Kwaku Ananse, the witty comic character in Ghanaian folklore is widely known across the continent and it’s not surprising that he was adapted by writer/producer Marc Guggenheim for a new animated web series titled Vixen which debuted on August 25, 2015, on The CW’s online streaming platform.
The series, described as an “origin story”, is set in Detroit, Michigan and “prominently” features characters from Arrow and The Flash.
In the second episode of the series, Mari McCabe returns to Detroit after searching for information on her birth parents, she ends up in jail for stabbing a potential employer in the hand with a pen. Her foster father Chuck posts her bail, and the two are confronted in an alley by some thugs looking to take Mari’s Tantu Totem, which she inherited from her birth parents at a young age. Mari uses the totem’s powers to defeat the thugs, and the next day, visits Professor Macalister hoping to learn more about the totem and her family. She discovers that the Tantu Totem has something to to do with Anansi, the trickster god.
The Anansi tales originated from the Ashanti people of present-day Ghana. The word Ananse is Akan and means “spider”.
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