This one doesn't want you rooting for anybody. It takes the most optimistic idea in the Cold War, a laser satellite built to shoot missiles out of the sky so nobody ever has to push the button, and then shows you exactly how fast bureaucratic panic and one bad call on each side turn a safeguard into a trigger. Toei animates the hardware with a straight face: tank columns, interceptors, silo doors, all rendered with the patience of a technical manual, so the escalation lands like a briefing instead of a spectacle. The scientist's hope is the whole tragedy, because his invention works exactly as designed and it still doesn't matter. Japanese peace groups picketed this thing in 1982, which tells you it hit a nerve nobody wanted touched. Watch it and try to name the moment it could still have been stopped.

An American scientist builds a laser satellite in the hope of keeping nuclear conflict from ever breaking out. His plan does not hold. A fatal mistake made by both the United States and the Soviet Union pushes the two powers into war, and humanity is thrown into a fresh wave of bloodshed. The 1982 feature film is a drama set against the fear of a clash between the superpowers.