It works on you quietly. Two animals with the same hole in them, a mother dog named Muku-muku who lost her puppy and a lion cub named Buru-buru who lost his mother, and the film just lets them fill it for each other without a single line of speech explaining why that should be allowed. Yanase Takashi's picture book art comes through in the shapes, soft and round and closer to something you'd read at bedtime than anything Mushi Pro was pushing in 1970, and Tezuka built it as a musical so the singing carries the weight dialogue usually would. Nothing here is in a hurry. The slowness is the whole point, and if you rush it you get nothing. It's also the one Tezuka planned as a full series and never finished, so what you're watching is a beautiful thing that stopped, which is its own kind of ache.

A mother dog named Muku-muku, whose puppy is gone, forms a friendship with Buru-buru, a baby lion who has lost her mother. The film is an animated adaptation of a picture book by Yanase Takashi, and it centers on the feelings of the dog and the lion cub. Osamu Tezuka had planned a full musical animated series based on the story. A 1998 re-release reworked some dialogue, recorded the audio again with a new cast and changed the final scene. The result is a drama with a fantasy touch.