Sea Cat (シーキャット) is a 1988 anime Edutainment short film created by Oh! Production and funded by the Kishiwada City Teachers' Union. It tries to teach children about the dangers of nuclear warfare, and was a hobbyist production that never aired on TV or received any form of home release, as it was intended to be shown in schools and libraries.
It finally saw the light of day in 2023 when preservation group Kineko Video obtained a 16mm film print of the short and scanned it to share online, preserving it for the future.
The film follows a kitten who is stranded at sea with his two siblings, who unfortunately do not make it. He is saved by a kind dolphin who takes him to a group of otters, where one who had recently lost her young child offers to care for him and raise him as an otter. The sea creatures live in peace until one day they come across a "sea monster" (actually a submarine) firing strange rockets into the ocean.
Sea Cat contains examples of:
- Amplified Animal Aptitude: The kitten learns to break open shells using other shells with his paws.
- Cartoon Whale: Mr. Whale is blue with a square-ish head and a small tail.
- Central Theme: Nuclear war is dangerous.
- Cheerful Child: The kitten protagonist is friendly and outgoing.
- Cute Kitten: The protagonist is a cute, tiny kitten adopted by an otter.
- Deus ex Machina: The kitten is saved from an explosion by a spaceship at the end of the film.
- Drowning Unwanted Pets: Implied at the start of the film, where the kitten and his two siblings are left to float out at sea. The protagonist is the only survivor.
- Friendly, Playful Dolphin: A group of them, who go swimming with the protagonist.
- Gainax Ending: The cat is saved from a nuclear explosion by a Flying Saucer that comes out of nowhere, which is the final scene in the film and never further explained.
- Green Aesop: While not the central focus, it is there, given the work centers on the consequences of nuclear weapons being tested in the sea and how it affects the sea life.
- Heroic Dolphin: A dolphin saves the kitten from drowning.
- Interspecies Adoption: The kitten main character is adopted and raised by an otter.
- Out-of-Genre Experience: The story is relatively realistic aside from the Talking Animal thing... That is, until the sudden appearance of an alien ship.
- Parental Abandonment: The opening of the film shows the kitten and his siblings being floated away on a small object at sea, left to drown.
- A Pet into the Wild: Being the only survivor out at sea, the kitten protagonist is adopted and raised in the sea by an otter.
- Super Swimming Skills: Eventually the kitten becomes an incredible swimmer able to swim fully submerged for long periods of time.
- Talking Animal: All of the animals in the short film can speak.
- Xenofiction: The story focuses on a cat raised by otters, and largely centers on his daily life doing normal otter things.
