The camera follows a chain of predators, each one focused so hard on what's ahead that it can't see the teeth behind it. Animation this patient and precise, every leaf movement, every muscle tension, turns a thirty-second food chain into something that feels like watching your own life. By the time you understand the structure, you're the cicada, the mantis, and the weasel all at once.

High in a tree, a cicada sings with all its might and sips dew, never noticing the mantis behind it. The mantis bends low and raises a foreleg to seize the cicada, unaware that an oriole sits close by, neck stretched out to peck. The oriole in turn misses the weasel stealing toward it. Each animal chases the prize in front of it while ignoring the danger at its back. Shanghai Animation Film Studio made this short film in the Chinese ink wash painting style, adapting the old Chinese fable about the mantis that stalks the cicada without seeing the oriole.