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.
In 1976, a 22-episode anime adaptation of the manga aired on TV Tokyo. 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.
- Animal Eyes: It's right there in the title. Cat Eyed Boy's eponymous eyes are usually the first thing that tips people off to him not being human, and even when he disguises himself as other people, his eyes usually remain.
- 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.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Due to being ostracized by humans and monsters alike, Cat Eyed Boy's morals are mostly self-serving. Most of the time, if an antagonistic force garners him getting involved to stop it, it's less because he's trying to do the right thing and more because he personally wants the bad guy dealt with, especially if they have any ill will towards him. It just so happens that most of the threats he encounters are much more evil than he is, so it usually works out to him helping save the day anyway. At the same time, he does apparently have some lines he won't cross. While he has no qualms with tormenting innocent people with his mischief, he won't seriously physically harm them unless it's in self-defense. He also shows some semblance of genuine heroism every once in a while, such as when he saves a baby from an incoming tsunami for no real benefit to himself.
- Body Horror: A staple for Umezu's work. Plenty of dismemberment, disembodied ghastly body parts, exaggerated deformities, blood, gore, and other things are abound. Even Cat Eyed Boy himself isn't immune to it either.
- The Cassandra: Cat Eyed Boy often tries to tell people what the real threat is, but because he's viewed as a monster, he's often doubted or even blamed for it himself.
- Child of Two Worlds: Cat Eyed Boy is implied to be half-human and half-yokai, but unfortunately this meant he was never welcome among either population ever since he was born — to humans he's too monstrous to be accepted by them, and to yokai his humanity is repulsive.
- 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: Wherever Cat Eyed Boy goes, strange happenings seem to always occur. Though they're rarely directly related to him, so in his case it's more so an instance of having consistently terribly unlucky.
- 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.
- 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.
- I Was Just Passing Through: If Cat Eyed Boy does something more heroic rather than self-serving, he sometimes frames it like he's too bothered by whatever evil threat there is to let it slide.
- Living Shadow: One monster Cat Eyed Boy encounters takes the form of a shadow who can latch onto different people, not only preventing them from escaping him, but also reflecting any harm dealt on him back to the person whose shadow he resides in. Ironically, his one weakness is being in an environment of complete darkness since, as Cat Eyed Boy puts it, a distinct shadow can't exist in a place with no light to cast one.
- 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. A Mad Scientist attempts brain transplants... but later discovers they can't be successfully performed, as the new mind housed in the body will eventually force its new body to match the one it was originally housed in.
- Our Monsters Are Weird: Many of the monsters in the "Band of One Hundred Monsters" fall into this, with some looking like standard Yōkai, some looking like humans with deformities, and some being so odd they barely seem to count as living beings. Ironically enough this is subverted for the group, since according to Komodo, all of the members are actually human, just with features so strange they border on being supernatural.
- 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").
