Most of the recurring villains are bizarre and specific, like a candy shop owner who is secretly a dentist and a fat old woman who has talking organs for friends and wants to stuff children’s faces full of food until they’re immobile. The premise is an organized pack of children who have to fight grown adults who want to literally kill them sometimes, and not to mention the rival cult of teenagers who also wanna kick their a**es. Part One: The PremiseĬodename: Kids Next Door is f***ing crazy. So, here is my revisitation on the themes, narratives, and characters of Codename: Kids Next Door, what I think they mean now, and what they meant to me as a child. When I realized that, it began to feel much more dire to write this essay, to unpack and understand this show on a deeper level. I spent the portion of my childhood/teenhood wherein I was aware of my existence and what I was, believing I would undergo some transformation in becoming an adult where I would suddenly be uninterested in cartoons and other things “for kids.” When I went back to Kids Next Door, something clicked, and suddenly I identified it as the source of that melancholia I spent the brunt of my life with. In doing so, I remembered my teen years, which I spent in a sort of melancholy fortification. It started quiet, but after some longer thought and allowance for myself to feel the nostalgic bubbles, I knew it was time to really dive in.

I had my usual difficulty connecting, the fear of nothingness or intrusive thinking, but it wasn’t enough to dampen. I used to love it, though, and that feeling peeked through the memories jostled by that dream’s surreal pictures. I don’t so much as recall what happened in the dream, but some aspect of it had to do with this show, which, at the time, I had not seen or thought about in months. My only salvation was my usual hyperfixations that came and went, one of which turned out to be Codename: Kids Next Door. Nothing that usually made me feel passionate, like I knew where and what I wanted to be, made me feel much of anything.

In June of 2022, I was going through a severe rough patch. *This essay contains spoilers for the entire series and corresponding films of Codename: Kids Next Door, Stand By Me (the film), and Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind.

My life next door series in order