“ | Thats an Angostura. (Snork: What? What`s that?) It`s a plant that eats insects- (Snork: Hey! My sister is not an insect so let her go at once!) | „ |
~ Snufkin and Snork talking about the Angostura while facing it. |
The Angostura was the name of a big and vile flesh-eating plant (in the book version it was a literal man-eating tree or shrub bush tree that was implied to be toxic) that was an antagonist in Comet in Moominland. In the movie (and the book) it was trying to eat Snorkmaiden, but was defeated by Moomintroll and his friends.
History[]
At some point the Angostura captured Snorkmaiden, as it saw Snorkmaiden as a prey. However Moomin, Snufkin, Sniff and Little My got involved thanks to Snorkmaiden and her brother Snork calling for help. The Angostura tried to catch and eat Moomin and Little My for trying to free Snorkmaiden.
Snufkin and Snork decided to distract the monster plant by teasing it; while their attempt was partly succesful, it was not enough as a few vines and eyes were still focusing on Moomin and Snorkmaiden, only for Little My to try to fight those vines and eyeball flowers off.
While Little My was distracting the monstrous plant, Snufkin gave Moomin a knife, which Moomin used to defeat the plant, possibly leading the Angostura to its demise, though it is unknown if it truly died or was simply scarred and wounded since Moomin scolds it (as seen in the 1993 animated movie at least) after it's defeated.
Appearence[]
In the animated movie from 1993, the Angostura has the appearence of a man-eating plant, with vines with eyeballs, and has a main head which it uses to digest its prey. Whenever it gets angry, the eyes turn red.
In the book and the stop-motion cartoon movie, the Angostura seems to be a literal man-eating tree with eyeballs on top of the twigs and/or leaves.
Trivia[]
- The Angostura's main head has somewhat of a similiar appearence to the Piranha Plants from the Super Mario game series.
- It is said that The Angostura eats insects, but somehow decided to eat living beings that are anything but insect, probably due to extreme hunger as pointed out.
- The Angostura`s name seems to come from the alcholic drink Angostura Bitters.
- The Angostura seems to be one of the only characters that can be considered to be antagonists in the Moomin series & franchise next to The Groke, the Lady of the Cold, the Hattifatteners, various pirates of Moominvalley including a leader of theirs known as Captain Budd, Stinky, The Imp, The Witch (as for the case with the Witch and The Imp, they only appeared in the 1990s finnish-japanese-dutch animated series) , the Octopus In the Shipwreck, the Antlion and some Ghosts. Unlike most of these antagonists however, The Angostura seems to be one of the few antagonists in the Moomin series (the others would be the Antlion, The Imp and the one pirate being Budd) that attempted to purposefully kill or harm the main characters in someway.
- The Angostura is not the only man-eating plant in the Moomin franchise. In the story where parts of Moominvalley turns into a jungle there were smaller pink flesh-eating plants that tried to pull Moominpappa.