Nobody talks about this one. That needs to stop. Dolphin Prince exists in that impossible space where 1965 television actually tried something, a three-episode gamble on undersea adventure that moves with the confidence of a show that knows exactly what it is, even if the world forgot it existed the moment it ended. The black and white cinematography doesn't soften the strangeness; it amplifies it, turning what could have been disposable kiddie fare into something genuinely eerie and alien. Watch it for the mermaid mythology, stay because you're watching anime's earliest proof that someone was willing to build entire worlds just to see if they could make them stick.

Dolphin Prince is a boy who lives beneath the sea with a pet dolphin at his side. He moves through the water in a wetsuit fitted with a jetpack and knocks out his foes with an aqua-boomerang. His companions are Neptuna, a mermaid friend, and Dr. Mariner. Only three episodes were produced, as a short experimental trial run, and the stories involve a red vortex, a call from the sea, and an attack by the Sea-Star People. The undersea premise drew partly on Arthur C. Clarke's novel Deep Range, and the show mixes action, adventure and science fiction.