Version française
Version française
1964, Kenya gains its independence. For many British civil servants, this new liberty means they have to come back home. One of them is Arthur Rod, a game-keeper in a preserve who has spent his career fighting poacher gangs. For his daughter Jackie, leaving Kenya is a terrible wrench. Her only comfort is to have got a pass allowing her to bring Murphy with her, the little Bushbaby she took with when it was a baby and she now can't live without. But papers are easy to loose... and one thing leading to another, the young girl gets involved into a long pursuit across Kenya.
Not so many series have such a contrasted structure, and two parts with so different styles. While the first half attempts to take its place with the traditional WMT style, and shows the daily life of Jackie and her family in their Kenya preserve, the second one is a pure adventure tale, the story of an eventful journey across Africa savannah, around elephants and crocodiles, under the threat of dangerous poachers and mysterious Africa tribes.
Not so many series have two halves of so unequal quality... You indeed have to watch carefully the 20 first episodes to find a scene which sounds true among this impressive amount of clichés! The young boy who pesters the school girls, children who find an ivory traffic while playing the detectives, a teenager who wants to work with his father instead of going to the University: the accumulation of commonplaces soon becomes irritating. The caricatured characters, the clumsiness of the setting make these episodes lose all their authenticity and make quite pale this attempt of SUZUKI to imitate "WMT style".
But suddenly everything clarify itself and the series starts up. The wild rhythm of the pursuit of Jackie and the poachers accross the Kenya savannah follows the slowness and the heaviness of the first part. Too much adventure to be bored! In spite of some incoherence here and there, these episodes full of action are nice to follow. This second half has of course not be done to be realistic like the first one. It paradoxically much better succeeds in going into the characters' psychology in depth. The greatest is the way the relationship between Jackie and her Bushbaby is developed: the doubts and hesitations of the young girl to decide what she should do with her pet animal give this series a surprising depth for an adventure story.
Sadly, Bushbabies' animation has the same weakness as Trapp Family's the year before. The characters' movements are usually jerky and inexpressive, and make many scenes lose their credibility. The animation is here again much better in the action sequences, where the characterisation and the acting weakness can go unnoticed.
The great quality of "Bushbabies" may finally be cultural. The series gives a panorama of Africa life, of the political problems a country faces when it gains its independence, of the traditions of the native tribes, the climate or the fauna. The pastel tones of the backgrounds (by far less sharp than the Meisaku standard) well shows the particular light of this region and the flora colours, which looks quite unusual for "westerns". "Bushbabies" is finally the only WMT to take place in Africa; Without this series something would have be missing in the world wide trip of the line: this is probably its greatest merit.
The series was shown on the channel France 3 in January 2001. The new French song is illustrated by the same pictures as the original.
Bushbaby was shown on the channel TM3 in 1997.
The was shown twice on Italia 1; in 1994 and in November 1995.
An English version has been show in Canada on the channels TVO (in Ontario) and Access (in Alberta).
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Frédéric Goetzinger
(goetz@starnet.fr) Opening date: September 23, 2001 - Last update: September 23, 2001