Whenever I appear, something frightening happens. It must be that terror summons me.
—Cat Eyed Boy
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Created by Kazuo Umezu in 1967, Cat Eyed Boy-series tells the story of the titular boy with cat's eyes, an especially human-looking son of a nekomata (who was forced to abandon his son to the care of a childless human woman since other monsters considered Cat Eyed Boy's human looks to be a disgrace and wanted him to be killed) who wanders from place to place, hiding in people's attics and witnessing gruesome supernatural happenings wherever he goes, occasionally helping and occasionally making things worse. No matter which he does, he will be shunned and feared by people who see him.
A live-action movie "Cat-Eyed Boy" of the series was produced in 2006.
Tropes used in Cat Eyed Boy include:
- All of the Other Reindeer: Cat Eyed Boy does not get treated well by humans or other monsters, though he mostly takes it pretty well. Mostly.
- All Webbed Up
- Animal Eyes
- Body Horror
- Came Back Wrong: Cat Eyed Boy helps a young kid to visit his dead mom, but just visiting isn't enough for the boy.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Komodo wants to transform the only good hearted kid of an evil family solely because the kid has the genes to later turn to be as shallow, greedy and mean as the rest of his family.
- Doom Magnet
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Cat Eyed Boy occasionally talks to the viewer, telling them that one day, he might hide in your house.
- Giant Spider
- Living Shadow
- Losing Your Head: Cat Eyed Boy once tricked people into thinking his head was cut off, yet functional. In reality the head was just a vase with an illusion on it.
- The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: Inverted in one story.
- Our Monsters Are Weird: Many of the monsters in the "Band of One Hundred Monsters" fall into this
- Pointy Ears
- Revenge by Proxy: Komodo's plan to turn the un-moral people his/her sister knows into monsters, because of the grudge he has for his sister.
- Shout-Out: When finding him lurking in the graveyard, one of the police wonders if he's "Keetaro, that graveyard kid" (referring to GeGeGe no Kitaro who was originally known as "Kitaro of the Graveyard").