Released en France in time for Christmas 1998, I doubt if anyone really expected Kirikou and the Sorceress to be quite the big deal (again, en France) that is was… or is… or whatever. It certainly seems unlikely. The producer has commented on the struggles convincing investors, comments which rather depressingly include there being concerns about all the characters being African. The thing was instead made on a comparative shoestring, running at 25mFF (equating to, at the time, a bit under €4m), and was viewed as an arthouse project. It was treated accordingly, but managed to grow and grow as word of mouth spread, running for months and opening on ever more screens. It eventually spawned a franchise, with numerous tie-in books and games and even a stage musical, as well as multiple midquels, which is a thing you’d think we could’ve come up with a better word for by now.†

Sick of loitering around in her uterus, Kirikou (voice of Doudou Gueye Thiaw) demands that his mother (v.o. Maimouna N’Diaye) hurry up and give birth to him. She reprimands him, pointing that if he’s in a position to talk, then he’s strong enough to find the way out on his own. So he does. Furthermore, if he’s in a position to demand she bathe him, then he’s strong enough to do that himself too. So he does. Pretty soon, (as in ‘less than a minute later’) her unfeasibly strong baby is asking all kinds of questions, most notably to the tune of ‘where is my father?’ or indeed other male relatives; the village is a total lady fest. The menfolk have gone off to defeat Karaba (v.o. Awa Sène Sarr), a sorceress who lives on the other side of the forest and is using her super-cool powers to be super-evil in the village’s general direction. Said menfolk have not returned, having apparently been devoured (*fnar*) by the witch, except for the old storyteller and mother’s youngest brother (v.o. Thilombo Lubambu), and the latter is on the way to give her what for, like, right now. The precocious little shit immediately runs off to assist, hiding in a hat that his uncle thinks makes him look more authoritative. Uncle survives his encounter with the witch and her army of killer fetishes thanks to Kirikou being able act as lookout for sneak attacks from within the hat; Karaba, figuring the hat is magic, ceases the battle and demands the hat in exchange. Following Kirikou’s advice, his uncle makes a pact for the hat; she can have it if she leaves the village alone. It’s done, he leaves, and Kirikou (as the hat) makes a break for it when she sends her fetishes to retrieve in from where uncle left it. Suffice to say, it isn’t long before she finds that the hat is not, in fact, magic, and rains spite upon the village. What no one is able to explain however, despite Kirikou’s incessant questioning of it, is what the reasons for her actions actually are.

The film maintains an aesthetic steeped in a combination of traditional African folk art and the dreamscapes of Rousseau, mixed with a vivid non-naturalistic colour palette. Early ideas were reportedly to replicate the look of shadow puppetry in the style of Ocelot’s earlier shorts; this fell by the wayside, but you can see its legacy in the unique silhouettes of the characters which pop against the vibrancy of the backgrounds. That gives the film a unique look befitting of its fanciful but measured tone.

Kirikou isn’t, as far as I can tell, based on any specific west African folk story, instead being a melange of various traditional stories and themes. The basic concept of the title character is apparently derived from ‘Izé-Gani’, but beyond said basics doesn’t seem to share all that much. Perhaps as a result of this, the film ends up with a bit of an episodic structure. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It does help make the world which the characters inhabit feel more lived in by its use of vignettes of Kirikou’s escapades, as well as help highlight some of the themes afoot. The questions as to the whys and wherefores of the world are important. We’re initially presented with the idea that the witch is evil because she’s a witch, and a witch because she is evil, but this circular logic is a problem. More than his heroic actions over the course of the film, Kirikou’s hero status is ultimately earned by his willingness to question. Karaba must have a motive. The starting place that if she is evil then the villagers are good also has its flaws, as, over the course of the vignettes, cracks in the idea that they’re entirely benevolent and magnanimous begin to show. Beyond the aesthetic, this is perhaps the film’s defining point that helps differentiate it from the bulk of its competition, at least at the time it was made. It’s consideration of the moral complexity of the issue was largely unknown in children’s films at the time, beyond perhaps some Studio Ghibli stuff; most which hadn’t really made its way to the Anglosphere at this point and the only one those that feels really comparable to me (Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)) was sufficiently mangled in its original English release (as ‘Warriors of the Wind') to lose such themes, but that doesn’t have the fairy tale like tone of Kirikou or indeed much of Ghibli’s later work. Proto-Ghibli film The Little Norse Prince (1968) maybe?‡ I suppose this sort of consideration is maybe a bit old hat now, as even Disney seems to be trying to get in on being slightly more complex these days, but then again said Disney films do tend to have this ‘a few bad eggs’ outlook rather than everyone essentially having the same capacity for good and evil, sometimes at the same time, that Kirikou does (or that, say, Spirited Away (2001) or Princess Arete (2001) or Song of the Sea (2014) do). For all the fake villains in modern Disney, it’s hard to imagine an American animated film from pretty much any studio ending in a manner remotely akin to how Kirikou resolves itself even now.

† I guess you very sometimes see ‘interquel’, which arguably follows the etymological pattern better.

‡ In case you were wondering, at that point, the only available French version of Nausicaä was based on the aforementioned English version. (Little Norse Prince didn’t see release in France until 2004, apparently) And, yes, I know Nausicaä technically isn’t a Ghibli film either. Incidentally, the Japanese translation and dubbing of this film was handled by Studio Ghibli. There's some trivia for you.