Nico (TV series)
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Nico (known as Nicholas in most non-Spanish-speaking countries) was a 2001 Spanish animated television series produced by BRB Internacional and the National Organization of the Spanish Blind about the title character, Nico; a boy that is blind. Blind people in the cartoon are usually referred to by the more politically correct term "visually impaired" (invidente) regardless of how severe, or otherwise, their blindness is.
The series raised awareness of progresses being made in cities as they became more blind-friendly. It also educated children about blind people.
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[edit] Characters
Nico is initially introduced as moving to a new school, where the rest of the main characters, his classmates, are introduced. In the first episode, he states that he progressively lost his sight, and was therefore integrated into a school for visually impaired people for the last few years. This is later changed to him being blind from birth: This was expressed explicitly in one episode, he tells a supermodel that has recently lost her sight that it is best to have been able to see once, than to never have seen like him.
Other characters include:
- Tom, Nico's guide dog who every now-and-then makes side-comments to the audience.
- Patty, Nico's neighbor, classmate, and best friend. She always ties her blonde hair in a pony tail.
- Oscar, a classmate that perpetually chews bubble gum, who for no apparent reason always tried to trick Nico or Tom into tripping or geting into trouble
- Flappy (so named because he wiggles his ears too much), Oscar's dim-witted and good-hearted, yet only, henchman. He is a bit egocentrical, believes he has psychokinetic powers, and has a short stature.
- Aisha, Nico's classmate of African descent who perpetually is trying to invent something. Seems to be allergic to Flappy.
- Tábata, Nicco's baby sister
- Boris, Nico's family's ever-hungry pet chameleon, who more than changing color, changes his shape. Always seen chasing a bug.
- Charlie, Nico's classmate of Japanese descent. He loves small creatures in general and carries a different insect or rodent around in his pocket in each episote hoping to care for it, much to the dislike of the creature in question. The creature always ends up escaping near the end of the episode, usually after interacting with Boris or Tom.
- Caifás, Nico's elderly, ill-humored, and very rich neighbor. He hates children in general, but he hates blind ones even more so. On one occasion, for example, he built a robotic bat for the sole purpose of bothering Nico.
- Nico's teachers
[edit] Episode structure
The episodes usually showed a modern city, but frequently featured improbable plots (one episode, for example, included a time machine that took a handful of characters to the future). Usually, there was a background story involving the animal characters Tom and/or Boris.
Many episodes happening in a believable scenario featured a reduction in visibility (eg: smoke from a building on fire) where Nico would save the day by quickly telling people how to "see" without using their eyes, enabling them to, in the above case, escape the building before the fire spread.
[edit] Closure
Each episode closed with a "Watch Out!" (Cuidado!) segment narrated by Tom. In it, a little-known fact of what blind people can now do, was stated. They usually started out with something allong the lines of, "You think someone that is visually impaired can't go skiing?" and then proceded to explain, in the given example, that blind people can ski if a guide skiis in front of them with a speaker on his/her backpack to shout warnings at the skiier, the guide himself wearing a warning sign, allowing the blind person to follow the sound of his/her guide's skiis sliding on the snow. This was followed by some sort of more or less comical note, to which Tom winked at the audience. (In the above case, Tom commented that crossing the path between a blind skiier's guide and the blind skiier can lead to accidents, while the accident depicted on screen isn't particularly that of the blind skiier, but of the person who crossed their path.) Often, these "Watch Out!" notes were a show of a much later episode.
Immediately afterwards, Nico's voice would give and advance of what the next episode would be about, while brief images of that episode appeared on screen.
During the credits, a comical sequence where Boris chased a dragonfly with ends of eating it, was depicted.
