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Like Mickey Mouse, his U.S. colleague, he was a leading cartoon character for millions of Soviet children. He inspired numerous jokes and even served as a symbol for the liberal intelligentsia. Today, Cheburashka -- the small, hairy animated creature with big round ears -- is enjoying success in what might seem to be an unlikely place: Japan.
Cheburashka has been something of a cult phenomenon in Japan since 2001, when the original Soviet cartoons were shown in Japanese movie theaters, sparking sales of Cheburashka T-shirts, toys and other merchandise. Now, he is poised to make even deeper inroads into Japanese pop culture, with the announcement last month that a Tokyo-based company will make a feature film about him. The company, TV Tokyo Broadband Entertainment, acquired the rights to make a new film starring Cheburashka, as well as his friend Crocodile Gena, an intelligent, pipe-smoking reptile, and their archnemesis, the nasty Old Lady Shapoklyak.
TV Tokyo Broadband Entertainment is owned by the TV Tokyo Group, which broadcasts throughout Japan as Channel 12 and is known for animated series such as the international hit "Pokemon." The rights to remake the Cheburashka story were acquired from Films by Jove, a Los Angeles-based company that owns the international rights for a number of Soviet-made cartoons.
Like the old Cheburashka cartoons, produced by the Soyuzmultfilm animation studio from the late 1960s to the early '80s, the new Japanese film will rely on old-fashioned puppet animation, though it will feature some computer-graphics enhancement as well. Although the production team is Japanese, plans call for the simultaneous creation of English- and Russian-language versions. The producers are planning a marketing push that includes rereleasing the old Soviet films in Japanese movie theaters and offering a special DVD package for children.
The popularity of Cheburashka in Japan is such that the country's newspapers have dubbed him the "Russian Pokemon." Some have speculated that his appeal lies in the innocent charm of the old Soviet cartoons, especially when compared to slicker, more high-tech Japanese animation.
"Although Cheburashka and his friends may never be able to compete with Pikachu and Satoshi here in Japan, somehow, the charm of a furry monkey/bear-like character seems more sincere than that of a slick yellow mouse that squeaks and has a history of causing seizures in small children," wrote the Yomiuri Shimbun in 2001, referring to an infamous 1997 incident when a broadcast of "Pokemon" induced seizures in Japanese children.
Japan is not the only international market where Cheburashka has enjoyed success. In February, the character served as the official mascot for the Russian team at the Turin Winter Olympics, prompting visitors to snap up white Cheburashka dolls made by the Bosco di Ciliegi luxury clothing firm. The dolls were popular among Russians and non-Russians alike.
At home, however, the Cheburashka saga is more than just a toy story for generations of Soviet and, later, Russian fans.
"The trinity of Gena, Shapoklyak and Cheburashka is the basis of our popular culture, something like a three-in-one version of Mickey Mouse," critic Sergei Kuznetsov wrote in Iskusstvo Kino magazine in 2004.
Cheburashka turns 40 this year, having first appeared in "Crocodile Gena and His Friends," a 1966 book by children's author Eduard Uspensky. In the book, the lonely crocodile is working as a night watchman in a zoo and looking for friends through a personal ad. He encounters Cheburashka, a small creature "unknown to science" who has arrived in Gena's city hidden in a box of oranges and lives in an abandoned phone booth.
The book achieved only minor recognition at first. Then, in 1969, it was made into a cartoon by Roman Kachanov, a director at Soyuzmultfilm. The 1969 cartoon featured a new image of Cheburashka designed by animation artist Leonid Shvartsman. So while Uspensky calls himself the "father of Cheburashka" and owns the character's merchandising rights within Russia, it was actually Shvartsman who created the iconic image that went on to become popular around the world.
Although Uspensky wrote that Cheburashka had the eyes of an "eagle-owl," Shvartsman saw the character differently, as he recalled in an interview with Itogi magazine. "Crocodile Gena was easy to do. He was a respectable gentleman. ... But Cheburashka, I thought, shouldn't have the eyes of an eagle-owl, but rather the eyes of a baby," he said.
After the release of four short cartoons, Cheburashka became a household name in the Soviet Union, with his image printed on candy wrappers and painted on the walls of kindergardens. His name entered the popular lexicon, with Soviet mothers describing their children's poorly designed velvet coats as being "made from Cheburashka" and drunkards calling small bottles of cheap vodka "Cheburashkas."
Liberals viewed Cheburashka and his friend Gena sympathetically, seeing the duo as rebels against the system. In the cartoons, Gena and Cheburashka try to join the Young Pioneers, a communist youth league, but fail because neither of them can "march as a team." Cheburashka and Gena are also depicted trying to close down a factory that pollutes a local lake, not unlike present-day Greenpeace activists.
Together with their friends Chander the lion and Galya the plastic doll, Cheburasha and Gena try to build a House of Friendship where everyone can meet new friends. But they face a bitter enemy, Old Lady Shapoklyak, who tries to scare Cheburashka with a rat called Lariska that she keeps in her handbag. In the original Uspensky book, though not in the cartoon, Shapoklyak wants to blow up the house. Looking for explosives, she goes to an obscure storehouse director named Ivan Ivanovich. He gives her glue instead, and she uses it to glue together Gena and Cheburashka.
Meanwhile, a joke that recently made the rounds of the Russian-language Internet even tied the box of oranges in which Cheburashka was found to Ukraine's Orange Revolution. "While Russians find Cheburashka in a box of oranges, Ukrainians find their president," the joke went.
Moscowtimes.com
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