Masyanya
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Masyanya (Мася́ня) is a popular and relatively new Russian online cartoon made with Macromedia Flash animation. The title character is a woman in her twenties who lives in an apartment in St. Petersburg. Masyanya has an oval-shaped head and always wears a miniskirt and a shirt with a bare midriff. Aside from Masyanya, main recurring characters in the series are:
- her rather dense overall-clad boyfriend Hryundel' (Хрю́ндель)
- their friends Lokhmaty (Лохматый, verb. The Shaggy) - a podgy and careless guitar-player and Lyas'ka (Ляська) - a girl from Moscow.
A typical Masyanya episode is only a few minutes long and consists mainly of sarcastic (and frequently absurd) commentary on contemporary Russian life. Some of the most popular episodes include one in which Masyanya and Hryundel' smoke while Hryundel' is working on live radio, one involving a sexual encounter made impossible by the lack of "shtuchki" ("thingie"), and one in which the two main characters exchange a series of increasingly awful gifts, such as a horse-shaped piñata or a bag of flying green cats (green cats are featured in many Masyanya episodes).
The episodes are generally loosely connected. The characters do not age. For most of the episodes, any particular sequence or storyline cannot be established. They can be watched in any order with no loss to the viewing experience.
Often, a song from one of the Russian pop bands is used in the soundtrack of an episode. Several episodes are in essence clips set to a particular song.
Masyanya's popularity is rapidly growing on both sides of the Atlantic. In Russia, she made a move from the internet to television, featuring several cartoons and talk show appearances, although her popularity is mainly supported by internet. In Germany, translations are being made of some of the more popular episodes. In the United States, Masyanya has become an integral feature of the Middlebury College Summer Russian Language Program in Vermont.
[edit] External links
- Masyanya's official site - cartoons in Russian, freely available for viewing on the site (Flash plug-in required) and for downloading as stand-alone Windows executables (require no preinstalled software and can be run in full-screen mode). File sizes are in the 1-5 Mbyte range.
