Tezuka throws everything at the screen like he's running out of time, alien worlds that look like nothing else, transformation rings that feel genuinely weird rather than coolly designed, a prince finding out he's nobody from nowhere. The animation moves in ways 1978 had no business achieving. The second half collapses under its own narrative weight, but by then you're already too far into Tezuka's fever dream to care about logic.

A terrorist attack tears through a spacecraft, forcing desperate parents to make an impossible choice: they seal their infant son in an escape pod and send him into the void. The pod lands on a strange world where inhabitants can turn their bodies into animals with the help of special rings. The royal family discovers the baby and raises him as one of their own, a prince among shapeshifters. When space pirates attack the planet, the young prince is kidnapped and taken against his will to Earth, a world he has never known. There he uncovers the truth about where he came from, including his real parents and a brother he had forgotten. The special mixes action, adventure, comedy and science fiction.