Luntik, or, in full, The Adventures of Luntik and His Friends (Приключения Лунтика и его друзей), is a contemporary Russian children’s cartoon series. Begun in 2006, it already has more than 450 five-minute episodes, and more are currently being planned.
The show tells the story of Luntik, a cute little four-eared creature who grew up on the moon but then fell to earth. He now lives in a meadow, where he has made friends with a variety of regular Earth-animals—insects, frogs, and fish. The series shows Luntik learning about the earth and its ways of life, from a naive, childlike perspective. He is portrayed as a very good-hearted creature who doesn’t understand evil and is always trying to make the world a better place. Some of the other characters are Luntik’s best friend, Kuzya (Кузя), a grasshopper; Mila (Мила), a ladybug; Pchelyonok (Пчелёнок), a bee; some caterpillars; and sundry others.
The general format of the show involves Luntik learning some lesson about the way the world works, with the help of his friends. Each is self-contained: the first 400 or so episodes started with a brief introduction, with a voiceover saying, “Once, on the moon, an unusual child was born…” (“Однажды на Луне родился необычный малыш…”), though after that they switched to simply “Hello! I’m Luntik. I’m with you again!” (“Привет! Я Лунтик. Я снова с Вами!”). The episodes can all be watched in order on the show’s website.
Luntik is quite a popular show among Russian children, so much so that there’s also a Luntik brand that includes video games, a magazine, and a line of dairy products. The show itself is produced by Melnitsa (“windmill”) Studios, a Russian animation studio that’s also responsible for such famous Russian animated films as Ivan Tsarevich and the Gray Wolf and The Three Bogatyrs series.
Creator: Aleksandr Boyarskiy (Александр Боярский)
Voiceover actors: Yekaterina Gorokhovskaya (Екатерина Гороховская), Anna Slynko (Анна Слынько), Yelena Shulman (Елена Шульман), Yulia Rubina (Юлия Рудина), Svetlana Pismichenko (Светлана Письмиченко), Oleg Kulikovich (Олег Куликович), Anatoliy Petrov (Анатолий Петров)
Production company: Melnitsa
TV channel: Karusel (Карусель), Rossiya K (Россия К), Mult (Мульт)
The first episode of Luntik, from 2006:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Hz3kHRRISU
