Alien Meets The Thing in Classic Anime Lily C.A.T.

redmangoreviews

February 9

Julien Neaves, Sci Fi Head Writer

Warning: Major SPOILERS Ahead

Plot: In the 23rd century the crew of deep space cruiser surveying for mining rights encounter alien bacteria that starts absorbing them one by one.

Bad kitty! Uses spray water bottle. It was highly ineffective

Review: Are you a fan of Ridley Scott's Alien and/or John Carpenter's The Thing? Then you should find something to enjoy in 1987 Sci Fi horror anime Lily C.A.T. from Hisayuki Toriumi (Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, Tekkaman: The Space Knight). The film wears its inspirations on its blood-soaked sleeves. As with Alien, you have a crew coming out of hypersleep, a mysterious alien entity onboard hunting them down and an artificially intelligent entity secretly working for an amoral company, though in this case fake human Ash is replaced by the titular fake cat. And the monstrous alien and the crew using flamethrowers against it clearly takes inspiration from Carpenter's The Thing.

Let's talk about what works here. The animation is solid: I often talk about how much I adore the look of anime from the 80s and 90s. Like the films that inspired it, Lily C.A.T. spends time building up a tense and foreboding atmosphere. It never attains the heights of those iconic movies (and to be fair, few films can) but it does a decent job at it. The mystery of the alien bacteria is an intriguing one, starting off a simple organism killing people by affecting their lungs and evolving into a giant monster that wears its victims like grotesque accessories. And the monster designs by Yoshitaka Amano are pretty horrifying, though I found the gore could have been turned up a couple notches.

NANCY: Are we going to die? JIRO: Yes. One hundred per cent

There are 13 characters aboard the ship but few of them are more interesting than the cybernetic cat. I liked the grim Captain Mike Hamilton and his explanation of being someone out of time due to hypersleep is quite deep (unintentional rhyme). Fake company man and fugitive medical student Jiro is an okay protagonist. Dogged secret detective Dick Berry (and yes, that is his real name) livens up proceedings with his suspicious nature. And that's about it. You'll forget about the other characters by the following day, which does make it difficult to care about them when they are getting offed.

That said, Lily C.A.T. is an okay watch and cuts a brisk pace at just over an hour.

Editor Jules' Score: 7 out of 10

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Julien "Editor Jules" Neaves is a TARDIS-flying, Force-using Trekkie whose bedroom stories were by the Cryptkeeper, learned to be a superhero from Marvel, but dreams of being Batman. I love promoting Caribbean film (Cariwood), creating board games and I am an aspiring author. I say things like "13 flavours of awesome sauce". Read more.