do‘it’s a very small letter – the s, at the end of cat eyes – which puts us unequivocally on the track of the intentions that TF1 had when adapting Tsukasa Hojo’s manga (cat’s eyein short). This remake, a live-action miniseries whose first episodes air on Monday, November 11, was not born from the desire to seduce French manga readers, but from the desire to revive the nostalgia of forty-somethings. Those who, as children, discovered the adventures of this trio of thief sisters in their animated version. is even “from a childhood dream” which kicks off Michel Catz’s ambitious series project (it can’t be made up), according to the website echoes.
Because this is also a heritage of Signed cat eyesFrench title of the cartoon, broadcast on FR 3 since the beginning of the 1986 school year, in reference to the calling 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 cafe run by the heroines, their cover.
The production also maintained the Frenchization of the character names for its flesh-and-blood cast, starring Constance Labbé, Camille Lou and Claire Romain; Rui, Ai and Hitomi Kisugi finished, space for the Chamade sisters: Sylia, Alex and Tam. The intoxicating and emblematic musical theme has also been preserved (“Girls of today, children of fitness, we like to laugh and dance…”), although modernized. On the other hand, the production invents a plot that precedes the original series, so as not to damage the basic material. It also moves the series to present-day Paris instead of the urban Japan of the 1980s.
Women in the spotlight
The production team working 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 a French version of Nicky Larson to the big screen (city hunter in its original version). The “cleaner” also comes from the same universe as the Kisugi sisters. You will follow them in the pages of the prestigious magazine. Weekly Shōnen Jumpone of the most popular manga incubators.
How can we explain that in the immense number of animated productions and mangas that have reached us, those by Tsukasa Hojo are the most favored than others by French scriptwriters? Firstly because the author gave his consent. He owns the rights to his creations through the company North Stars Pictures, which he co-founded with another manga author, Tetsuo Hara. Without shame, Tsukasa Hojo approves and supervises these projects from afar made in france. He has often come to Paris, such as to the 2023 Japan Expo fair, where the world I had met him.
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