Excellent animation

As I've mentioned before, we have recently been watching the afternoon kids' shows, mostly animations. One that's for somewhat older kids is called ממלכת אוקיאנה Mamlechet Okiana ("The Kingdom of Oceana"). It's a continued story, much of it set under water, with a number of interesting characters. Yesterday was clearly the final episode, where the main evil character is defeated, and the kingdom returns to peace. Although, in a way, this whole series (or at least all the episodes that we saw) is about an epic battle, but it is almost totally non-violent! The worst that even the most evil character, גלייל Galeil, can do is to zap people, leaving them stunned for a bit but obviously not even seriously injured. At the end, Galeil is defeated by הנסיכה נרי HaNsichah Neri, ("The Princess Neri"), who is clearly the heroine of the whole show. She does this by thinking, together with all the other "good" characters (which is everyone except for Galeil and his main sidekick, Elgar), about the message רק ביחד ננציח rak b'yachad n'natze'ach ("only together will we win"). And, in fact, the previous failures were all clearly due to selfishness on the part of the various characters. This time, they all have the same goal and the same attitude, and Galeil is finally defeated by their cooperation.

The story is engaging and varied enough to keep one interested (even, as in my case, when you don't understand a fair amount of the dialog!), the music is brooding and beautiful, and the settings are imaginative and fanciful. We're hoping that, although yesterday was obviously the final episode, the show will repeat. In fact, with a few more times through the various episodes, I'll probably pick up most of the dialog. There ARE subtitles (in Hebrew), and they help a little, but mostly I can't read fast enough.

One more pleasing aspect of the show: as I mentioned, the heroine is a beautiful princess. Her sidekicks are her little dog, מיקרו Mikro, who has some magic powers and sometimes is really helpful, and her consort, צ'ובה Chuba, who occasionally does something but is actually mostly useless! It's such a refreshing switch from the usually story lines, where the handsome prince does nearly everything, and his female consort is mostly there to look beautiful!