Cat's Eye (anime)

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
From left to right: Rui, Hitomi and Ai.

Cat's Eye (original title キャッツ・アイ) is a manga by Tsukasa Hojo published between 1981 and 1985 and adapted to anime format from 1983.

The three Kisugi sisters are at first sight perfectly normal young ladies who run a cafe. In fact, they are the daughters of famous German artist Michael Heintz, who disappeared several years ago, and at night they turn into cat burglars. Their hope is to assemble their missing father's entire oeuvre in order to find clues as to his whereabouts.

Their modus operandi is to announce their forthcoming passage by leaving a Calling Card. Every time, the police will deploy forces in order to catch them, and every time they evade capture and make off with the painting they were after. It helps that the police detective assigned to their case is, in fact, middle sister Hitomi's boyfriend; while he has no idea of the sisters' nighttime activities, he unwittingly helps them stay one step ahead of law enforcement.

A live action TV movie was produced in Japan in 1988 and a theatrical movie in 1997; only the latter is readily available.

Tropes used in Cat's Eye (anime) include:
  • Action Girl: The three sisters.
  • Anti-Hero: Main heroines break law with good intentions - they want to find their father.
  • Behind the Black In the live action movie, where they disappear into a car that is perfectly camouflaged against a brick wall. This is the variant where it's invisible to the viewer only because the film is 2D.
  • Bokukko: Ai is one of the early examples of this
  • But Not Too Foreign: From the picture above do you actually believe they have a German father?
  • Calling Card: The sisters are so self-confident that they sign their thefts before they even commit them.
  • Chika Sakamoto: Ai's Japanese seiyuu
  • Cigarette of Anxiety: The young male detective only lights up when he's really stressed, such as when the underage youngest sister pops up in bed with him (turns out she's a sleepwalker).
  • Classy Cat Burglar: The sisters fit this trope to a T.
  • Combat Stilettos: The sisters' catsuits come with built-in high heels.
  • Cop Boyfriend: Utsumi Toshio.
  • Da Chief: Utsumi's superior.
  • Dating Catwoman: Toshio and Hitomi, although the former remaining unaware of it is a crucial part of their relationship.
  • Defrosting Ice Queen: Asatani Mitsuko, Utsumi's colleague.
  • Femme Fatale: Subverted with Rui who looks like one but never acts as one, except when done on purpose.
  • Hero Antagonist: Toshio, Mitsuko, Da Chief, and other cops.
  • Hey, It's That Voice!: Keiko Toda best known as Matilda Ajan voices Hitomi, Toshiko Fujita arguably best known as Taichi Yagami voices Rui, and Chika Sakamoto best known to some as Agumon voices Ai Kisugi
  • Hidden in Plain Sight: The sisters' cafe is called the Cat's Eye. Nobody ever makes the connection, although Mitsuko does get suspicious. The sisters once explain a phone call about Cat's Eye by saying that they get calls like that a lot, which means the name of the restaurant helps them hide.
  • Idiot Hero: Toshio.
  • Keiko Toda: Hitomi's Japanese seiyuu
  • Latex Perfection: When one of the girls is disguised as the chief, an older man, near the start of the 1997 movie.
  • Meganekko: Mistuko.
  • Ms. Fanservice: All three would qualify but especially Rui.
  • Name's the Same: "Cat's Eye" is also the name of an American horror movie based on the works of Stephen King.
  • Nice Guy: Toshio, although he is more competent than most guys that fit this trope.
  • Panty Shot: Mitsuko gets one in episode 21. Ai ties a string attaching Mitsuko's skirt to the chief's jacket. As the chief walks away, Mitsuko's skirt lifts up, revealing her white panties.
  • Phantom Thief: The Kisugi sisters.
  • Roof Hopping: An early example.
  • Shipper on Deck: Both Rui and Ai work hard to get Hitomi and Toshio together.
  • Shout-Out: Got one in Totally Spies! (really), given that Alex is an affectionate rip-off of Aï. Much more blatant for French viewers, since Ai's name in the dub was Alex (for "Alexia").
    • And also, in an early episode of Cat's Eye, we see another mysterious thief, known as Lupin's Bride.
    • The café run by Umibouzu in City Hunter was also called Cat's Eye; of course this was the next manga penned by Hojo.
  • Soft Water: Episode 53. A man grabs Hitomi's feet as she is being lifted from a helicopter. She kicks him off when they're probably hundreds of feet in the air. He lands in the water with no damage.
  • Spy Catsuit: Each of the sisters has her own, of a slightly different cut from the other two.
  • Sticky Situation: Ai falls into one in one of the episodes.
  • Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist: Toshio
  • The Scream: The painting itself is used in the 1997 movie when Toshio throws a baseball at the girls and it becomes embedded in the painting exactly in the mouth of the screaming picture.
  • The Three Faces of Eve: Hitomi is the wife/seductress material, Rui is the seductress, and Ai is the tech-savvy tomboy.
  • Tomboy: Ai.
  • Toshiko Fujita: Rui's Japanese seiyuu, and not to mention Playing Against Type
  • Unitard Of Power: Despite some sites describing their costumes as leotards, they actually look closer to unitards. The 1997 movie has them shiny, apparently vinyl or leather.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: See Anti-Hero.
  • Wrench Wench: Ai.
  • X Meets Y: This series has been described as Lupin III meets Charlie's Angels
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