The Ridonculous Sidekick Sisters: A Kitty Ko-nnection

 When I first watched The Ridonculous Race in 2015, since it aired much earlier in the US than its native Canada, I was delighted to see the Total Drama universe introduce a new reality show with a different format from Total Drama Island. Owen, Noah, Geoff and Leonard all spun-off as the teams of reality TV pros, surfers and LARPers, and Brody and Tammy are new characters who were already friends with Geoff and Leonard before Total Drama Island. Everyone competing in Total Drama Island was a teenager, and some Ridonculous Race teams are also teens like the best friends, the goths, the twin boys, the stepbrothers, the rockers and the vegans. However, The Ridonculous Race has more age variety allowing for new sorts of character dynamics among teams, like a mother and daughter, a father and son, retired elderly tennis rivals, young gymnastic daters, and fashion bloggers and ice dancers in the middle of their adult careers. There is also a pair of sisters who are three years apart, and they are the main subject of this blog post because I am not a fashion blogger. Along with the police cadets, the sisters are among my most favorite Ridonculous Race teams who did not appear in earlier Total Drama seasons, but there might be more history to the characters of Emma and Kitty than most Total Drama Island viewers realize.

I rarely write blog posts because they are just a fun thing that I did for school and later for talking about a running joke in CinemaSins, The Prometheus School of Running Away From Things, which I just shorten to The Prometheus School of R.A.F.T.s. I get more views on YouTube than on blog posts, but the occasional blog post is a good medium to explore more lore on a subject I love to share with people on the internet, without worrying about the right way to record myself talking for a video, especially because I can always edit what I say on blog posts when I need to, and it is much easier than re-filming a video to be more concise than the first time I talked in it. When I saw Emma and Kitty in The Ridonculous Race, I instantly fell in love with Kitty because she has Lindsay's cute perky voice and face while being a much smarter person than Lindsay is, and because red is my most favorite color. I enjoyed watching Noah and Owen competing in another world travel reality contest after Total Drama World Tour, and I hope Millie and Priya follow in their footsteps, especially if they return in The Ridonculous Musical. Priya was happy to meet Owen in Fun Fight at the O'Cake Corral because he was TDI's first champion. While he gave up the $100,000 he won in Total Drama Island for a shot at $1,000,000 in Total Drama Action, he also won $1,000,000 on another undisclosed reality show before The Ridonculous Race. Millie might also like Noah because they are both studious kids who make fun of their generation's failures, until they become new best friends with the first winner of their respective casts. If Noah and Owen are allowed to compete in another Ridonculous Race season, they can coach Millie and Priya on how to be a more successful team than they were, and help them outlast Julia and Mary-Kate. Regardless of what happened with other original Total Drama Island contestants in Total Drama All-Stars, I really liked watching Noah and Owen form a new friendship alliance with Emma and Kitty, and it was fun to see Geoff play in The Ridonculous Race with Brody after Bridgette traveled with Noah and Owen without Geoff in Total Drama World Tour. Luckily, Bridgette's voice actress had another part to play in the Race as Carrie, and the toddler spin-off Total Dramarama reunited Bridgette and Izzy with Noah and Owen after The Ridonculous Race.

   Trevor Troublemeyer, Eric Needles, Kitty Ko           Kitty Ko, Emma Ko, Noah and Owen in            and Vana Glama in Sidekick                                    The Ridonculous Race

As the Reality TV Pros and the Sisters formed a tight new alliance, Noah made a good rebound boyfriend for Emma after Jake dumped her, and while Owen did not love Kitty in the same way, I can still see Kitty eventually being a good rebound girlfriend for Owen after Izzy dumped him. Kitty is at least on the market for a new boyfriend in case Owen loves her. However, when I look deeper into the Ridonculous Race's ongoing friendship between the Reality TV Pros and the Sisters, I also saw how it might be a crossover union of Total Drama Island and Sidekick. The first time I saw Kitty in The Ridonculous Race, my mind instantly went to another Chinese-Canadian girl named Kitty from Sidekick. This could just be a coincidence, because The Ridonculous Race's Kitty is drawn with a new outfit and a different hairstyle from Sidekick's Kitty Ko, and she never mentions any person named Eric, Mandy, Trevor or Vana during The Ridonculous Race. However, since Sidekick's creators Todd Kauffman and Joey So used to work on Total Drama Island as animators and directors, the Sidekick voice actresses who played Mandy Struction and Vana Glama were also cast to play the sisters Emma and Kitty, and Teletoon and YTV are both owned by Corus Entertainment, this Kitty situation may be less coincidental than we think. I personally believe in the possibility that Todd and Joey liked animating Total Drama so much, they may have lent Kitty to The Ridonculous Race because fans who liked watching Kitty experience silly superhero situations and adventures in Sidekick would want to see her again grown up in The Ridonculous Race. Fortunately for me, Sidekick is a four-fingered cartoon universe like Total Drama Island, and not a five-fingered cartoon universe like Todd Kauffman's later two series, Grojband and Looped.

Lindsay in Total Drama Island+ Kitty Ko in Sidekick

= Kitty in The Ridonculous Race

Nikki Wong in 6teen+ Mandy Struction in Sidekick= Emma in The Ridonculous Race

When I saw Kitty in The Ridonculous Race, I thought I recognized her from Sidekick because both corresponding Kitty characters share some physical attributes and many personality traits, except that the older Ridonculous Race Kitty is obviously more mature and emotionally stable than her younger Sidekick counterpart. Even though The Ridonculous Race Kitty has Sidekick Vana's voice actress, she still talks and acts in a way that makes her sound more like the other Kitty from Sidekick, who was voiced by Denise Oliver. Both are cute, friendly, smart, strategic girls who are crazy about boys, they can withstand dangerous obstacles because they are much stronger than they look, and they also have black hair and wear red hair ties on both sides of their head. When I look at their eyebrows, eyes, nose and neck, I can see how The Ridonculous Race may have borrowed Kitty from Sidekick, but I would also advise making Devin, Emma and Kitty less yellow if they appear onscreen again in any newer season, since TDI's artists did this with MK in Season 2 of their new reboot cast, which also has another character named Emma. Until Total Drama's creators confirm that The Ridonculous Race's Kitty is not also Sidekick's Kitty Ko, Kitty's older sister is unofficially Emma Ko to me, to differentiate her name from Total Drama Island's other Emma character.

    RR Teen Kitty and Emma              Sidekick Teen Kitty and Vana (fan art by brauer83)

Even when we look at teenage Kitty in two somewhat different art styles, their facial features, hair colors, personality traits and number of fingers match up surprisingly well. If the sisters and Devin were color-corrected like MK, Kitty's skin might also be a consistent match. There are some plausible ways I can make the case for Sidekick and Total Drama to be connected in the same four-fingered universe through Kitty (if the superheroes and supervillains of Splitsboro never leave Splitsboro), explain how Kitty matured into a better person between Sidekick and The Ridonculous Race, and why we never saw Emma Ko or her boyfriend Jake with Kitty Ko during Sidekick.

"Law School" Emma"Blonde Chicken" Emma

Time for my personal headcanon backstory! Emma Ko and Kitty Ko both wanted to pursue different career paths in criminal justice ever since graduating elementary school, so - Mr. Ko and Mrs. Ko enrolled Emma in the Lawyer Academy and enrolled Kitty in the Sidekick Academy. We might think that Emma never appeared in Sidekick before the Race because she was in high school while Kitty was in middle school, but it is not only that. There is also a pre-sidekick/pre-superhero preschool in Fart of Darkness, so we can assume Splitsboro has academics for super crime-fighting at every level of education. The non-super areas of Splitsboro also need to educate the normal crime fighters on how to be a successful member of a strong legal team, and how to prove if someone is truly innocent or guilty. The evil half of Splitsboro, which has a Henchman Academy contrary to the Sidekick Academy, probably also has a bizarro Lawyer Academy teaching its students how to defend guilty criminals into going free while convicting innocent bystanders. to be continued