C'is a very small letter – the “s”, at the end of Cat’s Eyes – which unequivocally puts us on the trail of the intentions that TF1 had when adapting Tsukasa Hojo's manga (Cat’s Eyein short). This remake, a live-action mini-series whose first episodes are broadcast on Monday, November 11, was not born from a desire to seduce the French manga readership, but rather from the desire to revive the nostalgia of forty-year-olds. Those who, as children, discovered the adventures of this trio of burglar sisters in their animated version. It's even “from a childhood dream” that starts Michel Catz's ambitious series project (you can't make it up), according to the website of Echos.
Because this extra “s” is a legacy of Signé Cat’s Eyesthe French title of the cartoon, broadcast on FR 3 from the start of the 1986 school year – a reference to the business card that the sisters leave at the scene of their misdeeds. In Japanese, the title Cat’s Eye (“cat’s eye”, in English) is the name of the café run by the heroines, their cover.
The production also kept the Frenchification of the character names for its flesh-and-blood cast carried by Constance Labbé, Camille Lou and Claire Romain: no more Rui, Ai and Hitomi Kisugi, make way for the Chamade sisters; Sylia, Alex and Tam. The heady and emblematic theme song (“Girl of today, children of form, we like to laugh and dance…”), although modernized, has also been preserved. On the other hand, the production invents a plot which precedes the original series, in order not to harm the basic material. It also transposes the series to modern-day Paris rather than urban Japan in the 1980s.
Women in the spotlight
The production team at work is not the first to venture into the fictions of the mangaka Tsukasa Hojo: in 2019, the French director and actor Philippe Lacheau undertook – with some success – to bring to the big screen a French version by Nicky Larson (City Hunter in its original version). The “cleaner” also comes from the same universe as the Kisugi sisters. He will follow them in the pages of the prestigious magazine magazine Weekly Shonen Jumpone of the most popular manga incubators.
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How can we explain that in the immense quantity of animated productions and mangas that have come down to us, those of Tsukasa Hojo are more favored than others by French screenwriters? First of all because the author gave his agreement. He owns the rights to his creations through the company North Stars Pictures, which he co-founded with another manga author, Tetsuo Hara. Not shy, Tsukasa Hojo approves and supervises these projects from afar made in France. He has often come to Paris, such as at the Japan Expo show in 2023 where The World had met him.
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