I KNEW IT! The Moomins _are_ japanese! Are they by the same author of Ahiro no Quack? The style seems the same. (Alfred Jodokus Kwak in my language :D)
The Moomins is a pretty good TV series, I watched it alot when I was a kid living in Hong Kong. The have a real knkack for making something frightening, even today I sometimes get chills watching an episode ><
Alignn said: Or Swedish. Hard to say, the guy was both. Original works were written in Swedish.
Tove was a woman... And she was Finnish, but like many Finns she spoke and wrote Swedish as her native language. The anime is obviously Japanese, though.