Anime‑Inspired Delusion

Commissioned by Stern Crime, Cat has undertaken a rare and challenging assignment: to visually interrogate the psychological breach where fiction bled into reality.

The four‑image series juxtaposes stark, documentary‑style photographs of the real German crime scenes (2017 killings in which the perpetrator, Marcel H., posted obsessively online) with Cat's hauntingly surreal, anime‑inspired renditions of the perpetrator’s internal fantasy world. Drawing on the iconic colour palette of red and blue, the illustrations nod to “Yu‑Gi‑Oh!” -  a series the murderer was apparently obsessed with - “Marcel” and “Jaden” becoming names blurred between victim and villain in his disturbed re‑enactments. 

Cat's work delicately balances sensitivity to the victims while peeling back the layers of a deluded psyche: each half‑page and full‑page spread folds the cold, forensic visuals through a lens of warped animated reality, visually narrating how virtual identity can consume and distort.