High school anxieties collide with royal sea legend in Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken, a 2023 animated family adventure about a shy teenager who turns out to be far more than she appears.
What is Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken about?
Ruby Gillman is a quiet, awkward teenager trying to get through high school without drawing attention, until she learns her family history runs far deeper than she imagined: she descends from a legendary royal line of sea krakens, and her true place is out in the depths of the ocean rather than the hallways she has been navigating. The discovery upends everything Ruby thought she knew about herself and her family, pulling her between the ordinary teenage world she has grown up in and an oceanic legacy far bigger than anything she could have pictured. Directed by Kirk DeMicco, the film builds its coming-of-age arc around that split identity rather than a straightforward monster story.
About the cast
Lana Condor voices Ruby, with Toni Collette and Annie Murphy among an ensemble that also includes Sam Richardson, Liza Koshy, Will Forte, Colman Domingo, and Jaboukie Young-White. The lineup spans Ruby's human classmates and her newly revealed sea-kraken family, giving the film two distinct social worlds to voice rather than a single central pairing.
Context & significance
The film sits in the recent wave of animated features that pair a fantastical origin-reveal premise with ordinary teenage growing pains, using the kraken mythology as a way to dramatize feeling different at exactly the age when fitting in matters most. At 91 minutes it keeps its family-adventure pace brisk, moving between school-set comedy and undersea spectacle without lingering long in either register.
Watching Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken on Ktime
Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken is available to watch on K-Time with a free account login, and the page itself is free to browse. The title includes both Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, so families can watch it fully in Farsi or with Farsi text alongside the English performances, part of K-Time's effort to make animated family titles accessible to Farsi-speaking households.