The Adventures of Lolo the Penguin

The Adventures of Lolo the Penguin
Directed by Kinjiro Yoshida
Gennady Sokolskiy
Produced by Toru Komori
Takeo Nishiguchi
Written by Victor Merezhko
Eiichi Tachi
Shozo Matsuda
Starring Svetlana Stepchenko
Lyudmila Gnilova
Rolan Bykov
Elena Sanaeva
Narrated by Alexei Batalov
Music by Masahito Maruyama
Cinematography Alexander Chekhovsky
Production
company
Life Work Corp
Soyuzmultfilm
Sovinfilm
Aist Corporation
Jim Terry Productions (USA version, "Scamper")
Release dates
  • 26 June 1987 (1987-06-26) (Russia)
  • 26 March 1988 (1988-03-26) (Japan)
Running time
 78 minutes
Country Japan
Soviet Union
Language Russian
Japanese

The Adventures of Lolo the Penguin is an animated film from 1987–1988, originally released as a three-part serial. Its original title and literal translation is The Adventures of Small Penguin Lolo. The film was a co-production between Japan and the Soviet Union. It is an animated feature film about the life of an Adélie Penguin.

Plot

The story begins with the end of winter, and the southern ocean showing the aurora australis. A flock of penguins, coming from the north, returns home. The females separate from their mates to go hunt as males build their nests from piles of pebbles. The females return to lay their eggs, only to eventually separate from the males again, whilst the males take care of the eggs. It would take forty days before the females returned. A flock of aggressive seagulls constantly threatens to steal the penguin eggs and raids the nesting grounds while the females are away. Unfortunately, the hunger and all the good food that was waiting made some of the male penguins abandon their nest. A father (black and white penguin) of a couple saves the egg of another family, meanwhile one of their two eggs is stolen from their nest. When the mother (a dark blue and white penguin) returns, the father says that one of the eggs does not belong to them. They return another penguin's egg and have one egg for themselves.

When the eggs finally hatch, the egg that is kept hatches into a blue and white male penguin named Lolo. He meets a pink and white female penguin. One day, he runs away from his nest. He climbs a hill and reaches the top. A pair of seagulls attack Lolo, but a helicopter blows them away, seriously injuring the seagulls themselves.

Soon enough, the penguins attend school. The students are educated by a wise, old grandfather-figure penguin named Mr. Pigo that is black and white. They have a physical fitness coach named Nini who is also blue and white. The teacher and the coach bear a resemblance to Lolo's parents. The teacher educates them about an elephant seal. While the seal yawns, the teacher observes and describes its mouth. Once the seal finishes yawning, it chomps on the teacher's head, but he is released unharmed.

The physical fitness coach teaches the young penguins how to slide. Much later, she will teach them how to swim. She must stay alert because the penguins cannot swim yet, as the water is too cold.

Lolo, like any other young penguin, is over-inquisitive and very curious. This irritates the adults because they realize they do not have any answers. Furthermore, he wanders off very often, and somehow gets into trouble with his father.

In one of his adventures, he meets a dog, a husky named Don and his human guardian, who are on a scientific expedition. Momentarily he decides to with his best friend Pépé, escape again. Lolo introduces Pepe to Don, but Lolo is attacked again by a seagull, which Don grabbed and assaulted. The scientist heals Lolo's wounds.

Later, the two penguins crash towards the water, but land on an enormous block of ice. They are stranded on the ice because they still cannot swim. Once they mature, they would grow more feathers to insulate from the water, but they are still too young. They are unable to call for help, and they cannot find any food to eat. They find a group of xenophobic Emperor Penguins, which ignore their cries for help. They are attacked by a leopard seal, who is attacked itself by an orca. The orca ignores the penguins, who are now on a much smaller block of ice.

The two penguins are rescued by the crew of a ship. The penguins think that the crew is of gentle scientists, but are mistaken. The men are evil poachers who threaten to throw the penguins into a cage. They have a neighbor, a male, black-feathered macaroni penguin. They also attempt to befriend another dog, a Saint Bernard.

Once they escape, they eat a disc-shaped food, only to be chased by the poachers. The Saint Bernard howls, and the crew of the ship take cover because they think there is a storm approaching. The Saint Bernard gives them a life saver which they float onto another block of ice. They have grown now, and can swim and eat.

Once the penguins return home, the coach Nini alerts the rest of the community when she realizes that the students have been captured in a net and taken to the city zoo, so Lolo's father leads a rescue. The poachers end up caught in an enormous tidal wave caused by their gunshots echoing.

The story ends as the dark winter comes, and the penguins go northward again, now led by Lolo. Mak, the macaroni penguin later decides to find his own community.

Production

The original film was created by Takeo Nisiguti who had sought a co-production with Russian animation. He contacted them in 1980 and the film took several years to develop. During this time, the Russian animation industry received film equipment commonly used in Japan. This film marks the first time Russia and Japan collaborated to make an animated film.

The film was animated in 1987 by Soyuzmultfilm. It was co-produced by Soyuzmultflm and Japan's Lifework Corporation with music by Masahito Maruyama. It was sponsored by Aist Corporation and Sovinfilm. English versions of Lolo were distributed by Force Entertainment. The "Scamper" version was released by Enoki Films USA. A French dub was produced by Agovision and distributed by Arkeion Films.

Additional dubs of Lolo were made in Estonian, Czech, Lithuanian, and Finnish.

Additional dubs of Scamper were made in German, Swedish, Portuguese, Danish, Bulgarian, and Serbian.

Additional dubs of both versions were made in French, Arabic, Hungarian, and Polish.

Another version called Pim De Pinguïn was released in Dutch.

Titles

The Japanese title of the film is Chiisana Pengin Roro no Bōken (小さなペンギンロロの冒険) and in Russian, it is "Приключе́ния пингвинёнка Лоло́" (Priklyucheniya pingvinyonka Lolo), both literally translate as The Adventures of Small Penguin Lolo. Apart from language, the Russian and Japanese versions are identical.

Other languages were released:

Censorship

English version

Censored and other versions of the film were created by another, albeit a very little-known company which dubbed it into English («The Adventures of Lolo the Penguin»), a Soviet studio called "Film-Export", although it is sometimes erroneously considered to be made in the UK. In this version of the trilogy, it was dubbed into English, but the script, character names, soundtrack and visuals are not subjected to any alteration, and remained in their original form. The division into a three-part series and intermediate titles between the series have also been preserved.

Titles in this version have been completely replaced by English, but kept the original style and font, but became much less detailed and only mentioned a few of the key figures. In addition to the transliteration of the names of the creators of the cartoon into English, the credits are different from the American English dub (E. Tati, V. Merezhko, G. Sokolsky, K. Yasaida). The author of the English text in them is named as Nikolai Kurnakov. Other information about the team who dubbed these titles is unknown. The credits for the year that the first film was dubbed is listed as 1987, The third was listed as being dubbed in 1989.

This version was distributed in 2005 by Force Entertainment (now called Beyond Home Entertainment) in Australia. The Beyond Home Entertainment version had the film edited for time purposes. (Trimming 15 minutes) The three parts of the film were combined into one film, thus deleting the original opening and closing credits.

Deleted scenes:

American English version

The American English dub was titled "The Adventures of Scamper the Penguin". It was edited by Collins Walker, produced by Patricia Curran, directed by Jim Terry, and distributed by production company Enoki Films USA. This dub was heavily localized and cuts out most of the violent scenes from the original (as well as non-violent scenes), including, but not limited to:

The poachers are now "zookeepers", and the scenes where Toto (and three other penguins) was shot and killed are deleted entirely. Toto's absence is not explained and the film's conclusion is rushed.

All of the characters' names are changed, among them are:

Narrations in the original version were made by a man. For "Scamper", they were made by a woman. Additional dialogue is added which includes expressive mumbling, and saying "hi" when waving, regardless of whether or not their mouths are open. And many dialogs are very far from the original.

A new soundtrack was made for Scamper the Penguin. It was arranged by Mark Mercury (credited as a band named "Bullets"). The music was synthesized instead of orchestrated. In "Lolo", there was only a soundtrack; there were no lyrics. For "Scamper", there were several songs with lyrics added. Example scenes include when the seagulls attack while the male penguins leave the nest, young penguins sliding for the first time, and escaping from the poachers while on the ship.

The opening segments were replaced to one similar to common American children's animated television series. A common practice of American dubbing of the time, the original closing credits segments were deleted and not included in the new closing credits. The replacement closing credits segment is abridged.

The original picture quality of Lolo contains vivid colors compared to Scamper. This also occurred with dubs that used "Scamper" as the source film. A few frames of Scamper contain modified backgrounds. While many scenes were deleted in the final version of Scamper, frames from other scenes were reused to keep the Scamper film the same approximate length as the Lolo film, and also to add time for the background songs containing lyrics.

UK rerelease

In 2011, Brightspark distributed the American English dub under the title: "Tappy Feet - The Adventures of Scamper".[1]

French

The film was dubbed into French in Quebec, Canada which sources the American English dub. It was also dubbed in France which was sourced the original film. The French version made custom edits. Several other dubs were then sourced from the French release.

Estonian

The Estonian dub is a carbon copy of the Russian-language release of Lolo The Penguin. The opening production credits are left in Russian with a dub narration of the credits. The glass harmonica music scene is otherwise unedited.

German

The German dub is a carbon copy of Scamper, including the new theme song and credits as well as the new music. Both the theme song and the credits were translated into German. The credits remain abridged. However, several deleted scenes were restored:

Dutch

The Dutch version is known as Pim de Pinguïn and contains a completely different theme, soundtrack, and sound effects.

Voice Cast

Russian

Japanese

French

Additional Voices:

Dutch

English

References

  1. ↑
  2. ↑ 小さなペンギンロロの冒険 Приключе́ния пингвинёнка Лоло́('88日ソ) - 声優辞典(作品) (in Japanese). Kanemoto.mydns.jp. Retrieved 2014-05-02.
  3. ↑
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