Editing Cheburashka (section)

==Characters==
<gallery mode=packed heights=250>
Cheburashka (Cosplay).jpg |Cheburashka played by an actor
Gena the Crocodile (Cosplay).jpg|[[Gena the Crocodile]] played by an actor
Old Lady Shapoklyak (Cosplay).jpg|Old lady [[Shapoklyak]] played by an actress
</gallery>

===Cheburashka and friends===
Cheburashka is male, has a bear-like body, and is about the size of a 5-year-old child. He is a toddling creature with huge round ears on the side of his head that droop when he is discouraged. He has feet without legs, big black eyes, a snub nose. His voice is high-pitched and childlike. Cheburashka is an optimist as he only sees the best in people and is chirpy even in the gloomiest situation. Sergei Kapkov, animation historian and managing editor of Soyuzmultfilm, has said that Cheburashka "is absolutely useless and hopeless. He is like a stranger who doesn't understand a thing but just has one global idea, and that is to make friends and have others&nbsp;... make friends with each other".<ref name="MissingTreasure">{{cite news|last=Dixon|first=Robyn|author-link=Robyn Dixon (journalist)|date=29 May 2020|title=Cheburashka was the beloved misfit of Soviet animation. It's now a missing treasure for Russia.|newspaper=[[The Washington Post]]|location=Moscow|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/cheburashka-was-the-beloved-misfit-of-soviet-animation-its-now-a-missing-treasure-for-russia/2020/05/28/bc97283a-99cd-11ea-ad79-eef7cd734641_story.html|url-access=limited|access-date=4 April 2021}}</ref> For Leonid Katz, an art historian in [[Bar-Ilan University]] in Tel Aviv, Israel, Cheburashka represents the "ideal". As he notes: "In the film he is completely innocent. He represents all that was lost, all that was maybe impossible, all that was dreamed of".<ref name="MissingTreasure"/>

After being turned down by the zoo as an "animal unknown to science", Cheburashka gets hired as a window display for a discount store selling [[factory seconds]] because he resembles one, residing in a phone booth. In the tale, he befriends an anthropomorphic [[Gena the Crocodile|crocodile named Gena]], who wears a hat, a bow tie, and a coat, and plays the accordion. Gena works in a zoo as a zoo animal. Gena's favorite songs are "Such a Pity that One's Birthday Happens Only Once a Year" and "The Blue Train Car", both of which are extremely popular with children.

===Antagonist===
Cheburashka and Gena have their adventures made more difficult by a character named "Старуха Шапокляк" (Old Lady [[Shapoklyak]]). She is a mischievous but charming old lady. Shapoklyak is tall and thin, wears a ''[[chapeau claque]]'' hat and a dark-coloured dress, and carries around a pet rat, Lariska, in her purse to help her play pranks on people, though near the end of some stories she turns around and helps the protagonists. The refrain of her theme song contains her motto, "One won't ever get famous for good deeds" {{langx|ru|Хорошими делами прославиться нельзя}}.