Indie Content Creator: 'Tokyo Meets Brooklyn' Normalizes Uniqueness
Entire businesses have been modeled around the enchanting family unit ever since sensationalism became a staple of entertainment. From following the marital drama of the Kardashians to obsessing over Harry & Megan pushing back against the royals, this uncanny phenomenon has had a strong hold on modern media consumers for decades now. Today, with creative resources and platforms at our fingertips, showcasing such relationship dynamics has become a common practice among content creators.
On YouTube, Tokyo Meets Brooklyn have developed their brand doing exactly this. Marketed as “a unique, blended and multicultural family based in NYC,” this entity consists of Japanese music producer Munari, African American & Costa Rican financial engineer Ashani and their three children. MJ (15), Daiya (12) and Baby Kai (4) aren’t stakeholders of the channel yet considering they don’t have authority over steering and contributing to its vision yet. Still, they each play a huge role in making their parents likable and adored by their viewers.
With 86K subscribers and 9 million views from just over two years’ worth of material, Munari and Ashani have indeed succeeded in showcasing their family’s uniqueness to the world. What makes their content appealing is that they do so in a manner that feels accessible to those who aren’t familiar with the day-to-day workings of a cross-cultural lifestyle. The channel’s material isn’t overproduced and is essentially just a series of complied videos taken by the couple as they go about their parental and domestic duties.
Munari and Ashani, though confident in their endeavor, aren’t the “stars” of the show. However, their state of normalcy despite being an anomaly is what makes them fun to watch. It’s almost like it isn’t a big deal to them even though they both have to live a completely different life than they did before meeting each other in order to raise their kids in that sweet spot between their respective cultures. The three children represent their success as a biracial pair, and watching them grow and come into their own is where viewers find comfort.
A year ago, they posted a video, self-explanatory from its title, “MJ'S 14TH BIRTHDAY!! *EMOTIONAL.” It’s tough to commend a couple who sees an emotional interaction with their child as an opportunity for anything besides a vulnerable moment, but this entire family operates in the public’s eye. Sure, not every moment between them has been broadcast to the world, but what we see are no different than home videos i.e., milestones in the development and evolution of a family, and like most home videos, it focuses on the positive.
As content creators, the couple isn’t very creative — Ashani, by her own admission, doesn’t have a knack for it whereas Munari demonstrates that side of him primarily through his music. They are, however, still a biracial couple with children, which, besides love, also represents unity, integration and multiculturalism, among other things. The videos are essentially them doing things such as going to the spa, taking their kids to the dentist, night-time routines etc., but nothing more. Though it’s just a series of a-day-in-the-life videos in different categories, they still have a dense audience because they’re not just any ordinary family.
Vlogging is a sensation centered on the idea that strangers care about your life, and it usually grows from a single selling point. Tokyo Meets Brooklyn is a success story that involves overcoming cultural barriers, so people like rooting for Munari, Ashani and their three kids. Considering the kids are young and so is the marriage, the channel has endless potential — over the years, viewers will witness not only physical growth but also emotional and cultural growth.
This surely poses the challenge of upholding the image of an idealized family dynamic. Relationships involve bickering, crying, fussing and all sorts of conflict in addition to the flowery stuff, but we never get to see that from Tokyo Meets Brooklyn. We only get a taste of how great this interracial couple works together, but that’s part of the job. This family is symbolic of hope, and they provide viewers with insight into how making a relationship work despite cultural barriers is no big deal — it’s as simple as falling in love and being sure enough of it to raise kids together.
