Cat's Eye (1983-1985) Anime Series Review

Tsukasa Hojo's Cat's Eye was a manga series (one of the highest selling) serialized in Shonen Jump from 1981 to 1985 and was eventually adapted into an anime series that ran from 1983 to 1985 with 73 episodes. The series followed the Kisugi sisters: Rui (older sister), Hitomi (middle sister) and Ai (kid sister), a trio of art thieves who under the alias of Cat's Eye try to gain back their missing father's art collection from museums and private collectors. Detective Toshi, female inspector Mitsuko and the police chief go after Cat's Eye whenever the girls leave a card telling them when and where they will strike next, but they are almost always outsmarted by the girls and most of their heists tend to be successful. A major conflict is introduced by the fact that Toshi is Hitomi's boyfriend and he has no idea that she is part of Cat's Eye, even when the café the girls run has that exact name.

Influential and empowering, the show was known for its highly capable and skilled female protagonists, even creating a very intimate feeling of sisterhood featuring clashing personalities that give us some funny arguments between the trio. Strong, clever, cunning, daring, deceiving, just, loyal and confident, these sisters are not only role models but also present a very modern version of female thief characters in fiction as they are not just romantic interests for others but people with full lives and motivations. Along with Dirty Pair, these were breakthrough incarnations of older tropes.

When it comes to the anime you can expect some fantastic J-pop and Eurobeat music performed by Anri accompanying rhythmic aerobic dance animation during the opening as nearly psychedelic abstract visuals showing the girls moving their bodies with fluidity and grace, sometimes hand drawn and other times rotoscoped. The ending theme Dancing with the Sunshine is also a true banger and both songs fit the overall style quite perfectly.

The story structure in each episode is kind of formulaic and somewhat loose in continuity but not completely episodic either. Every episode will feature Cat's Eye hatching a scheme to steal a painting, but some unforeseen event or element will destabilize it momentarily until the girls find a way to turn things back around as they pull tricks to fool Toshi and the policemen after them. Sometimes the girls are facing mobsters, other thieves, motorists, kidnappers or rich guys with deadly traps in their compounds. There's enough variety and intrigue, sometimes beginning with a baffling or out of nowhere visual or storytelling device that throws you off but that begins to make sense once the plot unfolds.

The talent of the writers relied on coming up with intriguing way of making you guess how the heroines will escape capture and the tricky and convoluted techniques they could employ to create a perfect alibi and never be caught outside of the café, although, sometimes it feels like they are cheating with some almost incredible or tricky twists. However, these tricks also give it some charm even if at some moments they stretch verisimilitude a bit because there are a lot of contrived plot points and coincidences in their plans, either that or they rely on the police officers and detectives being too dimwitted but nothing that truly breaks the story at any point.

Some aspects of the relationship between Toshi and Hitomi are a bit too unbelievable as there are only so many times one can let a coincidence fly by without the characters wising up to the real identity of the thieves but at several points Toshi comes close to solving the case by putting together the girl's patterns and the connections to the artist and the crimes but things don't quite work out for him.

The romance aspect is vital to the show's narrative as it really brings contradictory emotions to any kind of possible resolution that you can imagine. You want Toshi to succeed so he can marry Hitomi, but you don't want the girls to be caught either. Other pieces of media like the 1997 movie deal with this part of the story in a different way.

Director Yoshio Takeuchi did a great job at putting together a faithful adaptation of the spirit and story elements from the manga into an exciting and thrilling show that consistently did enough variations of its premise and formula without feeling stale or repetitive. I wont spoil the ending but I gotta say that incorporating the fictional element to play out a possible closure to the main storyline but without actually having it take place in the world of the series was a stroke of genius. It was a perfect ending that's not really an ending.

A highly recommended series for anime fans or lovers of caper stories.

Blue Seed Manga (1992-1996) Review

Let's finish off our Blue Seed anniversary retrospective with the manga that started it all. Supposedly, and contrary to what one would think, the premise of Blue Seed actually came from Ashi Productions and Production I.G, who gave mangaka and writer Yuzo Takada some ideas to develop. From the core concept he drafted and created characters and the overall storyline, taking inspiration from pop culture and genre efforts in order to modernize the original Izumo myth from Japanese folklore. The resulting Shōnen manga was published by Takeshobo in the Comic Ganma magazine from 1992 to 1996 and it only lasted for two volumes and 17.5 chapters.

The overall story is very similar to what we have seen in the anime but there are some significant differences. If you wanna know about the general story you can read my review of the TV series. Since my introduction to the series was the anime, my review of the manga will also compare the two works as my opinion of it is closely related to the way I see the anime but it's not a comparison thats fully tainted as I gave both the same chance, you can also extract the virtues and flaws of each work by what I have to say about them. 

Here are the major differences (without spoilers): 

-The manga puts more emphasis on Momiji and focuses more on telling the story through her point of view instead of alternating between the main cast all the time. The very first scene in the manga is Momiji taking a bath with her grandma, a scene that comes much later in the first episode of the anime. The events are told to us as Momiji learns about them, most of the info is revealed to her and to the audience at the same time, at least in the first chapter. The manga goes for a more mysterious tone because of this.

-The Aragami only attack at night time. This makes them pretty much useless during the day, the creatures have to wait until the sun is covered to attack. This also makes Kusanagi more vulnerable instead of the incredibly powerful hybrid he is in the anime, he has trouble going after Momiji during their first encounter, she even punches him, revealing that he is just another human in the daytime.

-Characterizations are mostly the same but they went through some slight differences in the manga. Momiji is more silly and is stronger in the manga (fighting back more occasionally, even against Koume!) to the point of defeating some Aragami single handedly. Kusanagi is less of a douchebag and comes off as more considerate since he is less antagonistic and goes out of his way to save Momiji´s life instead of simply having no other option. Ryouko is more tough and less formal, a bit of a deviation when compared to the somewhat gentle lady we see in the animated version. 

-The lore and the backstory of the curse and the Aragami are a lot more clearly explained here, the exposition comes off more naturally because it has to be explained to Momiji (us).

-The comedy is less prominent overall and it's implemented in small doses as the tone itself is lighter as a whole, so it wouldn't make sense to have strictly comedic sections. The running gag of Momiji showing her panties is present here but it's not a focus.

-Some characters have more interactions here than in the anime. They also work together as a team in a more traditional fashion than before. Koume and Sakura, for example, share more conversations and moments together than what we see in the TV series.

-A lot of the important plot points in the anime are introduced far earlier in the manga such as the appearance of Kaede and Sakura, making the story feel a bit cluttered at first but they handle the storyline quite efficiently and never allow it to be overstuffed. If anything, I now appreciate the anime for introducing these characters with more room to breathe in between. 

-The secondary characters are sidelined even further here, which is expected, they serve their function very well and enrich the story as their distinct personalities come through and make the characters' interactions more dynamic. While we dont get more insight into them than a few panels or lines we can thank the anime for giving us more memorable moments with them.

-Factions like Japan's defense force have a more active, even antagonizing, role and they put our main group in peril multiple times, allowing for the stakes to be increased and the danger to be more prominent, having to face more than just the Aragami. This also happens in the show but very late into the story.

But not everything can be compared, as the manga has some elements that stand on their own. The artwork is detailed and solid for a good amount of the pages, there are typical corners that are cut but not in a distracting manner, the drawings might be a little rough in a handful of panels but it's clear the effort mostly went into the larger and more important illustrations, creating some very memorable images. There are also some really intense stretches of storytelling that require almost no dialogue, playing to the strengths of its medium.

I appreciate the manga and anime for different reasons. The manga has a smaller scale and is considerably more focused while the anime is more bombastic, elongated and epic. The anime has more opportunity to flesh out concepts and ideas and, while it wasn't successful at everything, it managed to inject more life into the story, the additions like the character introductions and more time to show their dynamics made them more memorable and impactful in the anime as well.

Meanwhile, the manga had to resume and convey interactions and information in brief and concrete ways that the show had more time to explore and with more hindsight. A lot of it simply has to do with the medium and the way these works are produced. I will also warn you not to expect an ending, because it doesn't really have one, at least not one that's as truly satisfying and emotional as the one from the anime. 

In my opinion, the manga really required more time and room to develop and fulfill its potential, because two short volumes don't really cut it. A strange thing is that it was never properly continued or extended considering the fact that it was far from a failure. Takada has admitted that Blue Seed would have benefited from being a light novel instead of a short manga, as a lot of the concepts could have been explored further. This is part of why some fans consider the anime show to be the most complete version of the story.

This closes our Blue Seed retrospective. A very nostalgic and enjoyable ride. Totally check out the series as it runs the risk of falling into obscurity after all these years with very little discourse surrounding it, but there are a lot of great aspects that make Blue Seed timeless and lovable.