Masha and the Bear

Masha is a Russian girl who lives in the forest with her pig, goat, and dog. In the first episode, it is shown that all the animals in the forest are afraid of her, as she is constantly forcing them to play with her. Then Masha sees a butterfly and inadvertently follows it inside the home of the Bear, who has gone fishing. While playing there, she makes a big mess. When he returns, he sees the disaster caused by Masha. The Bear tries to get rid of Masha, but he is unsuccessful, and he and Masha become friends.[6]

In each episode of the show, Masha is portrayed as a smart, kind, but mischievous little girl who is exploring the world around her. This leads to many funny and entertaining situations. The kind-hearted Bear is always trying to keep Masha out of trouble, but often ends up the unintended victim of her mischief. There are several supporting characters in the series, including Masha's cousin Dasha, a penguin adopted by the Bear, a young panda cub from China, who is the Bear's cousin, two wolves who live in an old UAZ ambulance car, a tiger that used to work with the Bear in the circus, and a Female Bear that is the object of the bear's affections. Characters also include a hare, squirrels and hedgehogs, a pig called Rosie, a goat, and a dog who all live in Masha's front yard.[7]

Masha

A sculpture of Masha and The Bear along with their friend Hare in Yelan.

Masha (a diminutive form of Maria) is a six-year-old girl. Masha is naughty and hyperactive, and always thinks about playing. She lives in a house near a railway station; near her house there is a path that leads to Bear's house. Masha loves Bear very much, but in her games she tends to create problems for Bear. Her parents do not appear in the series. She loves sweets, jumping in a bucket, and looking at drawings of Masha and Bear. Masha's character combines the characteristics of 6-year-olds (making grammatical errors when speaking, crying when she is not given what she wants) with adult skills (playing tennis, fishing, making preserves, playing electric guitar). She is voiced by Alina Kukushkina. In English, Masha was voiced by Giselle Nieto, Elsie Fisher and Rebecca Bloom.

Bear

The Bear is a retired circus bear who lives in a house hollowed out of a tree in the forest. His past occupation makes him very talented in performing arts (like juggling, unicycling, and even stage magic) although he's also known to dabble into other hobbies and even some intellectual pursuits. Some episodes feature flashbacks in which he remembers his childhood as a cub in the same house. In the Russian-language version, Masha calls him "Mishka" (Russian: Мишка, lit. "Mikey", fig. "Little Bear"), the traditional name given to bears in Russian tales. He is a huge bear with a big heart and he is Masha's father-like figure, as well as a friendly figure to her. He was voiced by Boris Kutnevich.

Masha's Pets

A dog, a goat, and a pig (and in the first episode, chickens) who live outside Masha's house in her front yard, but almost every time Masha comes out, they hide themselves to avoid her. The Pig is often forced to play with Masha, who makes it dress up like a baby in a stroller. In the episode "Dance Fever" it is revealed that the pig's name is Rosie.

The Wild Animals

The wild animals are a hare, squirrels, hedgehogs, and two wolves. Masha and a certain Hare (in the episode 'One, two three! Light the Christmas Tree' the present list of Father Frost in English describes this creature as 'Bunny') often play hockey together (and make a mess or accidentally hurt someone), and the Hare is occasionally an antagonist of the Bear, due to stealing carrots from the Bear's garden. The two Wolves live in a derelict ambulance car on top of a hill, often looking for something to eat, and act as medics for any apparent injuries or illnesses, though they sometimes fear Masha (living in an ambulance cab and acting as medics is a pun on the Russian idiomatic expression Волки — санитары леса, "wolves are orderlies of the woods").

She-Bear

The She-Bear is a female bear. The Bear is enamored of her and sometimes goes out of his way to impress her. The first time she rebuffed him in favor of the Black Bear, only to realize how self-absorbed he is. Another time, she turned her nose up at the Bear's classical guitar playing as she preferred more modern music. [8] Even so, the She-Bear usually opens up to the Bear, such as the time she agreed to have a dinner with him, and she is sometimes kind to Masha, such as giving her a fashion magazine, helping to train her for her tennis match against the Black Bear, and helping her learn to ice-skate.

Dasha

Dasha is Masha's cousin from Moscow. She looks like Masha, but is more "ladylike", has blue eyes, wears blue glasses and an red dress. She is afraid of the Bear and calls him "Shaggy". [9]

Panda

Panda is a panda cub and the Bear's young cousin from China. He and Masha are rivals, often bickering every time he comes for a visit, but they occasionally get along and have fun together.

Whiskers n' Stripes

A tiger who is Bear's best friend from their days performing together in the circus.

The Black Bear

A himalayan black bear, who is Bear's worst enemy and Bear's chief rival for the attentions of the She-Bear. The Black Bear has an arrogant and unsportsmanlike personality, cheating to win against Masha in a tennis game, and laughing at her when she grows gigantic. Bear's biggest fear is if Black Bear and She-Bear marry, which is shown in Game Over when Bear imagines what will happen if he plays games his whole life.

Penguin

A penguin that first appears in "The Foundling", as an egg that Masha finds and makes the Bear hatch. The Penguin quickly imprints on the Bear as his parental-figure and the Bear forms a sincere bond with him, but chooses to send the Penguin to live in Antarctica for his own health. [10] Even so, they stay in touch and the Penguin once visited.

Father Frost

A Santa Claus-like character from Russia who appears in Christmas-themed shows.

Four-eyed aliens

These aliens appeared in episode 65. They live far away from Earth in the Universe. When 3 specimens accidentally crashed on Earth, they were helped by Bear and Masha to get back to their spaceship.

According to the project's director, Denis Chervyatsov,

Masha was based on a real person… In the 1990s, the project's artistic director, Oleg Kuzovkov, was on holiday when he saw a little girl on the beach. The child was so genuine and open that she could easily walk up to a stranger and play chess with him or pick up his flippers and go swimming. However, after a few days, the vacationers began to hide…[11]

The series' production has been handled domestically at Animaccord Animation studio since 2008.[11] The scenario for each episode is written by Oleg Kuzovkov, creator of the cartoon. Then the storyboarding is developed in accordance with the script and, in general, consists of at least 2000 slides. After the team finalizes the plot of an episode, the work for the 2D animatic kicks off. At this stage, animators define the duration of each scene in an episode, how characters are placed in it and interact with each other. After this step of the production is finished, the episode is passed for dubbing. Dubbing must be completed before 3D animation is applied, as the 3D animators need to know the characters' dialogue, intonations, and emotions in advance in order to keep their lip movements synchronized to the audio and make their facial expressions look realistic.[12]

Masha, her cousin and Father Frost are the only characters who speak. The others communicate through pantomime or wordless sounds.

For the first two seasons, Masha’s voice in the original Russian version was performed by Alina Kukushkina, who was 6 years old when she began to dub Masha. For the third season (seven years later in 2015), the officials of Animaccord studio confirmed that the new voice of Masha would be 6-year-old Varvara Sarantseva. The show's sound designer, Boris Kutnevich, provides the voice of The Bear. Mark Kutnevich provides the voice of The Hare.

For the English version, Elsie Fisher – the voice of Agnes in the Despicable Me films – dubbed the voice of Masha in the first season.[3] In subsequent seasons Masha was dubbed by Rebecca Bloom (ep. 27–39) and Angelica Keamy (ep. 40–52) and now is Giulia De Carvalho and Kaitlyn McCormick.

The music for each episode is written by Russian composer Vasily Bogatyrev. Most of the songs used in the cartoon, such as the soundtracks of “Laundry Day” and “The Grand Piano Lesson” episodes, became very popular in Russia and abroad.

Masha and the Bear on 2019 stamps of Russia

• In January 2015, the cartoon was included into a list of "TV Shows Destined to be Classics," which was compiled by the cartoon industry's periodical Animation Magazine to mark its 250 issue.[1]
• In February 2015, Masha and the Bear won a 2015 Kidscreen Award for Best Animation in the Creative Talent.[13]
• In October 2015, Kidscreen Magazine named Animaccord Animation Studios as one of the top 50 leaders in the world of animation (Kidscreen Hot50) and the top 10 production companies of the year.
• As of June 2020, one copy of the video "Recipe For Disaster" has received over 4.3 billion views on YouTube, making it the site's fifth most viewed video of all time, the site's most viewed non-music video of all time, and the site's most viewed animated video of all time.[14]

According to the Associated Press, "Masha, who is dressed in a folk costume with a headscarf, became a household name in many Muslim nations including Indonesia."[15] Dmitry Loveyko, managing director of Animaccord, said that "It's a Muslim country, so we thought we're lucky she wears a headscarf and her legs are covered!"[15]

The first Masha and the Bear mobile app was released by Apps Ministry in August 2011. In 2013 the first mobile game Masha and the Bear: Search and Rescue was published by Apps Ministry. Later more publishers such as Indigo Kids, PSV Studio, Noviy Disk developed and released games and apps featuring Masha and the Bear.

Netflix has released 27 of the first 29 episodes in 9 episodes of 3 segments each. Many of the videos were uploaded multiple times on three different YouTube channels ("Маша и Медведь", "Get Movies" and "Masha and The Bear") so their view counts across up to three channels have been combined.

As of 2019, Masha and the Bear premieres on CTC in Russia, Universal Kids in America, HOP! in Israel, and CTV in Canada. In the Middle East and North Africa, it premieres on Baraem and Jeem TV, as well as Spacetoon. In Germany, it premiered on Junior. It premiered on Malyatko TV in Russia, Chutti TV in India, in the UK on the channel cartoonito and Mult and Tlum in Russia on August 1, 2019. It is also broadcast in Indonesia by ANTV.

On 10 July 2017, activists of the Ukrainian public organization “Council of Public Security” from Odessa demanded that the State Committee for Television and Radio-broadcasting of Ukraine and other state services ban the broadcast of “Masha and the Bear” in Ukraine. The organization called the animated series “a Russian media propaganda product” and stated that “Russian propagandists send a clear message to children: the bear, which is traditionally considered to be a symbol of Russia and is associated with this country, appears as a big strong hero who seizes someone else’s property, house, land with impunity ". Animaccord reacted to the allegations, saying that only the first two seasons are broadcast in Ukraine, and that Ukrainian viewers mostly watch the animated series on the Ukrainian-language Masha and the Bear channel on YouTube, access to which is not blocked in Ukraine.[34]

• List of most-viewed YouTube videos

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Masha and the Bear (animated television series).

• Official website
• Masha and the Bear's channel on YouTube
• Masha and the Bear on IMDb