The SOJ Library

What did Tsukasa Hojo draw before City Hunter?

Three sisters, a café, and a string of art thefts: the hit that taught Hojo the weekly trade.

Before the sweeper there were the sisters. Cat’s Eye ran in Weekly Shonen Jump from 1981 to 1985, eighteen volumes: Hitomi, Rui and Ai Kisugi, three sisters who run a café by day and steal art by night, taking back, piece by piece, the scattered collection of their missing father, while the detective assigned to catch them is Hitomi’s own fiancé. It was Hojo’s first hit, and it made his name.

It also made his schedule. The young Hojo climbed to five finished pages a day on Cat’s Eye, a pace his editor Nobuhiko Horie still marvels at; the weekly grind of a hit Jump series is where the craft on this whole shelf was forged. Tokyo Movie Shinsha animated it from 1983, and France, characteristically, met it early and renamed it too: Signé Cat’s Eyes.

And in parallel, the tryouts: Hojo drafted the City Hunter one-shots in 1983, mid-Cat’s Eye, which is why the two series are stitched together forever. Umibozu’s café in City Hunter is called Cat’s Eye; in 2019 the Kisugi sisters walked into Shinjuku Private Eyes as themselves; in 2023 they headlined a crossover film with Lupin III. The sisters never really left.

The first hit

Cat’s Eye

Weekly Shonen Jump, 1981 to 1985

Eighteen volumes: the heist romance that taught Hojo the weekly trade and gave him his first audience.

The anime

Tokyo Movie Shinsha, from 1983

TMS animated the sisters while the manga still ran; the same studio would return to Hojo for the Angel Heart anime two decades later.

The stitch

1983 to 2023

City Hunter’s tryouts were drawn during Cat’s Eye; the sisters cameo in the 2019 film and star opposite Lupin III in 2023. One continuous Hojo world.

The City Hunter shelf

The History of City Hunter

The tryouts become the series.

How does Hojo draw?

The pace and the postcard.

What are the anime movies?

The sisters’ 2019 cameo, in Shinjuku Private Eyes.