Whenever I appear, something frightening happens. It must be that terror summons me.
—Cat Eyed Boy
Created by Kazuo Umezu in 1967, Cat Eyed Boy tells the story of the title 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.
This series/character provides examples of:
- 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: It's right there in the title.
- Beauty Equals Goodness: Deconstructed with the Ugly Demon. He is so ugly that everyone sans his father reacts to him with violent disgust, and it's this - not the ugliness itself - that's driven him to spitefulness.
- 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: Cat Eyed Boy
- 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
- Half-Human Hybrid: It is greatly implied but never confirmed that the Cat Eyed Boy might be the result of the nekomata wife's infidelity with a human man.
- Kick the Ugly Son of a Bitch: The Ugly Demon's plan to douse a woman in acid backfires when the crowd around him attacks him. However, the crowd never knew of his intent, and only attacked him because his guise as a beautiful person fell apart, reverting him back into a visually repulsive form.
- 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: Cat Eyed Boy
- Revenge by Proxy: Komodo's plan to turn the un-moral people his sister knows into monsters, because of the grudge he has against 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 Kitarō who was originally known as "Kitaro of the Graveyard").
- Sweet Polly Oliver: Komodo
