Ito’s chosen style is central to the hilarity of his stories: J-kun’s bulging, bloodshot eyes; A-ko’s pupil-less ones that make her seems more zombie than human.

Junji Ito makes gleeful use of his superior horror aesthetics to create a charming love letter to the cats his wife forced into his life. For example: A girl's hair rebels against being cut off and runs off with her head; Girls deliberately catch a disease that makes them beautiful but then murder each other; a woman treats her skin with lotion so she can take it off and look at her muscles, but the skin dissolves and she tries to steal her sister's skin, etc. That said, people who are into his sort of horror might not like that when all is said and done, he just wrote a cute little book about his cats. Despite being a dog person, J-kun finds himself purr-suaded by their odd cuteness and thus begins his comedic struggle to gain the affection of his new feline friends. Ito used two main artistic styles throughout the manga: a realistic one and a horror-tinged one of exaggeration.His wife was generally fine with her depiction in the manga, but disliked that Ito drew her stand-in with very small pupils and striped pants. Little did he know…his blushing bride-to-be has some unexpected company in tow–Yon, a ghastly-looking family cat, and Mu, an adorable Norwegian forest cat. Despite the imagery (and maybe even because of it) the comedy works even better as these monstrous creatures slowly win over his dog loving heart. Master of Japanese horror manga Junji Ito presents a series of hissterical tales chronicling his real-life trials and tribulations of becoming a cat owner.

Faustine Lillaz of Planete BD, in contrast, wrote that the humor of the manga would have a wide appeal. Kodansha USA announced that it had obtained the manga's license at the 2015 Anime Boston convention, [13] and published the English-language translation in North America on 27 October 2015. This comedic graphic memoir about becoming a cat owner is reissued in a deluxe hardcover featuring an exclusive interview with Ito and a new cover illustration by the author that glows in the dark! The perceived potential audience for the manga was a point of discussion within the reviews, with several critics writing that the manga would appeal mainly to cat caretakers and fans of the author.The cats scratch things, make messes, bite, make him feel unworthy, all the things that cats do and he’s documented it here for our absolute enjoyment.

You see Ito is a Horror Artist, and I use capital letters there because he takes it a step beyond what most can pull off. Little did he know his blushing bride-to-be has some unexpected company in tow-Yon, a ghastly-looking family cat, and Mu, an adorable Norwegian forest cat. The cats scratch things, make messes, bite, make him feel unworthy, all the things that cats do and he's documented it here for our absolute enjoyment. But when both cats arrive, he swiftly descends into a breakdown because the cats don't love him as much as he discovers he loves them.Master of horror Junji Ito turns his twisted eye on his own life in this comedic graphic memoir about becoming a cat owner, now reissued in a deluxe hardcover featuring an exclusive interivew with Ito and a NEW cover illustration by the author that GLOWS IN THE DARK! to eventually accepting their presence in his life to the extent that he is jealous of their relationship with his wife. Ito had never considered himself a cat person before and found her first cat to have a bad vibe about him. Visuals that could be alarming in other works are played for comedy (for example an extended mouth with over large teeth moving towards a cat and a panel saying “I’m going to gobble you up” then the next frame showing kissing/cuddling the cat). In "Yon is a Weird Cat," J-kun, while finishing his manga on a tight deadline one night, imagines that Yon transforms into various beings, including a slug, the supernatural snake-like creature tsuchinoko, and an elderly man.