In the twenty-third century the Syncam Corporation dispatch the deep space cruiser Saldes to survey distant planets for mining rights. Among the crew is the president’s daughter Nancy (voiced by Chikao Otsuka) who brings her precious cat Lily along on the trip. When they awaken from cryo-sleep it has been twenty years, but the crew led by Captain Mike Hamilton (Osamu Saka) are only a month older. Shortly the ship's hulking security officer Morgan W. Scott (Tessho Genda) is found dead from a mysterious infection. As more crewmen turn up dead the team come to realize the ship has been infiltrated by a murderous extraterrestrial lifeform. But that turns out to be the least of their problems. There is something suspicious about Lily...
Alien (1979) was one of the Hollywood blockbusters that exerted a major influence on anime in the Eighties. Lily C.A.T. is one of the more overt examples. Indeed the opening shots where a vast spaceship drifts into frame as its passengers gently awaken from cryo-sleep are lifted virtually wholesale from Ridley Scott's seminal sci-fi horror. Where the anime differs slightly from its live-action inspiration is a greater emphasis on the role of the ship's cat. In Alien, Jonesy the cat serves as a sort of harbinger of doom, heightening the film's carefully built atmosphere of unease and dread. Lily by comparison, though not strictly a character, is more integral to the actual plot. Writer-director Hisayuki Toriumi, a respected anime veteran best known for helming classic serials like Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (1972) and The Mysterious Cities of Gold (1982) along with the animated adaptation of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961), essentially fuses Jonesy the cat with another significant character from the Alien ensemble. Without spoiling the big revelation, Toriumi imports the same basic twist, burdening his characters with an even bigger obstacle besides the rampaging beastie.
That is where most of the similarities to Alien end. Simpering blonde Australian teen Nancy stands out amidst a cast of largely surly buff dudes but proves a poor substitute for Ellen Ripley. Whiny and ineffectual, she does practically nothing. Plus her motivation for coming along on this mission proves rather pathetic. The plot leaves most of the deductive reasoning and heroism to capable, level-headed Japanese passenger Jiro Takagi (Hiroyuki Okita). He also shoulders his own mildly interesting plot twist-cum-back-story that comes straight out of a B-western or crime thriller. Characterization is pretty thin for the most part but serve Lily C.A.T.'s equally one-note plot well enough. As with Scott's original Alien and James Cameron's sequel Aliens (1986) the script touches on class conflict and anti-corporate sentiment with the largely middle class-to-blue collar characters discovering Syncam treats employees' bodies like their own property. Surprisingly talky for an anime, the film still manages to weave a modicum of suspense punctuated by bouts of grisly body-horror that are arguably closer to The Thing (1982) than Alien. Including the obligatory lurid tentacle attack on a female character in a Japanese anime. Akira Inoue’s elegant, atmospheric score matches the equally intricate, evocative production design while the characters are unusually prosaic examples of the work of legendary chara designer-turned-fine artist Yoshitaka Amano. Toriumi stages the stalking scenes effectively enough but the plot is so inert Lily C.A.T. never captures the imagination the way it should. It's probably also less than ideal viewing for cat lovers.
