Review: The House of Mouse builds a new future in Lagos
Animated though it may be, a new Disney series captures the magic and the grittiness of the city.
Wilfred Okiche
The billion-dollar global success of Marvel’s Black Panther incentivised Disney, its parent studio, to double down on investments in Afrofuturistic world-building.
The latest entry comes in the form of the six-episode coming-of-age series Iwájú. This is a high-powered collaboration between Disney’s storied animation studio and Kugali Media, a collective fronted by a trio of youngish creators from Nigeria and Uganda.
Set in a futuristic Lagos, Iwájú (Yoruba for futuristic or forward-facing) is a visually stunning take on the city’s notorious economic disparity, typified by the divide between the dense metropolis on the mainland and the more affluent communities that make up the island.
The Lagos that Iwájú imagines is both familiar and fictional, one in which speculative technology – flying cars, robot assistants – coexist alongside established traditions, including frustrating traffic jams and power outages – the series might be set in the future, but in Lagos some things die hard.
A loving but emotionally unavailable father, Tunde (voiced by Dayo Okeniyi) gifts his privileged pre-teen daughter Tola (Simisola Gbadamosi) a pet lizard, Otin (Weruche Opia). What looks like an innocent present is actually a beta test for a game-changing AI-enabled technology that helps protect kids in danger.
Co-written and directed by Olufikayo Adeola, Iwájú leans into traditional Disney Animation beats complete with cute animal sidekicks.
But its exploration of the gulf between the haves and the have-nots is quite bracing, if not altogether progressive.
Trusting that it is never too early to introduce kids to the darkness of the world – this is, after all, the same studio that killed off Bambi’s mom – Iwájú adopts world class animation techniques, a stellar voice cast and plenty of local flavour to tell a delightful tale of crime and punishment.