But the Cat Came Back (Cat-Eyed Boy, Ep 13-14)

Orphan returns again to its intermittent releases of Cat-Eyed Boy; in this case, episodes 13-14. These episodes don't differ materially from the previous ones, except for the monster of the week. Cat-Eyed Boy is continuing his lonely journey to find his mother. In these episodes, he lends support to plucky young boys trying to fight a supernatural creature that threatens their family or village. To help his new-found friend, Cat-Eyed Boy must find, fight, and defeat the monster(s). But his triumph is short-lived, as he has to hit the road and continue his search.

Two reminders. First, Cat-Eyed Boy is done with gekimation, hand-manipulated paper cutouts paired with simple live-action special effects. Second, the episodes are from the laserdisc box set and are very primitive, with lots of grain, jittery images, noisy soundtrack, and film burn at scene changes. With those caveats, the episodes in this release are:

• Episode 13 - Wrath of the Stone Demon. Nobuo and his grandmother live in a remote village at the base of Mount Tengu. When a will-o'-the-wisp appears on the mountain, a white powder falls that puts everyone to sleep and eventually kills them. Nobuo sets off to find the source of the evil, so Cat-Eyed Boy rushes after him in support. They find a fallen goddess, who became a demon after a human stole her sacred mantle and is determined to be revenged on all humans.
  
  
  
  
  
• Episode 14 - Eerie! The Woman Who Lives in the Mirror. Sentaro's village is plagued by multiple murders. The victim is always drained of blood and nearly mummified. Sentaro believes it's caused by the Blood-Sucking Woman, who lives in abandoned houses. He goes to investigate a derelict inn and falls into the monster's clutches. Meanwhile, Cat-Eyed Boy finds a sick traveler who needs a place to rest and escorts him to the inn, placing everyone in peril.

The credits, so carefully translated, only have room for six or seven voice actors. Two are always Junko Hori (Cat-Eyed Boy) and Katsuhiko Ikeda (Narrator). The others in episode 13:

• Midori Kanbe (Stone Demon) appeared in Cat-Eyed Boy ep12.
• Yuji Shikamata (Nobuo) appeared in Raccoon Rascal and SPT Layzner, as well as Cat-Eyed Boy epidsode 10.
• Michiro Okada (Villager A) appeared in Cat-Eyed Boy episodes 9 and 11.

In episode 14:

• Midori Kanbe (Yukiko) appeared in Cat-Eyed Boy episodes12 and 13.
• Yoichi Mitsuhashi (Kazuhiko, Father) played Cygnus in the St. Seiya franchise, Naoki in Dragon Fist, and Ma Chao in Sangokushi 3. The last two are Orphan releases.
• Endo Yoshinori (Sentaro, Son) - no information.
• Michiro Okada (young traveller) appeared in Cat-Eyed Boy episodes 9, 11, and 12.

Once again, Skr was the driving force behind this release.For episodes 13 and 14, he checked Perevodildo's translation, edited, typeset, and encoded. I did additional editing and added a lot of typesetting in episode 14. Nemesis and Skr QCed.

So Orphan is pleased to bring you more Cat-Eyed Boy. You can get these episodes from the usual torrent site. See you again on Halloween, if not sooner!