Neko is a young girl with long black hair, pale skin, and light brown eyes who can transform into a Bake-Neko. She first appeared in the rental manga stories *The Vampire Tree and the Neko-Musume* and *A Walk to Hell* from *Kitarou's Night Tales*, later showing up again in volume 15 of the main series.
She's often seen as a prototype for Neko-Musume, though the two are officially separate characters.
Kitarou becomes fond of her and helps turn her into a famous idol singer, partly out of genuine affection and partly for the money. But Fake Kitarou and Nezumi-Otoko sabotage her by forcing her to reveal her true Bake-Neko form in public, then drive her to suicide as part of a scheme to steal Kitarou's chanchanko and break his spirit.
Her soul ends up trapped in Jigoku (Hell). When Fake Kitarou later gets trapped there too, Neko chooses not to be resurrected—instead, she forgives him and sends him back to the living world with a chunk of Nezumi-Otoko's brain she'd bitten off during her transformation.
Even dead, Neko becomes central to the second half of the story. Her memory drives Fake Kitarou's redemption and transformation into a genuine ally, while Kitarou himself is left shattered and unstable, acting more reckless than ever before.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
