It gets under your skin sideways. There's no spectacle here, no chase, just a private detective pulling on a thread until the thread turns out to be a noose: the green cat everyone treats as a lucky charm is quietly ruining every life it touches. That inversion is the whole trick, and it's a strange one even by Tezuka's standards, which is saying something. Nobody in it is a person so much as a piece the story moves, and the plot leaks in a couple of places if you press it, but at one episode you're in and out before that matters. This is Lion Books material, Tezuka in his cold, short-form mode where the moral lands like a slap and then the credits roll. Watch it for the pedigree, stay for the sick little idea that good fortune might just be misfortune with better timing.

A private detective sets out to learn where a mysterious green cat came from. The animal was believed to bring good fortune, but misfortune ends up falling on everyone who comes into contact with it. Along the way, the cat leads the protagonist toward vice, and the case turns out to have a science fiction side built around the idea of invasion. Made by Tezuka Production as a one-episode OVA, it adapts the fifth story of the 1950s Lion Books manga and serves as the first entry in the Lion Books series.