Customer Reviews

Cat Eyed Boy, Vol. 1

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I agree that Cat-Eyed Boy doesn't live up to the enormous amount of hype that surrounds it, but only because the publisher and its fan-boy reviewers are mainly preaching to the choir. VIZ has produced a beautiful, high-quality book, and Umezu is a clever storyteller. I especially like the way Cat-Eyed Boy often breaks the fourth wall by directly addressing (and sometimes threatening) the reader. But don't be misled about who that reader is supposed to be.

Cat-Eyed Boy was originally written for middle-school kids, making the "older teen" rating it has now unfortunate. I would have loved this as a small child.

This collection is not for new or casual grownup comics or manga readers. It might best be thought of as a piece of art history, a treat for those who can read it within the context of how and when it was originally presented. The art is good, the monsters are campy, the stories are simple yet creative; most of all, it's fun in the way monsters are supposed to be fun when you're a kid.

It's not really fair to judge Cat-Eyed Boy by today's J-horror standards or to even expect it to be "scary" (despite the publisher's over-enthusiastic "Master of Horror Manga" hype, which I think most adults understand is just a standard, meaningless marketing phrase). That would be like dismissing Universal's Frankenstein and Dracula films for not being scary anymore either. Cat-Eyed Boy is a good book for many of the same reasons those are still good movies, and VIZ turns it into a work of art fit for a kid or a coffee table -- just not for too many other readers in between.

Despite being a large book, it's actually pretty quickly read. Anyone who is a fan of post-nuke J-Horror will love these spooky little stories. Though I don't think I'd pay the full $24.99 retail price.

Wherever Cat Eyed Boy goes, terrible things happen. He doesn't make them happen--it more seems that he unconsciously is summoned to scenes of horror.

Told in a series of short stories, Cat Eyed Boy does what it can to be creepy, grotesque, and disturbing. It does a very good job of this. None of it scared me, but it left an impression. It's more of a strange book than a scary book, in the sense that the pictures are more likely to momentarily unsettle your stomach than keep you up at night. Most of the horror in this book is imagery horror, like monsters, and Kazuo Umezu comes up with quite a few unique images of them.

In the very first story, Cat Eyed Boy comes across a family chased down by a man who can't die. Like something out of nightmares, he keeps coming back, though there is gruesome evidence of his previous deaths. In the next story, a boy is born deformed and is hated by other people because of it. For a very short part of this story, we feel sympathy for this character because of how he's treated. That sympathy does not last long, though, because he has a sadistic soul and is soon torturing animals and plotting his revenge. He finds a way to transfer his brain to another person's body--the body of a beautiful man--but things turn sour before long.

Later, some of Cat Eyed Boy's history is explained. During sections of the book he is a witness to the story, taking little part. At other times, however, he gets involved with the latest plot line. Unlike the previously mentioned deformed boy, Cat Eyed Boy is a sympathetic character. People assume the worst of him because they think he looks weird and they don't take a chance to get to know him.

There's something about the artwork in Cat Eyed Boy that reminds me of the 1950s. But only some things, like how Umezu draws some of his human characters. A number of boys look similar, except for changes in hairstyle. However, his images of monsters and the likes are something entirely unto themselves.

Cat Eyed Boy is not for someone who is easily disturbed by pictures. They're only drawings, but their creepiness factor is rather high. However, it is an intriguing read that ought to interest fans of horror and macabre stories. Kazuo Umezu creates his own disturbing but fascinating world in Cat Eyed Boy, sucking readers into a dark universe where monsters and nightmares are everywhere.

-- Danica Davidson

Umezu is definitely KING of all things horror manga, and has been since the 1960s, when this was first published. Maybe that date itself says something about the quality of work here in "CAT EYED BOY, VOL. 1". As much as I love the guy's eccentric attitude and drawing ability, I have to admit I was a bit disappointed by the stories here in Vol. 1 (I've yet to read Vol. 2) and by Cat Eyed Boy himself.

We're given very little information about Caty Eyed Boy himself; the stories are mostly self-contained pieces that CEB finds himself wrapped up in, though some do tie together loosely (or maybe more, like I said, I've not read the second volume).

The first couple of stories are very lackluster. The art itself is great, yes, but a hiccup in Kazz's career these might have been. Or maybe they were just more shocking in August of 1964. Only when "The Tsunami Summoners" and "The One-Legged Monster of Oudai" come about do things begin to get interesting. Especially the latter, which involves a sadistic boy's bug collection and the retribution he faces for finding more pleasure in torturing bugs than he does collecting them. This story particularly reminded me of Junji Ito's short stories, for whatever reason.

Even more disappointing is that the final story, "The Band of 100 Monsters" is split into two halves, between the two volumes! What a slap in the face from Viz, a company I usually admire. After 500+ pages of reading this really isn't excusable. I know they're trying to sell a comic, but is it worth alienating fans?

The good to be said here is that Kazz is finally getting some recognition here in the States, with this and "THE DRIFTING CLASSROOM" being published the past few years - I recommend that comic over this one, though I have only read the first three volumes. Now that he's splashed his red and white status over Americans, I can only hope we'll get more recent works from him.