Nekome KozouCat Eyed Boy Edit What would you like to edit? SynopsisBackgroundAlternative TitlesPictureChapters/VolumesPublishing DatesRelationsTypeExternal Links   3c3q1d

An episodic horror-lover’s delight!

From the campy to the genuinely terrifying, Cat-Eyed Boy offers it all with gorgeous ink work, excellent page-turns, and genuinely surprising twists. While it may not be as well known as Kazuo’s other works, it is a must read for anyone who appreciates horror in general. Readers today may consider its direction and plots crude in comparison to its successors in the genre, but it is inarguably a progenitor of horror manga as we know it today and deserves to be known as such.

I found Cat-Eyed Boy himself to be adorable in his earnestness, and he serves as a great ... vehicle for Kazuo’s bizarre, folksy horror. The monsters were as classic as they were creative, as absurd as they were terrifying. While I’m not familiar enough with Kazuo’s longer-form works to compare them, I can say I enjoy his short-form story-telling style. I look forward to hunting down the 70s anime adaptation and the 2006 live action film

He's no man, he's no cat, he's Cat Eyed Boy! A young boy with feline features and supernatural dispositions, carrying his bindle across Japan, irresistibly drawn to places where mystery lingers and horrible tragedies are about to strike.

Viz published his adventures in two larges volumes in 2006. As observant readers may guess from the fine realistic graphic style, this work by horror manga master Kazuo Umezu is actually from a much earlier period. It was originally serialized in Shonen Gahosha, Shonen King and Shonen Sunday from 1967 to the year after, preceding well-known classics such as The Drifting Classroom and Orochi.

The eleven stories that make ... up the books are very uneven in length, some span only a few tens of pages, others one or two hundred. There's also a central story much longer than the others that connect the two volumes; it's the Band of One-Hundred Monsters, where Cat Eyed Boy tries to defeat the nasty three-eyed dwarf Kodomo and his hideous minions. In his first adventure, The Immortal Man, Cat Eyed Boy's role seems more that of a witness. But it is in truth misguiding as he takes an active part in all the following stories, often changing the course of events or solving the mystery himself.

In the tradition of Japanese horror, the basis for the story is often set in a - presumably fictitious - legend, be it monsters roaming deep forests or statues protecting villages. There's a strong cultural theme in several of the plots and this alone should rejoice fans of Asian horror. The way it is told, however, is not so satisfying. Some stories, especially the central one, seems to drag on needlessly. It's all about showing monsters and scary scenes and oftentimes the narrative seems to be used as a piece of canvas, stretched in loose ends to fit whatever Umezu wants to draw.

The writing is especially weak, although it is hard to tell who is to blame, Umezu or the translator. Viz usually provides good translations but that one seemed below their usual standard. Take the title for instance, where's the hyphen between "cat" and "eyed"? After the train wreck in The Meat Ball Monster, a sentence caught my attention, too, because it made no sense in the context and not much on its own, either: "And in the present day - the national railway frequently raised fares. And railway accidents occured frequently." There's a lot of tepid, uninspired dialogues, pointless exclamations and one-liners of bewildering blandness.

But Umezu is fore and foremost a graphic artist, and in that department he delivers with the ease of a true master. Each story abounds of ugly monsters and twisted human faces looking at them in utter horror. There's a good deal of blood, too, although some stories are more violent than others. But what remains afterwards is the intense imagery; many vignettes leave an imprint in the mind, fleeting nightmare visions of a black and white world. There's a few color s in the second book, one page in full color with a dark haunting palette and others with monochromatic (green or red) tones that gives a really nice feel.

Cat Eyed Boy may be not an essential read, but it's definitely worth a look! Umezu's vivid creativity and his eye for horror make up for the various shortcomings of the writing. Not to mention the titular character, whose quaint style and good-hearted devilishness are the right traits for a companion on this macabre journey.

I have to say that it was a struggle to complete this manga, but I did so just because it was so short. I'd say that it nails the horror element. This is an older manga and the visuals interested me as they are pretty grotesque and it does well in the element of shock value. The art style to me doesn't scream the typical "anime style", and in fact a lot of it reminds me of the western style, which isn't a bad thing, just something to note due to it's age.

The main character, the Cat Eyed Boy, is interesting, as he comes across ... as somewhat of an anti-hero. He isn't fully human, but does have human-like characteristics. Throughout each tale, he is seen as a "bad omen", as all of the horrors happen wherever he happens to go. He often acts on self-interest, but does intervene from time to time to help someone in need. He also isn't afraid to retaliate either, though.

The series in my opinion is very over-dramatised, as there are pretty much shock bubbles on every page, and the stories to me get a bit predictable. I like the horror element but I tend to prefer series that have more subtle climb to the climax of the story while in Cat Eyed Boy, things are made pretty obvious.

There are some good messages within this manga. It's filled with monsters and strange creatures and some of them are evil, but in certain cases this manga reflects on the shallow nature that much of society has on judging people based on appearances, when the "beautiful" people are in fact much more ugly on the inside.

Overall, the series is short and dated, it has great horror visuals but I wasn't really drawn to the series and it in fact was quite boring and predictable for me. In some respects it can be sexist with an old-timey attitude which doesn't age well, and the story wasn't something that drew me in. It's a great visual experience if you're into horror, and that would be the highlight of the series for me.