What an imaginative film that really captures the way children play...

When it was first subtitled in English & uploaded to Youtube by houzdog03, "Strawberry Rain" was viewed over 230,000 times and many people left very positive comments. Thankfully, despite the video now being deleted, you can still read those comments here thanks to the Internet Archive.

Top comments:

>Man, that was beautiful.
>I almost cried watching it.

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>When was this series on? Was it during the 80s? We never enjoyed so educative and touching cartoons in the west! It's nice of you to have added the subtitles because my Russian are so rusty! I'm putting your channel on my bulletin for my friends!

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>This is a very cute cartoon. I love the message.

>I didn't know Russian Animation was this good untill recently. I haven't seen too many Russian cartoons, but they're very good.

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>It's nice to see what Soviet Russia was not as cold and heartless as they would lead you to believe.

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>Most Soviet cartoons are so humane, innocent, and full of morals. The more and more I watch American cartoons (past and present) I see the huge difference. It seems to me that the creators of American cartoons want to make it entertaining to the children's parents as well (for business purposes), putting in cartoons adult themes, like dealing with adult relationships, and as a result the innocence and childhood wonder is lost in the American cartoons.

I'm no fan of the drawing style, but the screenplays in this series are very good, and there's something about the nostalgic mood and the focus on imagination, on the boundaries between past/present, child/adult, real/imaginary, visible/invisible, concrete/metaphorical that really appeal to me.

And some of them, like this one, I find very emotional to watch...

Sadly, I just noticed that I'd only saved part 1 of houzdog03's 2007 subtitles. The second part is surely long gone by now (I doubt anyone else saved it), so the rest will need to be recreated... (EDIT: the 2nd part is now translated)

Really, when watching this film, I believe that many Asian persons will be very moved. Because it evokes a horrifying memory of the sparrow extermination campaign from 1958 to 1962 in mainland China, which resulted in tens of millions of people starving to death.

I just watched this one, and was pleasantly surprised! The music rocks, and the whole experience is like a dream (and has the logic of a dream). You just have to allow yourself to go with the flow.

This series has only been published in Vietnam for about ten years now under the auspices of the Finnish embassy. It is quite popular among Saigonese young people.

Viewed on its own merits, it is perhaps a nice debut film, though certainly not as polished as Zyablikova's later films of the 1980s (and too much aimed at younger kids to the exclusion of adults, while the original book can be loved at any age). However... I watched this recently right after reading the book for the first time, and I found it to be an enormous disappointment. I enjoyed the book immensely. But here, too many changes seemed to be made simply for the purpose of shifting things around, and it seemed more like a pale imitation than a valid reinterpretation into a different medium. Which is unfortunate - I wanted to like this, but couldn't.

The transformation of Vietnamese language through word "Heaven" : Thiên 天 (classical times) → Blời (XVIII century) → Giời (XIX century) → Trời (XX century).

【Noname lullaby by Á-nam Trần-tuấn-Khải, 1921】

Let us sightsee the Sword Lake scene together,
With the Bridge of "the Rising and Perching Sun" and the Temple of "the Gem Mountain".
The Ink Slab and the Pen Tower is not worn yet,
Ask, who built this "Mountain and Lake" (land + water = country) ?

Rủ nhau xem cảnh Kiếm Hồ,
Xem cầu Thê Húc, xem chùa Ngọc Sơn.
Đài Nghiên, tháp Bút chưa mòn,
Hỏi ai xây dựng nên non nước này ?

【Langue indigène, 1926】

1. Lê-Lai rescues his lord

Lê-Lợi at that time in Chi-linh mountain was surrounded by Chinese troops ; the enemy was about to defeat the fort, so the King was in danger of being killed. He asked his general that : "Who dares to break the siege and fight the enemy on my behalf ? That man will of course be captured by the enemy, but I take advantage of their retreat, so I will recruit more troops and gather together to plot revenge. Lê-Lai the youngman took it. He wore a robe, then rode an elephant out of the fort, and called himself "Prince of Pacify" which was the title of King Lê-Lợi at that time. Ming army thought him as the real King Lê-Lợi, so they gathered to arrest and kill him. General Lê-Lai risked his life like that to save King Lê-Lợi from an accident, so that our country could gain self-control, from being oppressed by the Chinese army.

a. Ông Lê-Lai liều mình cứu chúa

Lê-Lợi bấy giờ ở Chí-linh bị quân Tàu vây riết lắm ; quân giặc sắp hạ được đồn, vua Lê tất bị giết. Vua mới hỏi tướng-tá rằng : "Ai dám thay trẫm ra phá vòng vây, đánh nhau với giặc ? Người ấy sẽ bị giặc bắt, còn trẫm thì nhân lúc giặc lui, mộ thêm quân, họp binh lại, mưu sự báo thù”. Ông Lê-Lai ra nhận việc ấy. Ông mặc áo ngự-bào, cưỡi voi ra ngoài đồn, tự xưng là “Bình-định vương” là hiệu vua Lê-Lợi bấy giờ. Quân nhà Minh tưởng là vua Lê-Lợi thực, xúm nhau lại bắt ông giết đi. Ông Lê-Lai liều mình như thế thành ra cứu được vua Lê-Lợi thoát nạn, mà nhân đó nước ta mới được tự chủ, khỏi phải quân Tàu áp chế.

2. Story about the magic sword of King Lê-Lợi

Legend has it that King Lê-Lợi, before he rose to fight the Ming army, was still in Hanoi working as a fisherman. One day he threw his net into Hoàn-kiếm Lake, then called Tả-vọng Lake ("Lake of the Left Looking"), when he pulled it up, he could not catch any fish, but he got a very beautiful sword with a wide, hard, and shiny blade. He got that sword, so rose up to fight the Chinese army, chased it out of the country, then he was crowned the king in Thang-long ("the Rising Dragon", at that time Hanoi). One day he was playing in a boat on the lake : He saw a big turtle emerging, swimming close to him. He was afraid, took his sword away, but the tortoise grabbed the sword and disappeared. He then knew that the turtle was the lake god who helped him fight the Chinese. After that, people built in the middle of the lake a tower called "Quy-sơn tower" (Tower of the Tortoise Hill), and that lake was called "Hoàn-kiếm lake" (Lake of the Returned Sword).

b. Truyện gươm thần của vua Lê-Lợi

Tục truyền rằng vua Lê-Lợi, trước khi nổi lên đánh quân Minh, vẫn ở Hà-nội làm nghề đánh cá. Một hôm ngài quăng lưới xuống hồ Hoàn–kiếm, bấy giờ còn gọi là hồ Tả-vọng, lúc kéo lên không được cá, lại được một thanh gươm rất đẹp lưỡi rộng, cứng mà sáng loáng. Ngài được thanh gươm ấy, nổi lên đánh quân Tàu, đuổi ra ngoài nước, rồi lên ngôi vua ở Thăng-long (Hà–nội bấy giờ). Một hôm ngài ngự thuyền chơi trên hồ : Ngài thấy có một con rùa to nổi lên, bơi lại gần ngài. Ngài sợ, lấy gươm gạt ra, nhưng con rùa ấy đớp lấy gươm rồi biến mất. Ngài bấy giờ mới biết rằng con rùa ấy là vị thần hồ đã giúp ngài đánh quân Tàu. Sau người ta xây ở giữa hồ một cái tháp gọi là “Quy-sơn tháp” (tháp Núi-rùa), còn cái hồ ấy thì gọi là “Hoàn-kiếm hồ” (hồ Giả-gươm).

Thanks for the history, Cynir!
I think that these films from the 1920s are interesting in that they show what was happening at the time. Unfortunately, most of the Soviet animation from before 1936 or so has been lost, as a lot of animation studios were dismantled in that year (replaced by Soyuzmultfilm) and their film collections not preserved. A lot of things were destroyed because of WW2, also.