I walked away from the first half of the Cat's Eye remake feeling mostly unimpressed, as the combination of its bland capers and even blander central romance didn't leave a whole lot to latch onto. To its credit, the second half does at least manage to shift gears a bit as Hitomi and her sisters go from their regular heists to dealing with an organization called the Cranaff Syndicate that has ties to their missing father, and is willing to go to violent extremes to keep them from retrieving his paintings. Between those higher stakes and all of the mysteries surrounding the girls and their father, it seems as though all the pieces should have been here to provide the back half of this show with the kinds of thrills it desperately needs, but in practice, what we got still feels a little underwhelming.

Despite the slight shift to the formula, most of the same issues that bogged down the first half of this remake are still at play. The capers here still come off as though they're largely going through the motions, and while the escalation from art heists to scenarios like extreme car races or duels to the death does make them a bit more tense than what we were getting before, the execution isn't strong enough to make any of them stand out. Even the teased increase in stakes doesn't really amount to much, as the members of the Cranaff Syndicate that we're introduced to are ultimately just a couple of evil art dealers looking to use the art they stole from the girls' father for money laundering. As such, aside from having a few armed bodyguards and better security, they don't do a lot to make the heists feel any more dangerous.

The only exception is the syndicate's leader, Kaibara, who does at least manage to come closer to exposing the true identities of the Cat's Eye trio than anyone else has, and their attempts to outmaneuver him do make for a better game of cat and mouse than their dealings with Toshi. Unfortunately, his presence is largely contained to the last three episodes of the season and quickly becomes less threatening once he's outsmarted, so he's not quite intimidating enough to make up for how safe the rest of the show's formula feels. We are also still not any closer to learning more about the Cat's Eye trio and their missing father, aside from discovering that Kaibara betrayed him. While it does at least seem like these mysteries are being left on the table for another season, the lack of progress on that front is still fairly annoying given that it's the only major plot the show has, and ultimately results in the Cranaff Syndicate storyline not feeling all that different from the show's episodic escapades. We also still don't have a whole lot of characterization for the girls themselves, as Ai and Rui have even less to do outside of the main heists than they did in the show's first half. While they're likable enough for this not to actively detract from the show, that lack of focus doesn't really do much to sell them as compelling protagonists.

The only member of the trio who does get a significant amount of focus is Hitomi, but even that is mostly defined through her relationship with Toshi, which is still pretty bland outside of the whole secret identity angle, and in the case of these last few episodes, is frankly the show's biggest weakness. Much like in the first six episodes, the relationship is mostly built on Hitomi and her sisters keeping Toshi in the dark about their true identities as Cat's Eye, but whereas the need to maintain that status quo simply made the first half of the season feel a little repetitive, here it actively drags it down with how increasingly contrived the whole charade feels.

One episode for instance sees Toshi asking to live with the girls for a few days after his apartment gets flooded and even with how denial he is over the possibility of Hitomi being connected to Cat's Eye, he can't help but notice how suspicious it is that the girls won't let him wander around the house, or how dropping a note with security plans on it around the house made it easier for Cat's Eye to pull off a heist. Yet even with all the signs pointing in their direction, all it takes is finding that note at work for him to be convinced that the girls aren't hiding anything, and the show reverts to business as usual. A much worse example is in the last two episodes, where Kaibara decides to use their secret identities' leverage against Cat's Eye and seemingly exposes them in front of Toshi, only for it to turn out that he's standing behind a one-way mirror, with nothing to go on but their barely disguised voices.

Even when the girls end up having to join forces with Toshi to escape Kaibara's island, and he takes notice of the fact that one of the Cat's Eye members knows his name, and sounds an awful lot like Hitomi, she concocts a last-minute cover story, and he remains in the dark. In a sillier or more episodic show like the 80's version where it has room to breathe and play around with this formula, the constant resetting here would be a lot more forgivable, but since this remake is only 12 episodes, and Hitomi's desire to hide her identity from Toshi is about the only thing that this show treats with any real stakes, it all just comes off as frustrating. Even with the backhalf of this show being more story-driven, it doesn't really feel as though much has actually changed from where the show started, and while I still wouldn't say I had a bad time with these episodes, they didn't really give me much of a reason to be invested in any future seasons.

Visually, the production from Lidenfilms still looks fine but otherwise unremarkable. While it doesn't look too rigid, and none of the characters here look off model, there also aren't any particularly notable animation highlights either. The closest these episodes come to any cool-looking sequences is the car race on Kaibara's island, which at least manages to bring out one of the show's better uses of 3DCG, but the direction didn't do much to help it stand out from any other bits of action in the show, and it otherwise didn't feel all that exciting. The English dub also remains solid, and Alejandra Reynoso, Ari Thrash, and Erin Yvette continue to do a good job of playing Hitomi, Ai, and Rui, respectively, even if the latter two have less to work with. If I had any real complaints to throw towards the dub, it would be that I wish they were directed to disguise their voices a little more during the team-up with Toshi in the final episode, as it made his inability to put two and two together look even more ridiculous. That said, even without that sore spot, the whole scenario was already stretching its level of credibility pretty thin, so while that might have helped, I'm not sure if it would have really changed much.

This was a show that I desperately wanted to like more than I did, but between its bland visual aesthetic and constant backpedaling on actual stakes, there just wasn't a whole lot here to keep my attention. As I said in my last review, it's easy to see how Cat's Eye's formula would have worked in the 80's where the whole secret identity sub plot could work as a backdrop for episodic capers that centered around whatever antics the trio gets involved in that week, but it just doesn't translate into a 12 episode series that requires a tighter focus, and this adaptation needed to be a lot more ambitious if it wanted to deliver on a show that works within this shorter format. What we got certainly wasn't bad, but it was also fairly forgettable, and for a new interpretation of an old classic, it's hard to think of a more disappointing outcome than that.