The Bush Baby

Bush Baby, Little Angel of the Grasslands
Screenshot of the opening logo from The Bush Baby
大草原の小さな天使 ブッシュベイビー (Daisougen no Chiisana Tenshi Busshubeibī)
Genre	Adventure, Drama
Anime television series
Directed by	Takayoshi Suzuki
Studio	Nippon Animation
Original network	Fuji TV
Original run	January 12, 1992 – December 20, 1992
Episodes	40

Bush Baby, Little Angel of the Grasslands (大草原の小さな天使 ブッシュベイビー, Daisougen no Chiisana Tenshi Busshubeibī^?), shortened as The Bush Baby, is the title of a 1992 anime series consisting of forty 25-minute episodes. It is based on the novel The Bushbabies (1965) by Canadian author William Stevenson.

The series is part of Fuji Television and Nippon Animation's World Masterpiece Theater, which consists of anime television series adaptations of classic children's books. It has also been broadcast internationally on networks such as TVO / Access Alberta (Canada),France 3 (France),Antena 3 (Spain), Italia 1 (Italy), Tele 5 / tm3 (Germany),ORF1 (Austria), ABS-CBN / GMA 7 / Quality TeleVision (Philippines), and RTM2 (Malaysia).

In 1964, a thirteen-year-old British girl named Jackie Rhodes living in Kenya travels the savannah in the area of Mount Kilimanjaro, Kenya, where her father is an Animal Protection / Wildlife Officer. Jackie finds an ill animal called a bushbaby, whereupon she adopts him, calls him Murphy, and nurses him back to health. Murphy, Jackie, her family and their friends go on many adventures involving wild animals, poachers and more. When her father loses his job, the family prepares to return to England where they came from. At Mombasa, right before they are about to leave, Jackie realizes that she has lost the papers for her pet bushbaby, Murphy. She leaves the ship heading for England and it sets sail without her. Luckily, she meets Tenbo, her father's loyal African assistant. Tenbo has been spying on the export warehouse of some poachers and is now being pursued by them. In addition, a manhunt for Tenbo has begun because people think he has kidnapped Jackie. They must cross the dangerous savannah to escape the poachers and police officers chasing them. Along the way, Jackie teaches the now domesticated Murphy to survive in the wild, so that, before she leaves, she can release him in his natural habitat.