Falling down The Octonauts rabbit hole
Feeling seen by alt-Korean YouTube Octonauts
My daughter’s first and most steady TV love over the last three years has been The Octonauts, a widely known animated series produced by Silvergate Media, based on the books by Meomi, a moniker for the duo Vicki Wong and Michael C. Murphy. Ada was never really interested in Daniel Tiger (too wholesome) and both kids only had a fleeting interest in very specific aspects of Sesame Street (i.e. the video Ladybugs’ Picnic).
The Octonauts features a cast of animals that live underwater in a structure called The Octopod, an octopus-shaped HQ and vehicle which houses the crew, a menagerie of both sea and land animals—Kwazii (cat), Peso (penguin), Captain Barnacles (polar bear), Shellington (sea otter), Tweak (rabbit), Dashi (dog), etc. They’re an ambiguously international crew; Shellington and Captain Barnacles have British accents, perhaps a relic of the show’s British origins. Peso speaks Spanish, and the others have no accent at all. And they’re ocean experts. Kwazii is a lieutenant and cryptozoologist, Dashi is a photographer and computer programmer, Professor Inkling is cited as the founder of the Octonauts, and is also an oceanologist, of course.
There are numerous minor and supplemental characters, my favorite of which are the vegimals, half-vegetable, half-animal creatures who make treats out of sea kelp and speak in a garbled, adorable partially English language officially called Vegimalese. My children speak it fluently.
The Octonauts embark on missions to preserve and take care of the ocean and its surrounding ecosystems. At the end of each mission, which is exactly 11 minutes, there’s a one minute summary called “The Creature Report,” a poetic sing-song in which the Octonauts perform some ocean facts back to you for the last minute, a full audiovisual report with dancing and singing, the perfect summation of what a child is supposed to comprehend from the previous 10 minutes. (Here is a 25 minute YouTube compilation of Creature Reports, if you want to go deep.)
It is structurally perfect episodic television, audibly catchy, visually enticing, repetitive and formulaic, with just enough variation to never make it boring. My kids have watched every episode of all four seasons on Netflix at least three times, and each of the movie specials multiple times as well. Their knowledge of sea slugs and water bears and the giant squid is astounding, and I can only credit the TV for this bounty of wisdom.
In the car I sometimes give my kids the choice of music. We have a playlist we’ve compiled over the last 5 years with songs that are both adult bearable and child enjoyed. (Think Miriam Makeba, Harry Belafonte, Paul Simon). But, this playlist has been played to death, and the kids have realized that movies and tv shows have soundtracks, so naturally they asked for The Octonauts soundtrack.
The Artist known as The Octonauts on Spotify is Korean, and though it’s clearly the same character IP at work with general ocean theming, the songs are released by an entity called Genie Music, a large music distributor based in South Korea. Each of the songs has an English and Korean version, though it’s also Korean performers singing the English lyrics. In The Party Song, this means that the “party party” lyrics end up sounding like “potty potty,” much to the amusement of my kids. It’s a weird and cloying set of songs—truly annoying kids’ music— which also includes a weird Octonauts rendition of Jingle Bells, Gup song, and Julian’s personal favorite, The Happy Halloween song.
It turns out these songs are largely derived from a Korean YouTube channel. Genie Music has 1.24 Million subscribers, so is no minor destination, though none of the Korean Octonauts videos have anywhere close to millions of views. A deep dive into the videos reveals gems such as the Bibimbap Song, where Captain Barnacles makes bibimbap with the vegimals. It’s in English this time, but seems written by a non-native speaker, with phrases like, “let’s mix it excitingly” sprinkled in.
When my kids hear these songs they find it to be a perfect amalgamation of themselves. It’s The Octonauts, it’s fun, it’s Korean—sort of. They listen to the songs in the car and while they can’t understand them per se, Ada will shout out all the Korean words she knows while she is listening. “Kimbap! Gungdungi! (butt), Halmoni! (Grandma) Tokki (bunny)!” It makes them giddy to feel seen by this niche part of the children’s media landscape, and to sing along with characters they love, to words they do not know, over and over and over again.
Recommendations for the kids:
Art / Adventure: Last Friday we went to the NY Botanical Garden (embarrassingly my first time there) for Yayoi Kusama’s large-scale installation and exhibition, Cosmic Nature. This is the perfect park-excursion-mets-culturally-edifying-experience and is up through the end of October.
Gear: Whether you’re camping in the wild or camping in the backyard this summer, sleeping bags are a vital part of churning up my kids’ excitement to…go to sleep. We got these Kindercone 25 sleeping bags from REI for Christmas last year, and they get points for textiles, warmth, and weight. At times, my kids also sleep in them on top of their actual bed.
Fungi mania: My kids are full-on obsessed with mushrooms—identifying them, drawing them, watching videos about them. (Pretty much everything but eating them). Our favorite books include Mushroom Fan Club, Fungarium, The Fungus Among Us, and Mushroom in the Rain. We’re also 3 days into this Organic Oyster Mushroom Grow Kit and the fungi are exploding out of the front.
Recommendations for the grown-ups:
Cook: I bought the ingredients for NYT Cooking’s Sheet Pan Baked Feta at least 3x before actually making it and it is hands-down, the easiest, most delicious one-pan meal to date.
Drink: For 5+ years, Jacob and I have gotten our coffee beans delivered from Maine from Speckled Ax, who wood-roast their incredible beans. We’ve tried pretty much every other coffee in the NY Metro Area and this remains the best. Their coffee subscription is the highlight of our mailbox every month.
Wear: Call me a geriatric millennial but i’ve become extremely fixated on sun protection and finding appropriate hats. These marble-dyed baseball hats by Christin Ripley are the caps I wish I’d gotten to order before they’d mostly sold out. (Large sizes still available!)
If you liked this this newsletter, please share it, send it to a friend, and let me know. And if you have recommendations for things you or your kids are loving, I’d love to hear from you. Happy Summer!