He cannot forgive the lie, and they part as colleagues with a handshake. At the airport a chance meeting with the counsellor Sumire has been confiding in changes Momo's mind, and he runs back towards her; on the way, a motorbike knocks him down. Days later, as Sumire is about to leave for a hot spring to get away from the empty flat, the doorbell rings. It is Momo, his arm hurt, asking whether she will bath him again. She welcomes him home and resolves never to let go.
Starring
Koyukias Sumire Iwaya
A brilliant, stiff newspaper journalist, admired and lonely, who takes in a young man as her pet.
Sumire Iwaya’s story
Sumire is dumped by her boyfriend and, the same day, hits her department head. On the way home she finds a battered young man asleep in a box, nurses him and, half joking, lets him stay as her pet, naming him Momo after her childhood dog. When Hasumi, her long-admired colleague, asks her out, she hides Momo, passes him off as a dog and borrows a dachshund. When Momo resolves to go to Germany, she sees that the reason he stayed and the reason she kept him are the same. On his last night she asks him not to go, and they sleep together; in the morning she flees to her friend Yuri's. She tells Hasumi the truth, and he cannot forgive the lie. Days later Momo is at her door, and she welcomes him home.
Jun Matsumotoas Takeshi Goda (Momo)
A carefree young dancer found in a cardboard box, who agrees to live as Sumire's pet and becomes the one she cannot lose.
Takeshi Goda (Momo)’s story
Momo greets Sumire every evening, begs her to come to his performances and cheers her through humiliations at work. As Hasumi courts her he turns jealous, hides in the loft when Hasumi stays the night, and on her company trip sees Hasumi kiss her and walks away. He resolves to go to Germany to study. On the last night she asks him not to go, and they sleep together; he wakes to find her gone. At the spot where she found him they say a cheerful goodbye, and he tells her to cry beside someone when she needs to. At the airport a word from Asano turns him round; running back to her, he is knocked down by a motorbike. Days later, his arm hurt, he rings her bell and asks if she will bath him again.
Seiichi Tanabeas Shigehito Hasumi
Sumire's handsome, high-flying senior colleague on the foreign desk, the man she has long admired, who wants to marry her.
Sarina Suzukias Yuri Shirotae
Sumire's married childhood friend, who tells her plainly the truths she keeps avoiding.
Wakana Sakaias Shiori Fukushima
A young temp at the paper who sets her sights on Hasumi and challenges Sumire openly for him.
Kyozo Nagatsukaas Tetsushi Asano
The newspaper's counsellor, whom Sumire confides in, and whose words at the airport send Momo back to her.
Why it matters
Kimi wa Pet takes a fantasy about power and turns it into a question about care. Sumire has done everything right, the best university, a serious newspaper, a suitable boyfriend, and has ended up admired, avoided and alone; the story's joke is that the only relationship in which she can be soft is one in which she is officially in charge. Keeping a younger man as a pet reverses the usual arrangement of age, money and gender, and the series knows how absurd that is. It also knows why she wants it: someone who is glad when she comes home and asks nothing of her standing. The respectable suitor offers her a proper future and cannot forgive the lie she told to keep the other thing. The ending chooses the arrangement that has no name over the one that does, and leaves open whether it needs one. A remake with a new cast followed in 2017.