This is the one that stares at a room full of adults and tells them the planet has an expiration date, and watches them argue instead. Tezuka's star system does the heavy lifting: Shunsaku Ban shambling through as the detective nobody takes seriously, Rock hovering on the wrong side of the line, Kenichi and Pichi caught between them, and Dr. Yamadano screaming into a world that has already decided he's a crank. The Fumoon themselves are the gut punch. Tiny, soft, absurdly cute things born out of nuclear testing, quietly loading Earth's animals onto ships because they've done the math and we haven't. It's a single 1980 special, no arcs, no second season, just a compressed hour of Cold War dread wearing a rounded, kid-friendly face. You come for the vintage Tezuka linework and leave thinking about who gets a seat on the ark.

Nuclear testing on a small island has triggered the sudden evolution of the Fumoon, a tiny but highly intelligent humanoid race discovered by Dr. Yamadano. Almost no one believes him, apart from a few witnesses such as detective Shinsaku Ban, the young men Rock and Kenichi, and Kenichi's sister Pichi. The Fumoon know that Earth will soon be engulfed by a cloud of black gas released by a stellar explosion, so they are taking animals from all over the world aboard their spaceships and preparing to leave. They mean to abandon humanity. One Fumoon, Rokoko, becomes close friends with Kenichi and tries to help Yamadano and the others build a ship so a few humans can escape, with support from Dr. Ochanomizu and Dr. Frankenstein. This one-episode science fiction special is based on Osamu Tezuka's early work The Next World and was made for a 24-hour charity program.