Awesome Art: The panels of Sputnik 2 taking off are visually stunning, capturing the wonder of space flight.
Jerkass Woobie: Mikhail is a mean, short-tempered bully, but it's pretty clear that his abusive father is a large part of the way he is, and his anger issues have made him The Friend Nobody Likes among the other boys. Seeing his friends ditch him after he loses his temper at them is more depressing than satisfying. When Liliana scolds him for treating Kudryavka badly, he exclaims, "No one loves me! Why should I love the dog?"
Kudryavka/Laika, a friendly dog who just wants to be loved but faces all kinds of abuse and trauma throughout her life. She is given to a mean boy who never wanted her in the first place, is thrown out and has to live as a street dog, and her friend is killed by a dogcatcher. Finally she is sent on a suicide mission aboard a satellite into space and dies a slow, painful death from overheating all alone in a tiny capsule, all because the leader of the Soviet Union demanded that the project be finished in less than a month.
Yelena is the dog trainer and caretaker for the Soviet space program. She loves the dogs and takes good care of them, but can't do anything to stop them from being sent on dangerous space missions in which they might die. After Laika, her favorite dog, dies aboard Sputnik 2, she ends up quitting the space program because she can't bear to be involved with sending the dogs to their potential deaths anymore.
