MeteoHeroes is an Italian animated TV series for children focused on environmental issues, such as global warming, deforestation and pollution. After debuting in Italy on Earth Day, April 22, 2020, it proved so popular that it is now airing in 144 countries and dubbed in 22 languages. Now it is on its way to the United States. On April 22 of this year, some PBS TV stations will air the Origin story MeteoHeroes: The Adventure Begins, to be followed in the Fall by the regular broadcast of the series on PBS KIDS accompanied by a live-action component titled Real Superheroes Don’t Wear Capes.

This exciting and funny series, targeted at an audience of 4 to 10-year-olds, features six children from different continents, who on their tenth birthday, on April 22, discover shining stones that give them superpowers to control weather phenomena. They are invited to the futuristic Meteorology Expert Center, located on the Gran Sasso mountains in the Abruzzo region of Central Italy, where an Artificial Intelligence computer called Tempus teaches them how to use and control their powers and transform into superheroes. The director of the center is named Margherita Rita, in honor of two exceptional Italian scientists, astrophysicist and political activist Margherita Hack and neurobiologist and feminist Rita Levi Montalcini, Nobel prize winner for Medicine.

The MeteoHeroes are three girls and three boys of different nationalities:

Thermo/Giorgio Latini, from Rome, Italy, can raise or lower temperature, heating or freezing objects.

Ventum/Andrew Khumalo, from Capetown, South Africa, can blow strong winds and ride on tornadoes.

Fulmen/Adam Bolt, from Sydney, Australia, can fling lightning bolts at the sound of thunder and run at the speed of light.

Nubess/Angelita Perez, from Buenos Aires, Argentina, can create fog and giant clouds.

Nix/Su Pa Sin, from Harbin, China, can make snow and ice and materialize a giant snowman.

Pluvia/Patty Storm, from Seattle, USA, controls the rain and can create rainstorms.

These children leave their classrooms and change into their superhero suits, just like Superman, when they are dispatched around the world by jet stream to fight environmental crisis caused by a supervillain, a profit-hungry mad scientist, Dr. Makina, and his Minion-like followers, the Maculans.

They show up singing their theme song: “We can use the rain, we can use the wind, we can use the snow as the clouds come in, listen to the thunder, look at that lightning, even change the temperature. Come on, it’s so exciting. Saving the Planet, working together, helping each other, fighting pollution, saving the nation, that is our mission. MeteoHeroes!”

The idea for the series was suggested to creator Luigi Latini by his Thai-born wife, Supasin Jitman, in a bid to talk to kids in the language they prefer, which is cartoons.  He told the HFPA in an exclusive interview (March 21, 2022): “When we discovered we were going to become parents, we felt it was our duty to do something about environmental education. We believe that information is power, in order to face a danger like climate change.”

Director Terry Amaini and his Japanese wife, Mitsue Haya, designed all the characters, the animation was done in China, the storyboards in Spain, the music in Toronto, Canada. Latini explains: “I wanted our cartoon to have a feminine touch and an international dimension, to be the product of totally different cultures and sensibilities.”

He added that the storylines are not about fantasy: “They are from the news, based on something that really happened somewhere in the world.”  For example, one episode about saving the bees is set in the Provence region of France, where the spraying of toxic pesticides has caused some of the bees to become disoriented and unable to find their hive. Another episode about saving the ocean shows our heroes freeing a whale trapped in a plastic net in the waters off Australia and getting rid of a mountain of garbage floating in the water.

An educational message is built into each episode, for example, in the bee episode, “Bees pollinate plants, helping them to produce fruit. They are essential to maintaining biodiversity and we must protect them, otherwise no more plants, flowers and fruit.”

Latini says that a school project was launched in Italy in the fall of 2020, as soon as the COVID lockdown was lifted: “Many teachers started to use the episodes of MeteoHeroes to prepare their lessons to explain climate change, nature, geography and science.” And the message is always positive. “We want to tell kids that there are many ways to produce green energy for cars or factories or everything without electric power – that you can use solar power and wind power and water power.”

Kenn Viselman, CEO of Itsy Bitsy Entertainment, who was responsible for bringing MeteoHeroes to North America, told the HFPA in an interview on Feb. 22, 2022, that a prominent child psychologist in Miami, Florida, Dr. Arthur Bregman, is actually using Meteoheroes “as a treatment for kids who are suffering from climate anxiety, with symptoms like stress, depression and hopelessness. This phenomenon is like another pandemic for kids, who are already dealing with the COVID crisis. They have this fear that they will have to clean up the mess that the adults in their lives have made. Will the world still exist by the time they are old enough to be able to do something about it?”  He added: “Kids today are a lot savvier about what’s going on in the world right now than we were at the same age. They are going to Governments; they are standing up and shouting that they want action.”

Latini concludes that this is the message of MeteoHeroes: “The solution of climate and environmental issues is in the hands of today’s children. We want to educate them to have hope because together we can do it, we can save Planet Earth. It’s not too late.”

READ MeteoHeroes-Insieme per la terra by Elisa Leonelli.

READ Los “MeteoHéroes”: A salvar el planeta Tierra by Elisa Leonelli.