“Flow” is a natural occurrence: all matter in the world is constantly moving just a tiny bit and sometimes, with the right stimuli, it will fall out of place and these fluctuations or “flow” will occur and change the shape of the world. Sometimes it’s caused by a person’s thoughts, other times it occurs naturally, and sometimes if left alone things will return to the way they were before, but you still need to call in flow disposal experts to figure that out. That’s Hirota’s job, and Kondo’s job now too, to investigate instances of flow in the town and see what needs to be done to set things back to right.
While the connection might not be immediately apparent from the summary, once you start reading this series it makes a lot of sense that this is from the same manga-ka as Mushi-shi; the two series aren’t connected in any way, shape, or form but the general idea that both natural phenomenon and human-made phenomenon shape the world, and that this act of change in and of itself is a very neutral action, describes both series perfectly. “Flow” seems to be largely more benign than the mushi were but even something relatively harmless, like a cherry blossom tree going back in time to last spring or an intersection suddenly having way more splits, can be a hassle for the people who have to live with it.
Flow can affect people more directly too — Kondo is an example of this as a 35 year old woman whose body has reverted back to being 12 and she’s searching for a way to undo this. Thankfully the story doesn’t use this set-up as an excuse to be creepy about Kondo. She still thinks like a 35-year-old woman and her appearance actually looks quite ambiguous since she’s still wearing the same hairstyle and glasses before her age reverted. When she confronts Hirota on seemingly not even realizing that something was strange with his new part-time employee he admits that since she was sent by City Hall he assumed she was qualified for the work (somehow) and didn’t question it, although Hirota is also the guy who named his cat Sacho (CEO) and employs said cat to help with flow work so this reaction is less surprising than you’d think.
When I think of Mushi-shi I tend to think of some of the hauntingly beautiful compositions in the anime and it’s true that When a Cat Faces West doesn’t quite hit those same emotional, visual highs since the subject matter is a bit more mundane. But it still boasts lovely art, character designs that are simple but distinct, and intricately drawn impact pages when the story calls for it. The soft watercolor style present on the covers makes me wish that we saw any of the colored art for this series since I’d really like to see more of Yuki Urushibara’s work in that medium (and it feels like a waste to have a digital-only release and not take advantage of the fact that color pages can be added without the extra costs and hassles that a print version would have).
Given how many Mushi-shi fans as I know, it’s a real shame that this title seems to have gone completely under the radar when it was released. Kodansha USA definitely releases more titles than they can market these days but considering that they’re also the license holders for the Mushi-shi manga it boggles my mind that I can’t recall seeing a single cross-promotional tweet to encourage sales. Even without that connection however, When a Cat Faces West is a lovely, quiet series about supernatural happenings and the myriad ways that they can be both harmless and deeply unsettling. I never felt like the series crossed the line into soft horror but it’s definitely “softly unsettling” at points (which again is a combination of both the stories and the art), a difficult mood to pull off well but it does so splendidly.