Written by April Malig
and illustrated by Hwei Lin Lim, Neko: The Cat is a short comic created as part of Slate magazine's "12 Panel Pitch" series where the plot of a film is condensed into a short 12-panel comic. It can be read here.
Michiko has just turned 10 years old, and her mother threw herself in front of a train before her eyes. Right before she did, she gave Michiko a black cat as a gift to remember her by. That cat becomes her only comfort in the days that follow, as her father throws up his hands at her grief and focuses on his courtship of a beautiful young woman from the countryside. Confronted with his daughter's despair, he merely says that some people just can't be helped.
Her father and the beautiful woman soon marry, and the family moves out to the woman's childhood home in the countryside. There, Michiko is left alone with her new stepmother as her father vanishes on business. In his absence Michiko has only her faithful cat by her side as she hears strange, terrifying noises from the woods surrounding the house grow louder each night...
Tropes in this comic include:
- Ambiguous Situation: What exactly befell Michiko's father isn't certain. Was he really a werewolf-like monster, transformed by the stepmother? Or was he merely held captive in the woods, and the stepmother made Michiko see him as a monster? The fact that the comic empathizes that the stepmother told her that she had no choice but to kill him and that the he's described as "screaming in agony" when she finds him implies that it's not as black and white as she'd like Michiko to believe.
- Arc Words: "Some people just can't be helped." is repeated by both Michiko's father after her mother's death, and her stepmother after her father's death in circumstances that are less different than they initially appeared.
- The Bad Guy Wins: At the end of the comic, Michiko's father is dead and it's heavily implied that not only will the stepmother kill again, but that she's indoctrinated Michiko into following in her footsteps.
- A Birthday, Not a Break: Everything in Michiko's life started going wrong on her 10th birthday, when her mother killed herself in front of her.
- Blood-Splattered Innocents: Michiko has blood splattered all over her white nightgown after having to kill her father.
- Cats Are Magic: The stepmother reveals that her cats are what allowed her to live on after her own suicide, and are what allow her to get vengeance on those she blames for it. The art implies that this connection exists because the cats ate her.
- Disappeared Dad: Michiko's father vanishes soon after they move to the countryside, apparently due to his job. As the stepmother points out though, emotionally he had vanished long before then and offered no support after her mother's death.
- Driven to Suicide:
- The comic begins with Michiko's mother throwing herself in front of a train on her daughter's 10th birthday. We never find out why exactly she did it, other than the stepmother's claims that she was lonely.
- The stepmother committed suicide after entering an unhappy marriage and becoming 'lonely'.
- Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: Michiko's eyes become dull, blank black in the immediate aftermath of her mother's suicide, and are especially prominent in the wedding photo of her father and her stepmother.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Was Michiko's cat just an ordinary pet, and supernatural events only began after moving to the countryside, or was it one of her stepmother's cursed cats, and her stepmother was responsible for Michiko's mother's suicide in the first place? The comic leaves which it is open to interpretation.
- Reflective Eyes: The last panel of the comic shows Michiko standing with her stepmother reflected in one eye and a cat in the other, indicating that she's fallen fully under her stepmother's control.
- Supernatural Gold Eyes: We briefly see Michiko from her father's point of view as she attacks him with an axe, showing that she has bright golden eyes even though earlier her eyes were black. This implies that Michiko's actions might have been more heavily influenced by her stepmother and the cats than she realized.
