Cat's Eye

Can’t get tired of phantom thief stories à la Lupin III or Kaito Kid? Cat’s Eye has 3 good looking sisters pursuing this infamous profession to find their missing father.

73 mostly independent episodes – Sometimes a bit repetitive but always with some nice action, comedy and eye candy especially for the male audience. The overall plot, the reason why the three Kisugi sisters are stealing art and jewels gets somehow overshadowed most of the time by the frequent burglaries and the hide and seek with the police. But for me this wasn’t that much of a problem. I still enjoyed these easy going funny ... episodes.

The trio sure is daring running a café right in front of the police station with the name of the criminal group… Wearing masks or disguises is also not necessary if you are as good as them… And on top dating the detective in charge of the investigation… Hilarious. Shows like this one must be a nightmare for the Japanese police!

Knowing that this show is from 1983 it looks very good and the animation is all right.

Nice show!

Cat's Eye is a 73 episode long TV series that premiered in 1983. It was made by studio Tokyo Movie Shinsha (TMS) and was directed by Yoshio Takeuchi (Harlock Saga) for the first "half" and the second "half" was directed by Kenji Kodama (City Hunter).

Cat's Eye follows the three sisters Hitomi, Rui and Ai Kisugi. During the day they work in a cafe called Cat's Eye, and by night they become the notorious theives Cat's Eye. They rob museums and take paintings and other artifacts that belong to a German artist called Michael Heinz. Heinz is actually the three sisters father, who has disappeared and ... they hope that by reclaiming their fathers collection they can figure out where Heinz is hiding.

Cat's Eye quite clearly takes a lot of inspiration from the novels of Arsene Lupin and series such as Lupin III. Just like Lupin III, Cat's Eye is a completely episodic show. Unlike Lupin though, Cat's Eye tends to stick to it's formula of them figuring out where the next piece in Heinz's collection is and goes to steal it. Very rarely does it do something other than that. But that is not to say that the heists are the only thing that happens in an episode. Apart from the heists you also get to see Hitomi's struggles trying to keep her relationship with detective Toshio Utsumi going. Toshio is one of the detectives who is trying to catch Cat's Eye, yet he has no clue how close she actually is. There is also quite a lot of comedy sprinkled in as well as some fanservice. Now, the fanservice in this show is just some light teasing, so it never gets too bad.

The animation in this show was actually a little better than I thought it was gonna be. It was not great, and the first half I thought the animation was slightly worse than in the second half. In the second half, with the change of director they also slightly changed the character designs. I am still not sure if I think the new designs were better than the old ones, but it wasn't worse either, just slightly different.

The music in the show was ok for what it was. It worked well during the heists and I also liked the music played when they were in the cafe, but ultimately, those two pieces were the only music that stood out to me. They also play them quite often, so if you don't like them you are definitely going to get sick of listening to them,

Overall I thought Cat's Eye was a fun show. Me being someone who really like Lupin III, I was looking forward to see how this show would play with that formula. Ultimately I thought the show played very safe and simply stuck to what it knew how to do, and with this being 73 episodes it can make for a bit of a boring watch in the long run, but it never became too much of a problem for me. I did however appreciate how the show portrayed the relationship between Hitomi and Toshio and how hard it was for Hitomi that she had to deceieve the man she loved. At least I enjoyed that when they were taking it seriously. One thing that I did not like about the show though was that despite having this underlying plot of Cat's Eye trying to find out where their father is hiding, that never really got explored and they simply decided to focus on Cat's Eye stealing back Heinz's collection. I would have liked to see them do more with that. Overall I thought Cat's Eye is just a slightly above average show. It had potential to do so much more than what it did, but ultimately it decided to just play it safe. So even though it was an enjoyable ride I can not say that I would recommend people to watch this show. I would rather just tell you to go watch Lupin III.

I didn't really expect much from Tsukasa Hojo. I don't find him to be a particularly good writer. Well, I don't think he's bad completely. I'll explain that later. Cat's Eye is a series created by Tsukasa Hojo. He's also the creator of another series called, City Hunter. I'm mentioning City Hunter real quickly, because watching most of Cat's Eye made me realize that I may have been too harsh on City Hunter. I dislike both of these series for different reasons, but as I was watching I thought to myself, "Maybe I'll give City Hunter another chance." At this point, if I had to ... pick my poison, I'd pick City Hunter over this show. I'm getting a little sidetracked, let me get to the review.

The premise behind Cat's Eye is that these sisters, the Kisugi sisters, have started a secret group called, Cat's Eye, where they steal valuable items Lupin the Third style. One of the sisters, Hitomi Kisugi, has a boyfriend named, Toshio Utsumi, who just happens to be a detective hunting down Cat's Eye. Quite the twist, huh? Toshio isn't very smart and he sucks at his job. He's definitely the Zenigata of the show. There is some depth to why the sisters steal these items, but I can't say because that would be landing in spoiler territory. When the sisters aren't stealing anything, they work and live in a café named after the group where they steal valuable items. Why would you do that!? The café is called, Cat's Eye! The group is suppose to be a secret! Why in god's name would you do that!? I tried contacting Tsukasa and I asked him why did he make that decision. He told me to fuck off and hung up on me. I guess we'll never know.

That alone is a red flag. Crimson! The fact that Toshio doesn't even pick up on this or is even slightly skeptical is just baffling. He didn't even know Cat's Eye was female at one point when they clearly are. He even chases Hitomi a few times and the long hair and womanly figure didn't give him a hint. Characters can act irrationally for the sake of drama and plot. This applies to Toshio. If Toshio was a normal person with proper thinking skills, this show would fall apart. There would be no show. Cat's Eye would get arrested and that's it. Okay, probably not. Toshio loves Hitomi too much to do that. I do find it weird how he doesn't even have the balls to call Hitomi his girlfriend in the early parts of this show. The romance does make some progress in episode thirty-three when Toshio proposes to Hitomi. That's the only complement I'll give Toshio. He did good. Episode thirty-three is probably my favorite out of the fifty-three I saw. Each episode is pretty much like a Lupin the Third episode. It's mostly episodic. This is all fine, but it doesn't need to be seventy-three episodes! It's just the same thing every episode with the occasional story progression. This could've been a twenty-six episode series and not much would change. Just cut the padding. Now that I think about it, I shouldn't compare this show to Lupin. It has a few similarities, but Lupin is leagues above this show.

I don't like the music either. It's sounds good, especially the background music, but lyrically it's dumb. I'm referring to the songs with actual singing. Saying random English that has nothing to do with what you're saying contextually. The two intros are my problem. The second intro is especially bad. The people who wrote these songs blindfolded themselves, opened a English dictionary, and picked random words they found to make lyrics. It makes me angry listening to some of these songs.
Remember when I was talking about Tsukasa Hojo and said, "I don't think he's bad completely." He's not. I read some of another manga he wrote called, Angel Heart. It's suppose to be some kind of City Hunter sequel and I enjoyed some of it. Angel Heart is not bad. I can't give him too much credit, because I've read so little of it and it can go bad at some point. Anyway, Cat's Eye isn't very good. If you're not putting too much thought into what's happening, I'm sure you'll like it. You don't want to end up like some of these other reviewers who gave this show a 9, do you? I do see the appeal of this show, however. My scores:

Story: 5/10
Art: 5/10
Sound: 6/10
Character: 3/10
Enjoyment: 4/10
Overall: 4/10