Ryan's World
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 From a toddler who only wanted to make a few videos with his parents, to a teenager with an entire franchise dedicated to exploiting his likeness.
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Ryan's World (formerly Ryan's ToysReview) is a YouTube channel starring Ryan Kaji (born October 6, 2011 [age 13]). The channel was created on March 16, 2015, with the first video being published the next day. The series is owned by PocketWatch, who has since turned the channel into an entire brand and franchise, with its toys, merchandise, and video games.
Why Ryan Should Get Out Of His World
- The main problem with the franchise is that it is just a shallow and cynical cash grab aimed at misleading their fans with low-quality content, exploiting Ryan and his sisters' likenesses for a quick buck, and presenting the overall problem with child exploitation in media.
- Quantity over Quality: Similar to Teen Titans Go!, the channel has been running for nearly 10 years and has not stopped ever since, mostly because of how decent their viewership has been with their videos, showing how much they have jumped the shark.
- It is clear that the channels are just a gigantic milking device for Ryan's parents and their production team, as they never go one day without uploading a video on at least one of their channels. This also proves that Ryan's World is likely the absolute worst offender of child exploitation in history.
- Additionally, many have pointed out that Ryan's parents may have actually tried to cover up their true intentions in making content with their children, mainly when they're interviewed.
- Pocket.Watch (the company that runs the channel) has since turned it into an entire brand and franchise, with Ryan having his toys, merchandise, video games, etc.
- The franchise even has its channel on Pluto TV and a streaming service known as Ryan & Friends+, which also has content from other kid-focused channels as well.
- They released their first video game titled Race with Ryan in 2019, which is a Mario Kart rip-off and being released for consoles instead of mobile devices, and despite having generally negative reviews, a successor, titled Ryan's Rescue Squad was released in 2022 anyway, in which it is a rip-off of every single good platformer ever made, particularly the Yoshi games with the "slime ball" mechanic.
- Before the release of Race with Ryan, they partnered with WildWorks to make Tag with Ryan, an endless runner mobile game that is just a reskin of the Animal Jam game Dash Tag.
- In 2019, they partnered with Nickelodeon to make Ryan's Mystery Playdate, which was yet another pathetic cash grab intended to promote Ryan's World once again and even becoming the lowest-rated Nick Jr. show, and the lowest-rated Nickelodeon show of all time on IMDB. It received four seasons within barely two years, although it was thankfully canceled in 2023.
- In 2020, they partnered with Macy's to make a giant Red Titan balloon for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. This balloon has been used annually in the parade ever since.
- They also released an Amazon Kids+ exclusive live-action/animation-hybrid special titled Super Spy Ryan the same year. The latter also got a mobile game based on it two years later, which is very late for a "tie-in" game, with the game itself just being a shallow and bland rip-off of both Brawl Stars and Piggy Hunt, in which the latter already died in popularity before the game was even released. However, the game was delisted from both Google Play and the Apple App Store on April 27, 2023, with the game's servers also being shut down, making the game impossible to play since then.
- And to make matters worse if the Smosh and AVGN movies weren't enough, they even released a MOVIE FOR THEATERS in August 2024 called Ryan's World The Movie: Titan Universe Adventure. Yes, we are not joking. The fact that the movie exists ends up making the franchise age even worse than it did before, probably even more than HobbyKids Adventures, since while HobbyKids is also bad too, it is a bit better than the channel itself.
- To be fair, however, there are other YouTube channels out there like Ryan that do milk their channels with merchandise at best just for fame, profit, or for fun. The same cannot be said for Ryan's World however, because they ended up taking this to a much bigger extent to the point of making a feature-length movie dedicated to the channel and making partnerships with many famous brands. Due to all of these reasons above, this proves that their constant cash-grabbing and milking of the Ryan's World franchise has hit full rock bottom for real this time. The film is also an example of the franchise trying to jump the shark. Did they have to do this?!
- The animation, which is usually done using Adobe Character Animator, looks very stiff and limited, and while the software itself isn't bad, it's not suited for a YouTube channel that makes millions of dollars a year and is another proof-point for the franchise's quantity-over-quality approach. However, since the animated characters are often used in videos, it's understandable why they would use a quicker and almost automatic approach here.
- Occasionally, there is Flash animation, and while it is more suitable for the channel than Character Animator, it is arguably worse, as it's extremely choppy, lazy, and often suffers from constant frame-rate drops. The infamous webisode "Astronaut Ryan Found an Alien Puppy in Space" is the worst offender. Thankfully, newer animations using the software look better.
- Many unlikable and soulless characters who are terrible role models for the franchise's target demographic, such as
- Shion Kaji (Ryan's father), who is treated as a butt-monkey/punching bag who lacks personality, other than being your typical "dim-witted and incompetent father".
- Combo Panda, who is a hypocritical jerk and easily the most unlikable and overrated character of all. Ironically, he is the most famous and overused character besides Ryan.
- Alpha Lexa is shown to be a whiny and somewhat self-centered brat, despite being quite tolerable compared to the other characters.
- Peck the Penguin is Combo's sympathetic and nerdy punching bag, and sadly, he is one of the few likable Ryan's World characters despite still occasionally being treated as a punching bag.
- Gus the Gator is nothing but an idiot who has a serious addiction to candy although he's more tolerable than most of the other characters. He also has a horrible and unintentionally racist-sounding Indian-like accent.
- Big Gil the shark is generic and has no personality other than being a sporty teenage shark, though he's one of the more tolerable characters of the franchise.
- Moe the Monster is one of the worst offenders. He looks like a Yo Gabba Gabba! reject, lacks any character development, and speaks in some obnoxious gibberish language.
- Dark Titan is supposed to be an evil doppelgänger of Ryan, but seems to act more of a bully/jerk and has generic motives, such as trying to take over the world and generally making very harmless threats.
- Packrat, despite being somehow entertaining and likable, serves as an obvious Dr. Eggman clone, in terms of how he acts and is designed.
- Robo-Combo is nothing but a robotic clone of Combo Panda. He is also overused in the VTubers channel.
- Zaidee, one of the newer characters, appears to be a replacement of Ryan, but her acting skills are slightly worse. While having Ryan appear less in the videos is a good thing for the channel, the fact that Zaidee is also a seemingly random child, shows that the Ryan's World franchise may never stop exploiting children.
- Generally, the channel doesn't seem to learn from any criticism at all, especially with their video games, as despite the reception they've been through, they continue to make a lot of videos and tie-in merchandise while ignoring negative feedback they've been through at the same time, which only makes the channel and the franchise itself age much worse and thus exploiting Ryan and his family to a bigger degree. Criticism is actually a good thing, since it can help people improve their work.
- The humor is very stale and poor, with many jokes just being lame pop-culture references, snarky comments, rude insults, outdated memes, and you guessed it, toilet humor.
- In more recent videos, they tend to use the "vine boom" sound effect a lot, which is another cheap attempt at appealing to a modern audience. "Rescue Squad Animation" is the worst offender of this, particularly in this scene.
- Newer videos often rehash a lot of their older videos, showing how lazy they are.
- The channel uses a lot of product placement as well, mostly for Ryan-related merchandise, but otherwise for other media, like McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Nintendo, fidget spinners, video games, toys, and so on.
- In August 2024, they began to upload an overwhelmingly higher amount of videos than usual, to promote their movie and brag about its existence. One ad for the film has Loann (Ryan's mother, who was previously arrested for shoplifting in 2003) record a brief snippet of the film at a local movie theater, which is ILLEGAL marketing, no matter what. Additionally, uploading an illegally recorded film online, depending on the length of the actual upload, can potentially get you sentenced to prison.
- Many of the videos are clickbait, with the worst offender being the video titled "No More Ryan's ToysReview", implying they were leaving YouTube for good, but it was only because the channel was being rebranded to Ryan's World. A lot of family channels use this tactic to get views.
- Recently, a few of their videos also claim to have Ryan as the main star as usual, but he has a relatively minor and pointless role, or, on some occasions, is completely absent. The video "Ryan and Mommy Play EXTREME Hide and Seek Challenge!", is an example of this.
- Additionally, there are a handful of gaming videos that claim to be tutorials (such as "Fastest Way to Escape King Turtle’s Kingdom" and "Fastest Ways to level Up Sonic") but are instead just general gameplays.
- Some videos even claim and showcase Ryan doing various things that he would never do in reality, for example, the video "Suprise Ryan with Pet Crocodile!" claims that Ryan is going to get a pet crocodile, when he doesn't actually get one as a pet; they only invited a zookeeper into his home just so that the keeper can show him random exotic animals. Also, the animal that Ryan holds is an alligator, not a crocodile.
- The worst and most glaring offender of this is a YouTube Short uploaded to the Stick with Kaji channel in August 2024, where an "earthquake in California" interrupts Loann (Ryan's mother) while filming for a different video. The video was uploaded on August 30, 18 days after a moderate magnitude 4.4 earthquake struck Los Angeles. Not only does Ryan's family live in Hawaii and not California, but the "earthquake" they filmed was obviously fake and poorly-acted (they just shook the camera). Even worse, this can also be seen as offensive to many considering earthquakes kill many annually. This proves that Ryan's parents don't care about how offensive their content may be, by MAKING FUN OF TRAGEDIES THAT HAVE KILLED THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE EVERY YEAR and not taking them seriously at all, just for money.
- The channel lacks any original ideas, with some of the videos just being copied from other YouTubers, such as the "24 Hours in a Swimming Pool" challenge, which tries to be like MrBeast but fails too. It is also clickbait as they were only in the pool for 10 minutes, with the video being cut. The creators also try to minimalize effort as much as possible to create videos as quickly as possible, resulting in the quality of the videos to be generally mediocre.
- They even steal thumbnails from other YouTube videos. For example, a video from the Combo Panda spin-off channel, titled "Battle for Bikini Bottom Part 2!" has a thumbnail that was actually stolen from another video by ProsafiaGaming. The only difference is that Combo Panda replaced Robo-Squidward in the stolen thumbnail. (original, stolen)
- Speaking of thumbnails, some are even AI-generated. Check these ones out.
- The original songs made by the family and their production team are bad, especially the older ones, because of the repetitive lyrics and grating vocals. Songs from Ryan himself sound even worse, because of Ryan's poor (but justifiably forgivable) singing and the horrible stock-sounding music.
- Most of the video titles have poor and inconsistent grammar, such as "Ryan Found Aliens Dog and Monsters in Space!" and "Ryan Learns and Explores Space from Gus!". Others are misleading, often by putting Ryan's name in the title, when he doesn't have a major appearance in the video.
- Some video titles also misspell Loann's name as "Loan".
- Some of the videos use subtitles that, due to them mostly being done with AI, sometimes misspell certain words, such as Roblox being spelled as "Roblocks", and another displaying the sentence "he dropped like everyone", when Combo Panda actually said "drop a like everyone".
- Hypocrisy: Despite claiming to be family-friendly, and while that claim is mostly honest, there are some moments that may suggest otherwise, such as Combo Panda actually twerking briefly in a Halloween music video. To make matters worse, Combo is only 10 years old, so this can be considered a CHILD SEXUAL OFFENSE, even if that's unintentional.
- The challenge videos are seemingly scripted and probably don't even count as actual "challenges", as Ryan wins most of them, due to him being the main character and mascot of the entire brand, giving nobody else the chance to win. This can also encourage poor sportsmanship in younger children.
- Some of the videos have poor-sounding audio.
- "Learn Seven Continents of the World for Kids with Ryan's World" sounds like it was recorded with a cheap laptop, which is again, unacceptable for a channel this successful.
- Most of "Dark Titan ATTACKS! Ryan’s World TAKEOVER!" (which is a compilation of older videos) features extremely loud audio that makes most the video outright unwatchable.
- Too many pointless spin-off channels, to the point where the franchise can be considered a content farm on YouTube.
- Kaji Family is a mediocre vlogging channel that feels like it was made for the sake of exploiting Ryan's younger twin sisters (Emma and Kate).
- Gus the Gummy Gator is a cartoon series with cringeworthy voice acting and bad animation which, like the main channel, tries to be hip and cool to a modern audience, but fails. The channel was abandoned on December 30, 2023, presumably due to its declining popularity and attempts to jump the shark.
- Combo Panda, while better than the other channels and was okay for its first few years, is now a mediocre gaming series that features the titular character. It also has many pointless cutaway gags, that are even more lazy and confusing than that of modern-day Family Guy.
- VTubers, while it mainly focused on dual-gameplays from the franchise's characters, now has a huge focus on reuploading videos from the original Ryan's World channel, which consists of Ryan and usually his mom playing cheap mobile games. Can't they just make a gaming channel to do this?
- The Studio Space is arguably the worst offender, featuring random "actors" in terrible, unoriginal, and "scripted" challenges, and appears to be a MrBeast clone.
- EK Doodles is another cartoon channel, and while it's quite decent, the series consists of extremely short episodes and lacks any dialogue.
- Elemon is an obvious ripoff of the Pokémon franchise.
- As stated above, all the franchise's channels, toys, merchandise, video games, television shows, etc. are all just shallow and cynical cash grabs aimed at promoting the Ryan's World brand and franchise, exploiting Ryan, Emma, and Kate's likeness for quick bucks, and presenting the overall problem with child exploitation in media.
- Since 2022, the views on the channels' newer videos began to decline rapidly, with Ryan's World only containing a couple hundred thousand views per video at best, compared to previous years where the views often exceeded the millions. Some of their newer videos get only about 20,000 views a day, and sometimes even less.
Redeeming Qualities
- Unlike various Elsagate channels, the channel is at least child-friendly, usually not showing inappropriate content on any of its channels, and that's saying something.
- As stated above, Peck the Penguin, Big Gil, Packrat, and Robo-Combo are all likable characters, Ryan himself, and occasionally others are tolerable characters, despite them being one-dimensional and lacking an actual personality.
- Sometimes, the franchise makes well-animated content, such as the EK Doodles series, the Titan Universe film and the Super Spy Ryan special. The latter two were animated by the Japan-based Shin-Ei Animation, the studio behind popular anime series like Doraemon, Ninja Hattori-kun, Crayon Shin-chan, Atashin'chi, Mysterious Joker, Teasing Master Takagi-san, and Pui Pui Molcar.
- In late September 2023, Ryan's World teamed up with Toei Animation, known for creating anime such as One Piece, Dragon Ball Z and Digimon to create Elemon.
- They try different styles for certain videos such as claymation, adding voice filters to older videos, and educational segments.
- Some webisodes aren't that bad.
- Since late 2022, Ryan has been making fewer appearances on the channel, he isn't even mentioned in some videos. This proves that Ryan is slowly getting less interested in making videos, but having him appear less proves that his parents may care about his opinions and choices. This is also a bit of redemption for the channel.
- Some newer videos feature Zaidee, who appears to be younger than Ryan and may take over his role in the channel in the near future. Since she debuted shortly after the franchise recieved massive backlash for forcing Ryan to make childish videos, this can also be seen as a genuine response to criticism.
Trivia
- The only reason Ryan wanted to be on YouTube was because he saw other kids with their channels on there. He may or may not regret saying this in the future.
- Ryan's mother, Loann Kaji, was arrested in May 2003 for shoplifting, and she served 30 days of a 60-day jail sentence for her crimes.[2]
- Since July 2023, many users from YouTube and TikTok began expressing concern for Ryan still appearing in the videos and not retiring from the channel. Most of them blamed Ryan's parents for continuing to exploit Ryan's likeness.
List of channels
- Ryan's World (2015-present)
- Kaji Family (2016-present)
- Gus the Gummy Gator (2017-2023)
- Combo Panda (2017-present)
- The Studio Space (2018-present)
- VTubers (2018-present)
- EK Doodles (2018-2021)
- Ryan's World Español (2019-present)
- ライアンズ ・ワールド (2019-present)
- Stick with Kaji - Podcast (2021-present)[3]
- Elemon (2023-2024)[4]
- Combo Crew (2024-present)[5]
List of Notable Bad/Mediocre Videos
- Astronaut Ryan Found an Alien Puppy in Space (one of the worst offenders, due to its low-quality animation)
- First Day Back at School (which was not a good way to start the Sunnyside School series)
- Ryan Challenged Dr. Ion for a Game ON Adventure!
- Learn Seven Continents of The World For Kids
- Emma and Kate's Fairy Adventure
- Pizza Challenge
- Combo's First Pet!
List of Notable Good/Okay Videos
Videos
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