A kitten directing mice in a samurai picture sounds like a joke, but it's a meditation on control, replacement, and whether art survives when you try to mechanize it. The 1959 color work here is patient in a way modern animation refuses to be, each frame holds weight, each composition breathes. By the time you realize this short is about the terror of being automated out of your own craft, it has already shown you, not told you.

Yasuji Mori brings back the kitten who first appeared in Koneko no Rakugai. This time the little cat steps behind the camera as a director, shooting a samurai picture and casting the mice he counts as friends in the lead parts. A 1959 comedy film, it picks up from the earlier outing and points the kitten's talents toward moviemaking.