Hacker News Reader

Comment by josep-panadero | Hacker News Reader

> "Pippi and the Moomins remind us that madcap humour and imaginative storytelling can convey humanistic ideas at least as powerfully as a more literal approach. "

"Moominpappa at Sea" is one of my favorte books of all time. All of the moomin books feel important and significant even that the characters are inocuous or even silly. It is easy to understand how many people missed the more adult messages of the books. But, that same style allowed children to enjoy the stories without overwhelming them.

It is a shame that in places like Japan, the characters are very well known, but the books are shadowed by the animated version. The characters are fantastic, thou.

For Pipi, everybody loves the 1969 TV show. I have read a couple of books, and I like them, but I do not have them in such regard as the Moomins books.

View on HN

I tried to nail down just what makes me like Moomin(trolls) so much, and I think it's the sense of wonder and mystery. Some things are partially explained at best, but you don't get an impression it's mystery for mystery's sake or conspiracy theorist bait (see David Lynch movies). I love both the cartoons and the books.

I think Moominland Midwinter is a masterpiece. It's just eerie.

I also really like how each character has his own philosophy or at least a way of doing things. Little My's approach to vampires is "Bite them first!". Yeah, Cobra Kai never dies! ;-). There's a saying "know your enemy", but Moomins take it one step further: no one is really an enemy, you just need to understand people and their motives. There are no black&white evil characters.

Moominpappa at Sea is somewhat similar to Watership Down where they are children books but themes are very deep. For Pipi it is kind silly adult point of view but generally chilren some weird reason loves it, nowdays my 4-yeard old dresses like pipi several times a week.

My favourite bits were:

1. A statement that they still didn't figure everything out, but they finally had something important: a decision.

2. When they repaired a boat they found, and Moominpappa said it doesn't matter that they don't know who it belongs to... the worst case is they'll give someone back a repaired boat.

For someone who grew up in Poland, this attitude is borderline mind-bending.

What was mind-bending about them?

I think it goes against common Polish mentality. Consensus is rare. Compromise is often called a "rotten compromise", there's a concept of "having right" which implies only one person. Swedes have a phrase "Polish parliament" to describe a fruitless, noisy argument. Second, Poles often see things they find as windfall rather than items lost by people with feelings.

Something unique to Poland is meme pictures with proboscis monkeys. They poke fun at perceived national vices. You might want to do image search for "nosacz".

Excellent! Guess I'll have to rewatch Life of Brian to see if there might be a bit about "Blessed are the big noses."

Where I am, when Napoleon invaded, the local militia defeated one of his recco squadrons. And then went back home and Threw A Party. After all the soldiers had already celebrated victory with a[1] well-merited pint[2], the french main force showed up...

[1] or possibly some

[2] or possibly smaller volumes of stronger beverages

I think what's liked about Pippi is her independence and how she believes she can do almost anything, without it becoming a cliché. It's a fine line. I remember Artemis Fowl for instance (when I was a bit older) became too much for me.

>I think what's liked about Pippi is her independence and how she believes she can do almost anything

Absolutely. I read Pippi as a child (in English) and always thought she was wonderful.

Amusingly, a friend and I both came to the conclusion that Lizbeth Salander[0] was Pippi all grown up.

I wonder if Stieg Larsson had Pippi in mind?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisbeth_Salander

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stieg_Larsson

Addendum: I found Larsson's Salander novels to be quite good, and thought the Swedish TV movies (with Noomi Rapace) were pretty faithful to the novels. I didn't bother with the American version, as American movies are mostly crap (then again, Sturgeon's Law[2] applies everywhere)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

I don't have a source at hand, but I remember reading an interview where Stieg Larsson confirmed both influence of Pippi and that Mikael Blomkvist was inspired by and named after Astrid Lindgren's character Kalle Blomkvist (translated to English as Bill Bergson).

Used to watch Moomin on Swedish TV, never really read the comics. Anime was rare back then and I certainly never realized it was Japanese. The congeniality is quite amazing. Never liked Pippi much, but I devoured other books by Lindgren, Emil of Lönneberga in particular. I find it noteworthy that Miyasaki's Pippi project never saw the light of day.

Miyazaki kind of did Heidi instead not long after Pippi fell through and that became an absolute cult classic in multiple regions while Pippi has a real-life classic already, so noteworthy for sure, but very far from a complete loss.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com