Lily C.A.T.

Bjoli Feb 8, 2012

5.5

A claustrophobic space horror featuring character and monster designs from Amano Yoshitaka of Vampire Hunter D fame, Lily C.A.T. is not the best animated or produced film of all time, but it has a certain charm.  A lot of its appeal comes through its indebtedness to the Alien franchise, which it apes thoroughly with its design and storyline.  However, Lily C.A.T. lacks a strong central character like Ellen Ripley, and suffers badly for it.  None of the cast are particularly interesting, and just mimic overplayed tropes before shuffling off to die. Thankfully, however, Amano had more sense than to provide a cheap Gieger rip-off to go along with the rest of the visuals, though there is something reminiscent of another '80s sci fi/horror classic, the Thing, in his designs.  Unfortunately, it's poorly explained and doesn't feel overly dangerous, meaning there's a lack of real tension in the climactic moments of the film. Perhaps the best thing about Lily C.A.T. is the captain of the ship, who although he is not given enough time to really develop, provides an interesting window into cryogenic space travel in some of the quieter moments, and strikes avoids the militaristic cliches of many space captains.  Indeed, his character feels similar to later space-sailors Jet of Cowboy Bebop and Mal from Firefly. The animation isn't stellar (no pun intended), but it doesn't descend into unwatchable territory, and stays fairly consistent.  The character designs aren't overly simple either, so that comes as something of a surprise.  As a final note, I should point out that I watched the English dub, which was surprisingly good, a few hokey lines not withstanding.

enki2 Jun 16, 2017

3

Lily C.A.T. is a mish-mash of ideas that will be familiar to western audiences: it's basically a combination of Alien and The Thing. It has a couple new ideas (like the alien monster being a colony of bacteria, and the Bishop character being a cat robot instead of an android), but these don't quite make up for the extent to which the rest of the film is a direct rip-off of these two better-known films -- down to setting design, plot points, and even individual animation cuts. One thing I will give it is that, for the time, the creature animations were great: it looks a lot better than the original Vampire Hunter D from around the same time, and the creature animation rivals some of the cuts from Akira's climax the following year. (The animation of the ships is not any better than Macross, and in some cases -- such as the ship's explosion -- is actually much worse.) All in all, it's a fun (if unoriginal) flick and worth spending an hour and a half on if you're not sure whether or not you want to re-watch The Thing or Alien.

bunda6662 Aug 1, 2022

5

The OVA starts off well but quickly descends into nothing special. The story drags at some parts and the mistery and tension that it is going for are never really there for the most part. The animation is below average for an OVA except at some parts where it is average and at one specific point it was really amazing! The sound is good, not spectacular. The characters are just cannon fodder, except for the captain. ALl in all this is not a complete waste of time, I guess it is worth a watch at least once.