Cat's Eye

The Loving Absurdity of the Modern Heist

There is a moment early in the 2025 remake of *Cat's Eye* that forces a choice: Detective Toshio Utsumi, fresh from being humiliated by a trio of female art thieves, wanders into a coffee shop to vent to his girlfriend. The place is called Cat's Eye. His girlfriend, Hitomi, is one of the thieves. He never puts the pieces together, since by night she dons a leotard and by day an apron. (To be fair to Toshio, no mask ever appears.) You either swallow that massive blind spot, or you switch it off. I stayed.

Mostly, I’m glad I did. Yoshifumi Sueda and Liden Films were given a weird task: take Tsukasa Hojo’s foundational 1981 manga—an emblem of bubble-era anime with its mix of romance, slapstick, and jazzercise-adjacent heist gear—and drag it into Reiwa times. That’s not easy. Sueda refuses to touch the sisters’ iconic looks. Hitomi, Rui, and Ai still look like they stepped out of an '80s City Pop album cover. Yet they’re also juggling modern smartphones to crack museum security.



Whether that mash-up works depends on how patient you feel. Sometimes the updates pull against the original premise. Heists feel very different when guards have night-vision cameras and drones, instead of flashlights and a whistle. But Sueda leans on pure kinetic energy to paper over the logic gaps.

Just look at the opening paraglider sequence in episode one. The sisters drop from the Tokyo skyline with effortless, fluid grace. The animation is tactile—wind crackling against nylon wings, neon city canyons whipping past. The camera tailing Hitomi as she carves around a glass skyscraper shows a woman completely in control, tense but calm. Sueda isn’t merely showing a robbery; he’s showing how much fun the girls are having.



At the center is Mikako Komatsu, giving Hitomi a fascinating duality. I’ve always thought the toughest job in a rom-com is the straight man holding everything together. Komatsu sells Hitomi as both a ruthless thief and a woman genuinely in love with the idiot cop on her trail. Her voice tightens into cool detachment during heists, then softens into warm, mildly exasperated affection at the café. She keeps things grounded when the plot risks floating off on its own silliness.

It does stumble. The middle episodes trip over themselves when the dialogue feels obligated to explain mechanics we’re already watching. (A modern anime tic, perhaps.) And I’m not convinced the rival jewel thief Kamiya subplot earns the screen time it steals from the sisters.



Even so, there’s a distinct charm to this twelve-episode run on Disney+. I caught myself thinking about *Charlie’s Angels* and how some shows from that era just vibed harder than they tried to make sense. Ado’s cover of the original theme playing over the end credits doesn’t feel like a cynical cash-grab; it feels like a mission statement. It spells out exactly what this show wants to be: silly, sleek, and ready for you to leave your skepticism at the door and ride along. Sometimes, a good leotard and a grappling hook are all you need.