tek's rating: ¾

Iwájú, on Disney+
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This is an Africanfuturist 6-episode miniseries set in Lagos, Nigeria, sometime in the future. (The title roughly translates to "the future"). There's a 10-year-old girl named Tola Martins, whose father, Tunde, is a wealthy scientist. For her birthday, he gives her a robotic lizard he'd created, named Otin, to protect her, though he doesn't let her know Otin is a robot. (She's basically beta-testing it without knowing it.) Meanwhile, Tola is friends with an older boy named Kole, who works as a gardener for Tunde. He also works for a criminal mastermind named Bode, who kidnaps children. Kole only works for him to help his mother, who is very sick. One day Kole takes Tola into the city, where Bode's people plan to kidnap her. Kole has a change of heart at the last minute, but it's too late. Eventually, Bode and his people kidnap Tunde as well as Tola and Kole. However, Otin should be able to help Tola, if only she can get her power recharged, which she does with help from Tola nd Kole.

Well, I'm leaving out tons of details, but the story does have a happy ending. Overall, it's a reasonably interesting story, with good characters. There are themes of Tunde's overprotectiveness and Tola's rebelliousness, both of which are problems that are resolved by the end. There are also themes of income inequality and class divide, which motivates Bode to crime, as he hates the wealthy and believes he deserves what they have. It also motivates Kole to desperation, and causes Tunde to look down on people like Kole. However, despite some serious themes and scary situations, it felt to me like a show that is aimed more at kids than adults. I couldn't manage to like it quite as much as I hoped I would, but I did like it. It's nice to see African stories like this, and I liked that the dialogue was a mix of English and Nigerian languages. Even if I couldn't understand every single thing that was said, it was still easy to follow the story.


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