2025-08-23 - La Planet Sauvage by René Laloux

Oms En Série (graphic novel cover) [1]

A friend sent me a link to Fantastic Planet (1973), a surreal French science fiction animation. I finally got around to watching it. The pace is a little slow. The content is almost psychedelic. One review calls it a retro-futurist Alice In Wonderland. Spot on!

In a nutshell, aliens domesticate humans as pets, with unintended consequences. What i enjoyed the most was the soundtrack, which was downright ambient and groovy at times, and incorporating cheesy arcade-style synths at others.

Below [2] is a link to watch the English translation.

The movie is based on a French language book, Ohms In Series [3], which sounds like a terrible electronics pun to me. Resistance is futile. It has also been adapted to a three volume graphic novel.

The Wikipedia page has spoilers for the animation [4].

p.s.

This brings to mind another excellent animation and graphic novel on this same theme: Dream of a Thousand Cats. The animation by Hisko Hulsing based on the graphic novel by Neil Gaiman.

Dream Cat illustration [5]

As before, the Wikipedia page [6] contains spoilers.

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