I finally found the will to talk about it: here's my favorite italian cartoon!

It was the year 2002. The tv director Raffaele Bortone founded the animation studio "Animundi" (this time I don't know its exact translation, my best guess it's that it is a combination of "animation" and the latin word for "of the world"). The studio specialized in creating kids oriented animated series with the use of Stereotoon, that allows to watch them in 3D, and that had little innovations (like E-Fox, the first cartoon to air on the internet, and Sparky and Caramela, who had aspects in order to be fruitable for disabled audience). In 2006 Raffaele had an idea: what about making a cartoon... about dinosaur cubs travelling through time? And before you ask, no, it's not Dinosaur Train, it's not even italian and tbh I think this one is more interesting. Anyways, Animundi presented the idea to RAI (HER AGAIN!!!), which accepted. In the same year, they produced a pilot for the series. Despite it being almost terrifying to watch (due to jerky animations and some not well drawn frames), it told the story in a funny and cute way, and made the producers give the ok to the series. After presenting it at Giffoni, a festival for kids entertainment, finally, in 2008, "I Saurini e i viaggi del meteorite nero" (this time I'll simply tell you the official english name, which I really like, that being "Jurassic Cubs and the journey of the black meteorite") aired. The protagonists were Saro the parasaulolophus, Bronto the brontosaurus, Stego the stegosaurus, Ranu the dimetrodon and Nunzy the dinosaur firefly. They live in an unspecified prehistoric land. One day their families go searching for a new home, but suddenly they're met with a meteorite storm. To protect their cubs, the adults bring them to a cave in a trex-shaped mountain, but the next day they seemingly disappeared. In their place our heroes meet Nichus, the assistant of the wise shaman Sauro (yeah, I know, lots of originality with the names), who reveals the cubs that their parents have been transported into the future by a magical meteorite. With his help, the protagonists use it to travel through time in order to bring their parents back... or at least this was the plot of the first season (I'm starting to notice a pattern...). In the finale of it, in fact, they discovered their families have arrived in the year 2150, and have been kidnapped by the evil scientist doctor Thaurus, who wants to discover the secrets of timetravel in order to conquer every time period. After saving their parents, our protagonists have to butcher every plan of the tyrant. The cartoon made a good success in Italy, recording a 10% share across various age groups and lasting 4 seasons, producing an anthology home video movie and various merchandising.

I remember well the day I discovered this series. It was a normal day, I just had finished my schoolwork and wanted to relax watching cartoons, like any normal kid would. Zapping on Rai Yoyo, I saw this cartoon, which I never saw before or heard anything. Still, the plot and artstyle convinced me to give it a chance (I always loved history, and the characters looked really cute to me). Needless to say the cartoon won me over like immediately and from that day I started watching it pleasently, and still today I like it a lot. The story is beautiful, the episodes have interesting ideas and developes them well, the characters are funny and charming (my favorite's gotta be hands down the villain), the artstyle is intriguing and most of all their happy endings are the sweetest and most heart-warming ever. The first two seasons (expecially the second one) are in my opinion the best, for they have better episodes and artstyle. The third one is a bit below par, but still has something to say, while the fourth is a big fall from grace (doesn't help that one of the protagonists changed voice actress and that the focus shifted from time travels to... space travels? Why? J-just why?!), but it's still nice to look at and it leaves us with a worthy ending. Despite it not being a masterpiece and objectively not the best italian animated series (this title for me goes to the cartoons of the studio called Rainbow, and the ones of the cartoonist Zerocalcare), I personally think its simplicity is one of its strong points: it's nothing but a simple cartoon that wants to entertain kids and, why not, even teach them something, and for me in that sense it works perfectly. Even today, watching its episodes puts a huge smile on my face.

The drawing I made represents the recurring scene of the cartoon: the protagonists that, inside the metorite, excitedly wait for their adventure. I usually hate scenes in cartoons that are repeated in every episode, even when I was a kid, because they annoyingly steal time for the actual plot, but this is so sweet it makes an exception. The sixth guy is Roy, a robotic dinosaur built by Thaurus, that however betrays the scientist once he realize how evil he is. Even though I took inspiration from the second season of the show (and Roy doesn't actually join the team before the ending of said season), I added him because I think he's the most adorable character in the series.