H2O: Just Add Water

Submission 11,247

About

H2O: Just Add Water is an Australian television drama series for children and teens which follows the lives of three girls, Rikki Chadwick, Emma Gilbert ad Cleo Sertori as they grapple with the challenge of secretly being mermaids. The fantasy series was created by Jonathan M. Shiff and was widely mocked by TikTok users in August 2019.

History

On July 7th, 2006, Season one episode one of H2O: Just Add Water aired in Australia. The show continued for two more season and ended in April 2010.^[1]^[2] In 2014, H2O: Just Add Water Official YouTube channel was created. On February 28th, the channel uploaded a funny conversions compilation which received over 180 million views in five years (shown below). The show continued to grow in popularity when Netflix began streaming the show in 2019.

Reception

H2O: Just Add Water has been nominated for numerous awards and received "Best Visual Effects" at the 2008 AFI Awards,^[3] "Best TV Drama Show" at the 2008 Nickelodeon Australian Kids' Choice Awards^[4] and "Most Outstanding Children's Program" at the 2009 Logie Awards.^[5]

Fandom

H2O: Just Add Water fans congregate in subreddits like r/JustAddWater^[12] and r/MakoMermaids.^[13] There have been over 100 fan fiction pieces posted to Archive of Our Own.^[9]

Cleor TikToks

On July 17th, 2019, TikTok user @userconnorw uploaded a parody of an H2O scene and mocks the Australian accent in particular (shown below, left). The video gained over 398,200 likes and 71,200 shares in five months. Later that month more TikTok user began posting parodies of H2O scenes in which they mock the accent. TikTok user @heyyahoo49 received over 39,600 likes and 370 shares in five months for their parody (shown below, right).

On August 1st, The Netflix Twitter^[11] account tweeted, "i dont know which TikTok teens need to hear this but all three seasons of H20 Just Add Water are now streaming" (shown below). The tweet gained over 20,800 likes and 2,300 retweets in four months.

In August, various articles were written about the parody video and published by Pedestrian^[8] and Teen Vogue.^[10] On August 4th, YouTuber Mike's Mic uploaded the video "Behold, the H2O Tik Tok meme (H2O Just Add Water)" (shown below). The video garnered over 156,000 views in four months.

Slazo

In February 24th, 2019, Redditors began drawing correlations between the TV series and Australian youtuber Slazo. Redditor sexycreeper456 posted a photoshopped picture from the series which includes Slazo to r/slazo^[6] (shown below, left). On March 28th, Redditor alliemw_ compared Slazo to the character Lewis from H2O in an r/slazo^[7] post which received over 100 points (99% upvoted) in eight months (shown below, right).