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Cat-Eyed Boy: The Perfect Edition #2
Cat-Eyed Boy: The Perfect Edition, Vol. 2
A deluxe hardcover edition of Kazuo Umezz's Eisner Award-nominated classic collection of horror stories featuring a strange cat-eyed boy, shunned by humans and demons alike.
Hated by humans and demons alike, Cat-Eyed Boy dwells in the shadows of the human world.
Wherever he goes, disturbing tales of both men and monsters begin to unfurl.
From the mind of Kazuo Umezz, undisputed master of Japanese horror manga and creator of The Drifting Classroom and Orochi , comes Cat-Eyed Boy ! This deluxe second volume picks up where volume 1 left off, with Cat-Eyed Boy trying to stop the Band of 100 Monsters from taking gruesome revenge on the corrupt humans who have made them outcasts. Then, Cat-Eyed Boy continues to travel between the lands of humans and demons in six more disturbing tales, including “The Stairs,” in which Cat-Eyed Boy helps a child say a last goodbye to his deceased mother, and “The Thousand-Handed Demon,” in which a woman trying to bring a deity to life gets a lot more than she bargained for.
Hated by humans and demons alike, Cat-Eyed Boy dwells in the shadows of the human world.
Wherever he goes, disturbing tales of both men and monsters begin to unfurl.
From the mind of Kazuo Umezz, undisputed master of Japanese horror manga and creator of The Drifting Classroom and Orochi , comes Cat-Eyed Boy ! This deluxe second volume picks up where volume 1 left off, with Cat-Eyed Boy trying to stop the Band of 100 Monsters from taking gruesome revenge on the corrupt humans who have made them outcasts. Then, Cat-Eyed Boy continues to travel between the lands of humans and demons in six more disturbing tales, including “The Stairs,” in which Cat-Eyed Boy helps a child say a last goodbye to his deceased mother, and “The Thousand-Handed Demon,” in which a woman trying to bring a deity to life gets a lot more than she bargained for.
496 pages, Hardcover
Published December 26, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
January 8, 2024
This volume collects the second half of the "The Band of One Hundred Monsters" from the previous volume, along with other short horror stories like "The Meatball Monster", "The Thousand Handed Demon", "The Stairs", "The Promise", "The Hand" and "The Friend". Umezz's stories here all center on the titular "Cat-Eyed Boy" who was born to a nekomata in the mountains, only to be abandoned in the human world due to his mostly similar appearance to humans. Cat-Eyed Boy travels across different regions, often living in attics of human families, and mainly emerging to handle threats involving monsters or the supernatural. But despite his efforts to save people, Cat-Eyed Boy is maligned by people due to his appearance and often blamed for the supernatural happenings in each tale. Despite this, Cat-Eyed Boy continues to intervene in moments of crisis, but he develops a bit of a cynical and morally ambiguous outlook on life. "The Band of One Hundred Monsters" is most true to this formula with Cat-Eyed Boy even taking some pride into his perception as a monster.
The stories here have a similar surreal whimsy to those found in Umezz's other works, though I do think the overall narratives aren't nearly as engrossing. Some stories feel a little too drawn out, like "The Meatball Monster" which mostly exists to deliver some grotesque artwork but cannot do much with the flimsy premise. Most of the Cat-Eyed Boy adventures feel quite repetitive as well as Umezz tends to stick to a bit more of a formula compared to some of his other works. It's only in the moments where the story takes a bit of a pause to reflect on Cat-Eyed Boy's characterization that the narrative feels a bit more elevated, as was seen in "The Stairs" tale.
Overall, I'm not quite as taken by this series as I was with Umezz's Orochi, but there are ample bizarre and grotesque things being drawn by Umezz in Cat-Eyed Boy for me to still enjoy reading on.
The stories here have a similar surreal whimsy to those found in Umezz's other works, though I do think the overall narratives aren't nearly as engrossing. Some stories feel a little too drawn out, like "The Meatball Monster" which mostly exists to deliver some grotesque artwork but cannot do much with the flimsy premise. Most of the Cat-Eyed Boy adventures feel quite repetitive as well as Umezz tends to stick to a bit more of a formula compared to some of his other works. It's only in the moments where the story takes a bit of a pause to reflect on Cat-Eyed Boy's characterization that the narrative feels a bit more elevated, as was seen in "The Stairs" tale.
Overall, I'm not quite as taken by this series as I was with Umezz's Orochi, but there are ample bizarre and grotesque things being drawn by Umezz in Cat-Eyed Boy for me to still enjoy reading on.
June 21, 2024
"I- I’m dead.
It doesn’t matter! As long as you’re with me! See? I brought matches. Once we get out, I’ll burn this house down. Then you won’t be able to come back."
Cat-Eyed Boy is back and he's as crazy as ever.
This volume of stories seems to be very repetitive as to what was offered in the first volume. I do enjoy these stories but I do wish things we a little different. Some of these were far-fetched and hilarious. The art is always stellar and I enjoyed how some of these were even in color. That added to these stories a lot.
Of course, I'll read volume three if it exists. Can't get enough of this little bastard.
It doesn’t matter! As long as you’re with me! See? I brought matches. Once we get out, I’ll burn this house down. Then you won’t be able to come back."
Cat-Eyed Boy is back and he's as crazy as ever.
This volume of stories seems to be very repetitive as to what was offered in the first volume. I do enjoy these stories but I do wish things we a little different. Some of these were far-fetched and hilarious. The art is always stellar and I enjoyed how some of these were even in color. That added to these stories a lot.
Of course, I'll read volume three if it exists. Can't get enough of this little bastard.
October 26, 2024
Storywise these are all kind of duds (pretty much every story just abruptly ends once Kazuo Umezz runs out of ideas) but monsterwise... so many good goopy yucky monsters, I have no choice but to hoot and holler. Kind of taxing to read almost 500 pages of it but I love to see those ghouls and goblins!!
February 1, 2026
This one was a lot of fun. The stories seemed more polished and streamlined than the first volume. The meatball story was a little silly but after thinking about it I could see how you could make a horror story of sorts out of it. In the end I feel like this was peak horror for the author, some of the latter stories being published in 1976 maybe a bit later. What I do enjoy is comparing it to American horror comics from a similar time frame and it is wild how similar they are even despite the cultural differences we have. Great stuff and any old horror fan should have Kazuo Umezz on their shelf.
May 11, 2025
Quick recap: The Cat-Eyed Boy (who has no “real” name) is the child of nekomata cat monsters who for unknown reasons was born looking unusually humanoid. His mother died in childbirth and his father dumped him at a shrine. Fortunately, the baby was taken care of by a local human woman until the village was destroyed. Now the boy wanders Japan, encountering monsters and other bizarre supernatural incidents.
This second volume has the back half of “The Band of One Hundred Monsters” arc. This band of monstrous-looking individuals with strange powers was explained to Cat-Eyed Boy as being mutants, humans shunned for their deformed appearances. Their leader, Kodomo, offered the Cat-Eyed Boy a place in their ranks as they sought to take revenge on society by mutilating the normal-looking but evil. Cat-Eyed Boy refused on the grounds that despite his humanoid appearance, he’s a “true” monster.
So far the Band has attacked a manga artist and a corrupt politician, and are now engaged in taking down an entire wealthy and exceedingly greedy family. They’ve managed to reanimate the corpse of the family’s patriarch as part of the plan. The youngest son of the family is actually a pretty decent kid, so Cat-Eyed Boy is trying to save him.
Naturally, the Band of One Hundred Monsters isn’t going to make this an easy task. Kodomo tips its hand by going after the “good” boy first on the grounds that he will surely grow up to be as evil as his relatives. This sets off a series of reveals about the true nature of the Band and Kodomo. Cat-Eyed Boy stops the menace in the end, but it’s left a little ambiguous.
“The Meatball Monster” concerns a supposed family curse. The Sakuragi family have a legend that one of their ancestors encountered something horrible in the mountains, describable only as a “meatball monster.” He died raving soon after. Ever since, every few decades one of the Sakuragi bloodline sees the monster and dies.
None of this, of course, would ordinarily be Cat-Eyed Boy’s problem. Except that he’s now arrived in Gojo City and sees the Meatball Monster himself. Figuring out why, and surviving the experience, becomes his new goal.
The monster has also shown itself to several members of the current Sakuragi generation, who are desperately trying to avoid its curse, going so far as to blind themselves. (That doesn’t work, the Meetball Monster can still force you to see it.) The one unaffected Sakuragi, a medical doctor, is trying to work out just what the curse really is.
There’s some mumbo-jumbo about how the Meatball Monster is allegorical for the fear of cancer, but that doesn’t help much as somehow the sheer terror of the Sakuragi family has allowed the Meatball Monster to manifest in the physical world and it is multiplying rapidly. The Cat-Eyed Boy is able to overcome it, but at the cost of one of his few possessions.
“The Thousand-Handed Demon” has Cat-Eyed Boy stumble across a village where the local multi-armed statue of Kwannon is apparently granting prayers on a much more regular basis than usual. Except that soon after getting their wishes, they die horribly, their blood gone. Turns out that the local priestess has been using various tricks to grant the prayers, then sacrificing the worshippers’ blood to the statue to grant it life. This backfires on her–seriously, anything brought to life by human blood sacrifices isn’t going to be benevolent. Or grateful.
Then we skip ahead to some stories from 1976.
“The Stairs” has Cat-Eyed Boy being proactive for a change. A little boy is missing his dead mother. The Cat-Eyed Boy happens to know about an abandoned house nearby with a staircase that allows you to see people in the afterlife. But you must only ever look once. The little boy can’t quite understand the word “once.” Cat-Eyed Boy regrets being proactive.
“The Promise” has a new father promise his son to a snake if it will let a frog go. Some years later, the snake turns up for its meal. Cat-Eyed Boy tries to intervene, but the parents are stupid, and the snake isn’t.
“The Hand” is about a little boy who has visions of Buddhist Hell. He believes that his mother will die unless he keeps his fist closed, anchoring her in the living world. But perhaps he’s mistaken?
“The Friend” is a spooky tale about two boys who are friends, but after one joins the soccer club, he becomes much more popular and the other friend feels neglected. The angry boy pushes his friend into a cave, and keeps mum as everyone else is concerned about the disappearance. Then he moves away with his family. The Cat-Eyed Boy tracks him down to ask for the location of the body, but there’s a twist that calls into question just how much of the story is real.
And that’s all the Cat-Eyed Boy stories there are, as the creator moved on to other ideas.
Cat-Eyed Boy is a solid character concept for a horror anthology series, someone who has good reasons for always being on the road, and morally ambiguous enough to have flexibility in the role he plays in events. And the monster art is great. But I can see how the creator was running out of stories that needed the character, most of the 1970s run is the kind of stories where the title character is almost unnecessary to the plot and just there for the brand name recognition. Nothing else quite reaches the same heights as the Band of One Hundred Monsters.
Content note: Violent death, including children and animals. Suicide. Body horror. Body fluid humor (Cat-Eyed Boy likes peeing on things to express contempt.) Horror fans from about fourth grade up should be able to handle this, but some sensitive kids may not be ready.
This is one of those quirky series that’s more memorable than great. Some of those images will be sticking with me for a while. Recommended to horror fans, particularly fans of monster design.
This second volume has the back half of “The Band of One Hundred Monsters” arc. This band of monstrous-looking individuals with strange powers was explained to Cat-Eyed Boy as being mutants, humans shunned for their deformed appearances. Their leader, Kodomo, offered the Cat-Eyed Boy a place in their ranks as they sought to take revenge on society by mutilating the normal-looking but evil. Cat-Eyed Boy refused on the grounds that despite his humanoid appearance, he’s a “true” monster.
So far the Band has attacked a manga artist and a corrupt politician, and are now engaged in taking down an entire wealthy and exceedingly greedy family. They’ve managed to reanimate the corpse of the family’s patriarch as part of the plan. The youngest son of the family is actually a pretty decent kid, so Cat-Eyed Boy is trying to save him.
Naturally, the Band of One Hundred Monsters isn’t going to make this an easy task. Kodomo tips its hand by going after the “good” boy first on the grounds that he will surely grow up to be as evil as his relatives. This sets off a series of reveals about the true nature of the Band and Kodomo. Cat-Eyed Boy stops the menace in the end, but it’s left a little ambiguous.
“The Meatball Monster” concerns a supposed family curse. The Sakuragi family have a legend that one of their ancestors encountered something horrible in the mountains, describable only as a “meatball monster.” He died raving soon after. Ever since, every few decades one of the Sakuragi bloodline sees the monster and dies.
None of this, of course, would ordinarily be Cat-Eyed Boy’s problem. Except that he’s now arrived in Gojo City and sees the Meatball Monster himself. Figuring out why, and surviving the experience, becomes his new goal.
The monster has also shown itself to several members of the current Sakuragi generation, who are desperately trying to avoid its curse, going so far as to blind themselves. (That doesn’t work, the Meetball Monster can still force you to see it.) The one unaffected Sakuragi, a medical doctor, is trying to work out just what the curse really is.
There’s some mumbo-jumbo about how the Meatball Monster is allegorical for the fear of cancer, but that doesn’t help much as somehow the sheer terror of the Sakuragi family has allowed the Meatball Monster to manifest in the physical world and it is multiplying rapidly. The Cat-Eyed Boy is able to overcome it, but at the cost of one of his few possessions.
“The Thousand-Handed Demon” has Cat-Eyed Boy stumble across a village where the local multi-armed statue of Kwannon is apparently granting prayers on a much more regular basis than usual. Except that soon after getting their wishes, they die horribly, their blood gone. Turns out that the local priestess has been using various tricks to grant the prayers, then sacrificing the worshippers’ blood to the statue to grant it life. This backfires on her–seriously, anything brought to life by human blood sacrifices isn’t going to be benevolent. Or grateful.
Then we skip ahead to some stories from 1976.
“The Stairs” has Cat-Eyed Boy being proactive for a change. A little boy is missing his dead mother. The Cat-Eyed Boy happens to know about an abandoned house nearby with a staircase that allows you to see people in the afterlife. But you must only ever look once. The little boy can’t quite understand the word “once.” Cat-Eyed Boy regrets being proactive.
“The Promise” has a new father promise his son to a snake if it will let a frog go. Some years later, the snake turns up for its meal. Cat-Eyed Boy tries to intervene, but the parents are stupid, and the snake isn’t.
“The Hand” is about a little boy who has visions of Buddhist Hell. He believes that his mother will die unless he keeps his fist closed, anchoring her in the living world. But perhaps he’s mistaken?
“The Friend” is a spooky tale about two boys who are friends, but after one joins the soccer club, he becomes much more popular and the other friend feels neglected. The angry boy pushes his friend into a cave, and keeps mum as everyone else is concerned about the disappearance. Then he moves away with his family. The Cat-Eyed Boy tracks him down to ask for the location of the body, but there’s a twist that calls into question just how much of the story is real.
And that’s all the Cat-Eyed Boy stories there are, as the creator moved on to other ideas.
Cat-Eyed Boy is a solid character concept for a horror anthology series, someone who has good reasons for always being on the road, and morally ambiguous enough to have flexibility in the role he plays in events. And the monster art is great. But I can see how the creator was running out of stories that needed the character, most of the 1970s run is the kind of stories where the title character is almost unnecessary to the plot and just there for the brand name recognition. Nothing else quite reaches the same heights as the Band of One Hundred Monsters.
Content note: Violent death, including children and animals. Suicide. Body horror. Body fluid humor (Cat-Eyed Boy likes peeing on things to express contempt.) Horror fans from about fourth grade up should be able to handle this, but some sensitive kids may not be ready.
This is one of those quirky series that’s more memorable than great. Some of those images will be sticking with me for a while. Recommended to horror fans, particularly fans of monster design.
March 23, 2024
Tough read. Really didn’t do much for me. It was slow, fairly boring and was far weaker than the previous volume. I did like one story in it though, but that’s not enough to warrant the recommendation of this volume.
September 18, 2023
A mutant with claws and a healing factor protects humans that hate and fear him, but his name’s not Wolverine, and he likes to piss on stuff.
June 9, 2024
Diferente do primeiro volume os desenhos dessa me deram muito mais agonia principalmente o meatball. Mas as histórias mudaram um pouco o rumo aqui, o protagonista sofre um pouco mais e tem 3 contos no fim que são um pouco mais pé no chão.
Eu não esperava da obra um grande mousse até pq o junji lia quando era criança então já dava para imaginar que a história iria ser simples.
Um pouco azedo
Eu não esperava da obra um grande mousse até pq o junji lia quando era criança então já dava para imaginar que a história iria ser simples.
Um pouco azedo
March 24, 2025
The twist for the Meatball monster cause me so off guard and made me laugh with how silly it was.
But I still loved it.
Not as good as the first book, but still great.
But I still loved it.
Not as good as the first book, but still great.
June 23, 2024
Features some red-hot scorchers, I think "The Meatball Monster" is probably the highlight of this series. It's gross and weird and doesn't stop all the way till the end. I liked the late 70's stories as well, but they weren't as manic as the earlier stories.
April 2, 2024
Lots of fun to read. I wish I had a child to raise to be badass by giving them books like this.
February 5, 2025
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 panel 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.
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.
December 31, 2023
Kazuo Umezz's Cat-Eyed Boy is like the inverse of Shigeru Mizuki's Kitaro; Cat-Eyed Boy is hated by humans, is cynical, and somewhat amoral. Children die horrible deaths in these stories, and there's often no moral like in the Kitaro stories. Umezz's art is more simplistic and less detailed than Mizuki, but he does present a lot of great monsters. The two volumes together are a fast read despite their size, because a lot of the panels are disposable. Umezz also makes frequent use of word effects, which seems to be a staple in horror manga. Still, I enjoyed these a lot, and they have a nostalgia factor for me because I read them over the summer of 2014 in undergrad when I got my first library job.
December 17, 2023
This second volume of Cat-Eyed Boy seemed far more cohesive to me and I enjoyed all the stories here a lot more. My particular favourites were 'The Meatball Monster', which was a sprawling tale about one family with some truly grotesque artwork and 'The Stairs', which was sad and creepy all at the same time. Overall, I thought this second volume was a lot of fun and I would definitely recommend both volumes as a result.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.
August 4, 2024
It's good to have an archive available of older publications. The art style is clearly older, but the stories were fun. This volume was a better collection than the first one. I appreciated the color pages towards the end to add that extra flair. I don't see myself going through for a second read, but I do like having this series in my collection.
December 1, 2024
Not quite as good as volume one, but still pretty fun read.
i really like the cat-eyed boy, he's such a little shit. the art was sort of dated, but still pretty charming. the stories were a bit thinner in this one, but a few were good, one in particular was great. all in all, i enoyed both of these volumes and will pick up more by this author. 3.5 stars.
i really like the cat-eyed boy, he's such a little shit. the art was sort of dated, but still pretty charming. the stories were a bit thinner in this one, but a few were good, one in particular was great. all in all, i enoyed both of these volumes and will pick up more by this author. 3.5 stars.
October 27, 2023
Arc from Netgalley. 500 pages is a lot of manga. Is it a little repetitive? Sure. But its not less fun because of it.
March 23, 2024
Seriously, the strangest things are going on in this manga but I just can't put it down.
May 5, 2024
Not Umezz's best storytelling, but definitely his best art.
May 8, 2024
Some better stories than the first volume
April 20, 2025
even if no one loves you, i love you cat eyed boy!!!!!!
July 6, 2025
These short stories all vary in how well received they are, but "The Stairs" stands out as a favourite.
well worth the read.
well worth the read.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews