Genre: Horror
Range: T+ Older Teen
Price: 24.95 USD
Another reviewer here, Charles Tan, and I are both bit manga horror and seinen fans, and although he is a bit more critical than I am, I think we both agree on a lot of titles. Cat Eyed Boy is no exception. It is interesting to note (to me, at least) that Charles is not a Kazuo Umezu fan, where I am. Kazuo Umezu is one of those weird icons in the manga world. Famous for his red and white-striped Waldo shirts and GWASHI hand-gesture (you'll have to look that up) even in his old age the petite and soft-spoken manga-ka is revered among fans as one of Japan's true masters of horror.
More and more of Umezu's titles are being published in English in recently, and all have been done with careful accuracy. The three-volume Scary Book series is a great intro to Umezu's style and the long series The Drifting Classroom literally takes an elementary school of frightened children to another world.
Cat Eyed Boy is another fantastically presented title that could have run over five typical manga-sized releases, but instead Viz chose to release it in two giant 500+ page tomes at the same time. The pages are actually bigger than typical manga, making the price point not nearly as outrageous as a reader might initially think. This is a release directed more to collectors than casual readers, and as a collector, that is always appreciated.
Cat Eyed Boy can be considered "classic J-horror manga". It would be unfair to readers not to make clear that this is a publication of a series started about forty years ago. It bears no relevance on the story, but it certainly can be seen in Umezu's style. As I said, the story, however, has timeless qualities, and some modern manga-ka could learn from.
The Cat Eyed Boy is part cat, part boy (shocking!) and rejected by society, holes himself up in the attics of unsuspecting "victims". The role(s) Cat Eyed Boy plays in the individual stories varies, keeping the reader on his toes. Sometimes CEB is a story-teller, letting us in on some horrific secret hiding in the home he is camping in. Other times he is active participant in the story's events. Sometimes both. This duality in CEB's character pulls the reader in a unique way, as he talks to us AND interacts with the characters in the stories.
This first volume is a combination of one chapter-stories and multi-chapter arcs. In terms of creeps, the shorter stories are more successful, but the introduction of some very classic and very Japanese spooks set in a "modern" setting in the longer stories works successfully, especially for readers with an interest in that sort of thing. In the story "The Band of One Hundred Monsters" a non-believing horror manga-ka is put through the ropes by subjects of his stories in some pretty agonizing scenes.
The cover and presentation of Cat Eyed Boy is hard to beat. Worthy of a hard-cover, the inside flaps make the perfect old-school horror announcement "Even Your Blood Will Freeze!" This is classic horror and is as campy as it is creepy.
Fans of Kazuo Umezu have surely already purchased Cat Eyed Boy, but if you aren't sure if it worth the value, wait and see how many "Best of" lists Cat Eyed Boy shows up on at the end of the year. This one will surely be on mine.
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