Moomin (1990 TV series)

The Moomin family and friends. From left to right, Snufkin, Little My, Sniff, the Snork Maiden, Moominpappa, Moomin (Moomintroll) and Moominmamma.

The series begins with the arrival of spring in Moominvalley. Moomin, along with Little My, Moominpappa and Moominmamma wake up in Moominhouse, while Snufkin also comes back from his south travel on the first day of spring. The first eight episodes create a coherent storyline that is based on the third novel, Finn Family Moomintroll. During the story, Moomin and his friends find out the magical silk hat, that turns out to belong to the Hobgoblin. He later gets his hat back from the Moomin family. The Moomins later find a wrecked boat, fix it and travel to a lonely island which is full of Hattifatteners. Next, two small creatures called Thingumy and Bob with a large suitcase arrive to the Moominhouse, and they are followed by the Groke. After the Moomins manage to evict the Groke from their way by giving her Moomin's seashell, it turns out that Thingumy and Bob are keeping the large "King's Ruby" in their suitcase. After Thingummy and Bob return Moominmamma's missing handbag, the Moomins celebrate the event with a large junket, where suddenly the Hobgoblin also arrives. Finally the problem of the King's Ruby's ownership is solved with the Hobgoblin's magic.

Moomin takes place between a three-year period of time. Moomin and his family or friends manage to take part in two winter periods through the series, although the Moomins are normally supposed to fall into hibernation. Through the series, Snork, the Snork Maiden's inventor brother, designs and creates two flying ships of different type; the first is destroyed due sabotage and the second one gets finished at the end of the series. Before the second winter period, the Moomins and their friends also get to know Alicia and her grandmother, who is a witch. She teaches Alicia to become a real witch and has a negative opinion about the Moomins and their nice nature. As the series goes on, the witch however begins to appreciate them. At the end of the series, Snork decides to go on a journey with his finished flying ship while Alicia and her grandmother also leave the Moominvalley for the third winter period. The series concludes when the winter arrives, the Moomins fall into hibernation and Snufkin travels to the south once again.

Moomin is the third anime adaptation based on the novels and comic strips. Before the production, author Tove Jansson was already displeased with the previous Moomin anime adaptation from 1969 due to how unfaithful the series' characters and stories were to her original source material.[4][5] Because of this, both of the first Moomin and New Moomin from 1972 were never distributed or aired outside Japan. Since 1981, Finnish animation and commercial producer Dennis Livson began to beg the rights from Tove and Lars Jansson to make another animated adaptation.[6] Eventually, Livson managed to win both of them over after they saw his previous produced animated series Alfred J Kwak, and rights for another series were obtained. A year later in Tokyo, Livson showed a small preview of the anime series for both Tove and Lars Jansson. According to Livson, Tove commented it by saying "Dom lever ju" ("They are really alive!").[6]

Unlike previous two anime adaptations, Moomin was co-production of Dutch company Telecable Benelux B.V. (later re-titled as Telescreen since 1998 until the acquisition to brand management & media company m4e in 2008) and Japanese animation studios Telescreen Japan Inc. and Visual 80. Hiroshi Saitō and Masayuki Kojima were the series' main directors while Akira Miyazaki did the screenplay for the first 12 and many later episodes. Tove and Lars Jansson were also involved with the screenplay by doing certain changes in scripts.

The series includes plotlines taken from following Moomin books: Finn Family Moomintroll (eight episodes), Moominland Midwinter (three episodes), Moominsummer Madness (three episodes), The Exploits of Moominpappa (three episodes), Moominpappa at Sea (two episodes) and several short stories from the collection Tales from Moominvalley (five episodes in total). Roughly twenty episodes in the original series and dozen more in the sequel series are based on stories taken from Tove and Lars Jansson's Moomin comic strips. The series does have differences from the books and comic strips, more strongly than European stop-motion series The Moomins that aired between 1977 and 1982, but not as much as the previous two anime adaptations. Certain events and characters from the books and comic strips are missing to fit the series' own continuity or for reasons unknown. Many new plotlines and some new characters have been added, especially in the later episodes. Some notable differences include:

• Moomintroll is called simply "Moomin", except in the first episode in the Japanese version, where the narrator introduces him as "Moomintroll".
• Little My appears in the series from the beginning, but appears only in later volumes in the books.
• Lady of the Cold looks very different from the description in the books.
• In the books the Moomins exchange the King's Ruby for the Hobgoblin's top hat and the Hobgoblin later arrives, to collect the King's Ruby, with a new hat. In the series however, Hobgoblin gets his top hat back in the second episode and in the seventh episode the Moomins instead exchange the King's Ruby for a heart-shaped sea-shell Snorkmaiden gave Moomin.
  • Also the wishes are different. In the series, Snorkmaiden wishes for eyes like the Wooden Lady, Moomin wishes them back to normal after she ends up hating them, and with the third wish Thingumy and Bob wish for a ruby just like the Hobgoblin's. In the book, Mamma wishes for Moomin to not miss Snufkin being gone, and Moomin wishes for some of the party's food to go to Snufkin.
• A Fillyjonk raises Moominpappa in the orphanage in the series, while in the books it's a Hemulen who raises him.
• Snorkmaiden and Sniff who disappear occasionally in the book series have bigger roles in the TV series and they appear quite often throughout the series.　
• Snufkin takes a friendly attitude towards people who are not in the Moomin family. He doesn't smoke a pipe in the series.
• Snork appears regularly and he's portrayed as a scientist and inventor whereas in the books he's a very minor character who mainly tries to solve varying problems with systematic approach. Snork's fixation with flying is not based on the books.
• Alicia and her grandmother (the witch) are characters who were invented for the series, they did not exist in the books or comic strips.

In the Swedish dub the cast was exclusively made up of Finland-Swedes. Generally Finland-Swedish actors are always cast as the Moomins in Swedish productions and localizations because Tove Jansson herself was a Finland-Swede. The Japanese, Italian, Finnish and Swedish dubs used a female narrator to give the impression that the show was narrated by Jansson herself.

William Roberts replaced Peter Whitman as Moominpappa after Episode 47, due to Whitman's death.

The first anime series consists of 78 episodes, although only 76 episodes have been aired in certain countries. The series was first aired in Japan on TV Tokyo on April 12, 1990. The last episode aired in Japan on October 3, 1991. As its initial run went on, Moomin become known for it being aired during the Gulf War. When the Operation Desert Storm broke out on January 17, 1991, other TV stations around Tokyo switched to emergency broadcasting with only TV Tokyo broadcasting the anime as usual and attracted a lot of attention.[10][11][12]

After its first run in Japan, many other television channels have re-aired the first series. The series was distributed to many countries worldwide. In Tove Jansson's home country Finland, the series first aired on Finnish Broadcasting Company's YLE TV1 on September 1, 1991, and a Swedish dub first aired three days later. After the first run, the series has been moved to YLE TV2 and has been rebroadcasting along with the sequel series in almost every year, either with the Finnish or Swedish dub. In 2017, presentations rights of the series in Finland was moved from Yle to commercial channel MTV Oy. The series received a new HD-remaster, and a new Finnish translation and dubbing was recorded, due to copyright reasons. The new Finnish translation was based largely on the CBBC English version.

During the early 1990s, the first anime series has also been dubbed into British English for Children's BBC (later renamed as CBBC) in the United Kingdom under the title Moomin. The series was distributed by Maverick Entertainment, while the dubbing was recorded at Cardiff's Eco Studios. The full voice cast includes Susan Sheridan, Toni Barry, Pat Starr, Peter Whitman, John Chancer, David Graham, Garrick Hagon, Jeff Harding and Stacey Jefferson. Sheridan's daughter Emily Stride also provided the English voice of Too-Ticky in some episodes. The series has never aired in the United States with the exception being Hawaii, where the series has been retitled as The Tales of Moomin Valley and aired on television station K-5.[3] Despite the different opening and ending themes, Hawaii airings featured the British dub from Children's BBC.

Between 2019 and 2020, all 78 episodes of the first series were uploaded to YouTube by official Moomin channel under the new title Adventures from Moominvalley. The British dub was used again with new, high definition remastered prints.

• Moomin at Tokyo MX's official website (Japanese)
• Moomin at Cartoon Network's official website (Japanese)
• Moomin at Telescreen
• Moomin at IMDb
• Tanoshii Moomin Ikka (anime) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia
• Tanoshii Moomin Ikka: Bōken Nikki (anime) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia
• Moomin at ClassicKidsTV.co.uk