An aging zookeeper and two recruits learn that keeping animals alive is just watching things fail in slow motion. The comedy comes from incompetence meeting genuine care. A 1981 special that treats a dying camel with more dignity than most anime treats its heroes, built on the quiet authority of a man who actually did this job and lived to regret nothing about it.

Toshio Nishiyama is an aging zoo keeper who takes on two young trainees: Takeshi Ishizawa, a hot-headed former chef, and Ichiro Hasegawa, a mild-mannered veterinarian. Both discover that a job which looks simple is anything but. An escaped pelican here, a camel on its deathbed there, the birth of a hippo. Each day brings fresh trouble, yet the two keep going. What unfolds is part comedy, part drama, built from the semi-autobiographical anecdotes of the real Nishiyama, a keeper at Tobu Animal Park. He appears in person at the start and close of the special to speak about his love for animals, and he reveals that Ishizawa stands in for his own younger self.