If you thought your teenage years were tough, at least you weren’t chosen by the ancestors to save the world from rampant industrialisation and dictatorship. Pax Afrika isn’t so lucky.
Thirteen-year-old Pax is the protagonist in a new South African animation, Urbo: The Adventures of Pax Africa, on SABC3.
The 52-episode epic is set in a future Cape Town, called iKapa, where Pax and his friends search for the lost city of Urbo to save an already warped future.
‘No card, no fresh air,” a droid tells a mother as she hands over a ration card that will allow her son to breathe air in a pavement booth. Industrialisation has left its cold, grey mark on the city, polluting the skies and eliminating any vegetation.
‘The overall theme is caring for your environment and a bit of a warning for where the world is going,” said director Matthew Brown.
Could this be a local spin on popular American cartoon Captain Planet? The creators are adamant that it’s completely different: ‘This is no transparently pedagogic Captain Planet-style show. It’s about compelling story lines, cool characters, crazy comedy and a completely rendered world.” And they are right. Urbo is engaging and delightfully subversive.
A hideous industrialist named Maximillian Malice controls the city, raking in the profits from a deeply consumerist culture. ‘Helloooo citizens of iKapa and isn’t it a beautiful day? The smog count is low. The radiation levels are down to lethal. It’s the perfect day to, that’s right, go shopping!” he intones over a public-service announcement.
This Big-Brother quality extends to a robot chiming ‘Everything is perfect” in an annoying sing-song voice on screens around the city.
The depiction of alienated factory workers and drab cities evokes fears surrounding the Industrial Revolution. It seems that South Africa has traded in a democratic state structure and widespread inequality for unfettered industrialisation and dictatorship.
‘The idea of a slightly underhanded, anti-consumerist angle that we have going maybe applies to a developed country but also to us because we are headed that way quite fast,” explained Brown.
Production company Octagon CSI landed an R8-million commission from the SABC to produce Urbo last year.
Brown said that they hope to sell the series internationally, either to television stations or to a distributor.
Urbo targets the nine to 12 age group and the creators hope its humour and innovation will draw a wider audience.
‘It’s our story, put to our people on our TVs,” said Anelisa Phewa, the actor behind Pax’s voice, who recalls doing a double take when he heard one character saying, ‘Hola Keitu”, because it was unexpectedly local.
Cape Town is strongly suggested through the setting. You can see what’s left of Table Mountain as well as distinctive buildings and street signs.
And then there are the accents, which suggest that in the future, everyone who isn’t Afrikaans-speaking has been forced to take elocution lessons. A notable moment is where the school bully Tumi menaces nasally, ‘Didn’t your daddy learn you not to interfere?”
Brown said they had to decide between unaccented voices and subtitles over dialogue in different languages. The outcome represents the middle road, which they hoped would work for an international audience.
The animation style is flatter than most children’s cartoons but is not as visually skimpy as South Park.
‘It still has to look fantastic but it’s a bit more reliant on storyline, the characters and humour than the visual feel,” said Brown. The decision to construct a two-dimensional look was as a result of stylistic considerations as well as time and budget constraints.
The software they used to produce the two-dimensional environment enabled the crew to bang out a 24-minute episode every week.
As for merchandising, Brown admits it will be difficult to spin the anti-consumerist line if they were to do a hard sell with Pax Afrika toys in Happy Meals. You are more likely to find Pax Afrika seeds or lunchboxes if the market is right, he said.
Catch Urbo at 9am on Saturday on SABC3