‘Summer Camp Island’: A Good Sign For the Future Of Children’s Cartoons
With shows like Adventure Time and The Amazing World of Gumball, there is no shortage of cartoons that, while aimed officially at children, hold plenty of value for people of all ages! One of those cartoons that holds a lot of value in the lessons it teaches its audience is Summer Camp Island, a series that still has plans to continue now after 100 episodes since its original launch on Cartoon Network in 2018.
Since its origin on the popular television channel, the show has gone on to be hosted on HBO Max along with other popular new cartoons such as We Bare Bears and Steven Universe. The show’s creator Julia Pott has gone on to win a plethora of awards following the show’s pilot episode, winning in categories such as “Best Short Film” and “Best Animated Short.” The show was most recently nominated for an award for Outstanding Children’s Programming as part of the 2021 GLAAD Media Awards, an event created to give recognition towards media that gives proper representation of the LGBT+ community and the problems that can affect their lives.
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The show follows the events of Oscar (voiced initially by Elliot Smith) and Hedgehog (Oona Laurence), two best friends who spend the summer at a magical camp where they learn lessons about themselves and others, and while the premise itself may sound like any other cartoon you might expect to see, it is the lessons themselves that offer a new perspective on the powers that cartoons can have on influencing those who consume it. For Summer Camp Island, these lessons tend to focus more on emotions than anything else. For example, one of the main driving forces between Oscar and Hedgehog is that they are a boy and girl who have a strong platonic love towards one another.
Unlike the trope of having two main characters bond and develop their relationship romantically, the relationship between the two is never pushed beyond that of a close friendship, and the show makes it clear to viewers that it is okay to have a relationship like that. Just because Oscar is a boy and Hedgehog is a girl and they both like each other doesn’t mean that they have to automatically try and be a couple together. The show takes a societal expectation from such a show and gives a unique perspective that aims to help children better understand their emotions. It says, “You can be a boy and have your best friend be a girl and not have it be romantic” and the relationship between Oscar and Hedgehog is proof of that statement in action. This type of relationship was also explored within Adventure Time when Finn (Jeremy Shada) and Princess Bubblegum (Hynden Walch) have a friendship that is often blurred when it comes to their feelings towards one another and whether those emotions are romantic or not. However, that show focuses more on the topic of one-sided love, and it attempts to tell a different story throughout its runtime about friendships and how to deal with unreciprocated feelings.
Summer Camp Island goes so far into this idea that in the Season one episode “Spell Crushers” it gets revealed to Oscar (voiced in this episode and in Season two by Asher Bishop) that Hedgehog actually had a crush on another camper named Max (Ramone Hamilton). Upon hearing this, one would presume based off of previous shows that tackle such topics that Oscar would become jealous, but instead his response when he is alone is “I can’t wait to tell my mom!” For Oscar, it isn’t something to be jealous about, but rather just another part of his best friend’s life that he is excited to see from her. Such healthy relationships are rare to see from cartoon shows, and Summer Camp Island isn’t afraid to challenge the societal norms of yesterday to help build a more emotionally confident generation for tomorrow.
Another episode in Season one that hits on a topic that might not always be shown by cartoons is “Momsoon.” In that episode, Oscar and Hedgehog help someone who is trying to seek approval from their mother. When the two eventually get them to see their mom, the mom is not impressed but instead disappointed. The plot ultimately concludes when hedgehog gets a call from her own mother who fails to give Hedgehog the approval that she desires. Hedgehog instead decides to stand up for herself and realizes that she doesn’t need her mother’s approval to be proud of what she is doing, and that confidence helps the other person to understand that they don’t need to rely on their mother’s approval either. The episode makes you think that the team would find a way to earn the approval of their respective parents, but instead it teaches kids that it is okay to not need to seek the approval or respect of someone you look up to for doing something you love as long as you are proud of what you do yourself. This lesson also brings light towards the fact that, unlike some shows such as Steven Universe where the parental figure is openly supportive of their child, it isn’t always the case that parents respect the lives that their children attempt to follow. It is this inclusion of the other side that makes Summer Camp Island stand out against other shows, because it isn’t afraid to show that these strained relationships exist and aren’t always something that can be “fixed.”
The episodes of Summer Camp Island not only tackle the societal norms of what is expected out of a boy/girl relationship, but it also tackles the tough reality of what might happen to friendships as time moves on. The show spends multiple episodes depicting the relationship between head camp counselor Susie (voiced by Julia Pott and Poppy DeAbaitua [young Susie]) and her former best friend Ramona (Lesley Nicol, Isobel Chinnery [Ramona Age 8], and Bella Ramsey [age 15]). Their friendship was massively expanded in the show’s third Season, in which four episodes that run back-to-back explain how the two became best friends in the first place along with why they have to be separated. To oversimplify the arc, Susie and Ramona embark on a quest to save magic, but part of that quest involves the separation of the two until magic is saved. This is heartbreaking for Susie, who doesn’t like the idea of being separated from her best friend. Ramona however understands the importance of saving magic and does as the prophecy states, sealing herself away in frozen time. This separation between the two eventually leads Susie to become more distant from Ramona, especially after Ramona deceives Susie into thinking that continuing the prophecy would bring the two together prematurely. After Susie realizes that she has been “betrayed” by Ramona, she becomes very distant and refuses to talk with her. This topic is very sensitive, as it tackles the struggles between maintaining friendships and respecting the responsibilities placed upon those within the friendship. A good reflective example might be if one friend had to move states with their parents, or in the case of a friendship between adults, one of the friends getting a new job somewhere far away.
In both scenarios, the friendship does not necessarily end, but it makes it much more difficult to maintain. For the case of Susie and Ramona, the split in their friendship came from Susie wanting Ramona back as soon as possible and Ramona accepting the responsibility placed upon her to help save magic. Despite being set around fantastical elements, the episodes cover a timeline of events that can and almost certainly will happen at some point in people’s lives. People we grow to call our best friends will eventually have to shift their focus onto their responsibilities, and the result may be the decay of those relationships if not properly attended to. An example of an adult animated series that briefly discusses fading friendships is BoJack Horseman. The first Season shows what a worst-case scenario might look like when a friendship drifts apart and neither party attempt to maintain it. While of course that show goes about discussing friendships in an entirely different manner, it still offers insight into what can happen when friendships aren’t given proper upkeep, just as Summer Camp Island portrays the situation in a manner that makes it easier for younger audiences to understand.
Summer Camp Island is a show aimed at the children of a new generation. However, that is not to say that the lessons it has to teach are any less real or important for adults to experience as well. Part of what makes the show so appealing is that it brings a light towards topics that older generations simply didn’t hear as often through the cartoons they watched. This isn’t to say that new cartoons are better than older ones for discussing these topics either, but rather that they both fill a need that was required of them at the time. Older cartoons needed to find a way to entertain children in the rapidly changing world around them, and newer shows are attempting to fill in the gaps that the writers wish could have been filled when they were kids themselves. In our still rapidly advancing world, newer generations are realizing the importance of understanding one’s own emotions, and it is thanks to shows like Summer Camp Island that children and adults alike are being told that being emotional is okay.
