“Adults always say ‘that can’t happen’ or ‘that’s impossible’ and things like that. Their minds are totally stuck. But we know that anything can happen. That’s why we’ve managed to survive.” — The Drifting Classroom, Vol. 3
When I was a young child, I would occasionally be possessed by the fear, nay, the certainty, that my parents were not only not really my parents. but were monsters in disguise. When my back was turned, when I was asleep, when my attention was diverted, they would take off their masks like Scooby-Doo villains and reveal their true selves. I imagined them looking a lot like the Joker.
I knew such a thing was outright impossible. I knew that my parents loved me and that people didn’t really look like the joker in real life. But still, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I mean, what if?
It’s a fear that manga-ka Kazuo Umezu innately, intuitively understands. That basic, nightmarish childhood dread, that not only are things not what they seem, but that at any minute a curtain might be pulled and everyone and everything you trusted is not only disinterested in your benefit, but is actively plotting your destruction.
It’s a theme that runs throughout Umezu’s oeuvre, at least what little of it has been published here in the United States. In “Faces,” which was published in the third volume of Dark Horse’s “Scary Book” series, a seemingly benevolent younger sister drives her older sibling to madness and murder. In “Butterflies” in Volume 2, it’s the stepmother who turns out to be malevolent. In “Reptilia” (published by IDW) a young girls discovers her mother has been replaced with an evil, shape-shifting snake monster. Later in the book, another girl discovers her adoptive mother is also a snake demon.
And, of course, there’s Drifting Classroom, Umezu’s largely acknowledged masterpiece of terror. Here, formerly benevolent adults (educators no less!) quickly turn into murdering, jibbering madman when confronted with the fantastic and illogical. Only the kids (or at least protagonist Sho) are able to deal with the monsters outside the gate because, after all, they were half-expecting the other shoe to drop anyway.
But that nightmarish quality I mentioned at the beginning of this review really comes to the fore in Cat Eyed-Boy. Again and again we see stories of people, usually children, being ripped out of their safe worlds and placed in danger, usually by people they thought they could trust.
To wit: A young boy can’t understand why his brother is acting so strange, not knowing that his brain has been replaced with that of an evil (and ugly) madman; a dead grandfather is posessed by a demon; a husband discovers his wife and kid are actually monsters; a seemingly benevolent father is transformed into a (yes, again) snake monster. Nothing is what it seems or to be trusted. Even your own shadow might come to life and try to kill you.
Now, to an extent, this reoccuring theme may largely be due to the fact that most of these stories are Umezu’s early work, when he was largely writing for a younger audience. That would certainly explain the Goosebumps, “there’s-a-monster-under-my-bed” feel that pervades works like Reptilia.
But it’s the dream-like, constantly shifting atmosphere of Cat-Eyed Boy that ultimately makes it such a compelling read. I hestitate to use the word Lynchian, but if we need a Western comparison, David Lynch is certainly an artist mining the same field. He’s also, like Umezu, someone who combines humor and horror frequently, an issue I’ll discuss more in depth in a moment.
Cat-Eyed Boy is a loose collection of short stories, all connected by the title character, a half-human, half-demon child who wanders from town to town, and wherever he turns up, something bad is usually about to go down. (In a bit of inspired fourth-wall breaking, he promises to stop by your house real soon.)
He’s a bit of a trixter god, with no real special love for either human or demon society (we find out why in an early story in Volume One). Sometimes he’s a helper. Sometimes he’s a foe. Sometimes he gets involved just because his dander is up, as when a group of deformed humans decide to pretend to be actual demons (”That’s so arrogant!”) But usually he’s just a witness to the proceedings. Any attempts he makes to aid or hinder the other characters usually end up having little to no effect.
But if Cat-Eyed Boy is more of an onlooker and occasional participant than outright protagonist, that’s alright. It’s the narratives, or rather, the constant abandonment of narrative, that makes these stories so fascinating. Seemingly making it up as he goes along, many of the longer stories in these two volumes have abrupt shifts in plot and characters, all the better no doubt, to capture that dream-like experience that Umezu is so obviously desperate to get down on paper.
He does an excellent job of it. The Band of One Hundred Monsters, for example, starts off with the afore-mentioned group of deformed humans chasing after a horror manga artist (ho ho). Having ruthlessly disfigured him, they go after a greedy, rich family. But then suddenly it turns out the band may not be real at all, and their leader may not be what we thought and his motives are entirely different from what we expected them to be.
In one of my favorite stories, The Meatball Monster, a family is plagued by visions of a lumpy, misshapen thing that heralds their death, though no one else can see them. It is, Umezu makes overtly clear, a metaphor for cancer.
But then suddenly and without any explanation, there are hundreds of meatball monsters attacking the town! Like zombies, they are unstoppable and relentless and seemingly everywhere at once. Only another, seemingly innocuous monster has the ability to save everyone. And his true identity is an utterly bizarre and nonsensical revelation that someone like Luis Bunuel would have killed for.
Did you ever have a nightmare like that? Where malevolent forces were surrounding you no matter where you went and you couldn’t escape them? Or where perhaps antagonist in your dream changed shape and idenity or even multiplied? And perhaps the only way out was an absurd, left-field choice that wouldn’t make a lick of sense in the light of day? I know I have. And I’m impressed by Umezu’s ability to evoke that sort of subconscious fear with such finesse and seeming effortlessness.
And no doubt you chuckled at the earlier mention of the “meatball monster.” That’s to be expected. Umezu is constantly throwing out bizarre jokes like that in Cat-Eyed Boy. As author Mizuho Hirayama notes in the afterword, Umezu’s stories often focus on the point “where fear and laughter merge.” Cat-Eyed Boy often blends humor and fear together, so that one flows naturally into the other.
The bottom line, though, is rational thought has no place in these volumes. There is no attempting to explain things. Rules frequently change. Identities and perceptions alter. Umezu’s stories here work on an emotional logic, not a physical, comprehensible model of the waking world. There’s no “logical” reason why the little boy in one of later stories, after witnessing a terrifying vision, must keep his hand closed else his mother slip into the bowels of hell. Even witnessing such a horrific scene as that doesn’t neccessarily obligate him to the sort of obsessive behavior he develops. And, after all, his real mom is standing right there in front of him He just knows he must not open his hand, no matter what.
Because, you know, what if?
