Web Animation / Underfity

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Underfity, or Underfity Friends, is an ongoing series of animated YouTube music videos by South Korean artist RAMDARAM. It started in 2018 with several animation memes, which evolved into distinct music videos. The videos generally contain no sound other than external (often copyright-free) music and have little to no dialogue. The series's style has a heavy aesthetic focus, with an emphasis on VHS and digital retro styles. It is often abstract, featuring many non-diegetic elements and extensive use of symbolism and visual metaphor, with minimal literal depiction of canon events.

The often ambiguous story takes place in the eponymous city. It primarily follows Daram, her experiences with friendship and grief, and her conflict with her childhood friend Sue and Underfity Laboratory.

The videos comprising Underfity include the numbered "💊Underfity", or "Underfity Friends", video series, started in 2022, which is more story-focused and roughly chronological; and other, miscellaneous videos that are also part of Underfity. It also includes several non-canon videos, promotions, and artwork.

Underfity contains examples of:

• All There in the Manual: Common due to the lack of dialogue.
  • Many of the details are only clarified by the explanation videos "캐릭터 소개 Character introduction" and "(ENG) Story of a city where it’s not strange for a person to go missing".
    • These include Wan having stolen Connie's medal, Fondue being able to produce electricity, and Kawa never speaking.
  • The name of the "lamp lady", Haeil, was casually revealed in a single piece of artwork posted to the artist's social media.
• Animal-Themed Superbeing: Dew and cats, Kawa and rabbits, Daram and squirrels.
• Art Shift: Multiple instances.
  • "📺 Pulp Fiction" contains sequences hand-drawn in crayon.
  • Several sections of "Two time - meme" and most of "📺Swing Rabbit! Swing!" feature parts drawn in Inkblot Cartoon Style, complete with Pie-Eyed characters.
    • "Two time" uses a monochrome color scheme for this, while "📺Swing Rabbit! Swing!" includes splashes of green.
• Batter Up!: Daram's weapon of choice is a baseball bat.
• Came Back Wrong: Wan in "📺Ghost town - meme". She comes back as a malevolent being resembling a ghost. She may or may not have actually died prior to this.
• Cowboy Episode: "💊Wanted" features Wild West-themed outfits, a desert landscape, and horses, any number of which may or may not be literal.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Daram lip-syncs to the music in several videos, all with male vocals.
  • Some of the (female) characters depicted speaking in “Citylove(red)” can be interpreted as similarly lip-syncing to the (male) vocals.
• Cute Oversized Sleeves: In most of her outfits, Dew’s sleeves cover her hands entirely.
  • Also Nothing Up My Sleeve in “💊Backseat”, when Dew pulls up her sleeves to reveal her claws.
• Deliberate VHS Quality: Many of the videos have VHS filters and, occasionally, VHS framing. In some scenes, such as in "💊MAMITA", the VHS filter is only applied to some onscreen elements.
• Escaped from the Lab:
  • Daram, Dew, and Fondue in "📺H.A.Y." and "💊UNDERFITY ISLAND".
  • Pocopoco, Bada, and Sooyoung in "💊WAKE".
• Eyes Always Shut:
  • Dew is almost always depicted with her eyes closed. Her eyes being open seems to mostly be when depicting her with her memories.
  • Sooyoung has so far only been depicted with her eyes closed.
• Faceless Masses: In some videos.
  • "💊Backseat" has gray silhouettes as Faceless Goons.
    • The goons in "💊911" wear blue goggles but are otherwise similarly faceless.
  • Daram's unnamed father is depicted without eyes in "💊The Last Sunshine", as are the children in "💊The Missing Children". They do, however, have other facial features.
  • Averted in "📺Swing Rabbit ! Swing!"; the crowd of Underfity employees are all depicted wearing suits, rabbit ears, and masks obscuring their faces.
  • Played with in a scene in "📺Let You Get"; the figures standing on a street around Daram are not only still silhouettes but glitching cutouts of computer error screens, with error messages marqueeing across them.
• Geodesic Cast: The main cast can be grouped into four trios, with each member roughly corresponding to a member of each other group: Daram, Dew, and Fondue; Connie, Wan, and Lemon; Pocopoco, Bada, and Sooyoung; and Sue, Kawa, and Haeil, all respectively.
  • In particular, the arc after and including "💊Can't Let Go" has each member of the main trio interacting with the corresponding member of the Pocopoco trio.
• Hair Color Angst: Daram's hair turns pink due to a drug from Sue, which also seems to have been the source of her tail and/or superhuman athleticism. Her attempts to turn it back are in vain, as seen in "💊Strange Candy Shop" as a box of black hair dye falling into a pool of pink.
• Identity Amnesia: Dew lost her memories and her past identity.
• Improbably Female Cast: Every named character is a girl.
• Inconsistent Coloring: Intentional. Many episodes have their own color schemes, and the characters' colors shift somewhat to match. Daram's hair in particular is much redder in some episodes and pinker in others.
• Inconsistent Spelling: Sue or Shu? Connie or Coni? Sooyoung or Sueyong?
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Several Underfity videos (and some other content) — including the first Underfity video, "Wonderland" — have been deleted (many of them presumably due to copyright, others for unknown reasons). Fan archives remain online.
• Killed Offscreen: Connie and Lemon. Represented figuratively in several episodes, especially "💊Strange Candy Shop", but the deaths themselves are never shown directly, leaving how they died ambiguous.
• Lost Pet Grievance: In "Two Time - meme", and alluded to in "💊 LET IT OUT". A young Daram, newly adopted, comes home to find her pet hamster dead, its box having been knocked over. She responds by beating her adoptive brother to death with the box.
• Match Cut: The chorus sequences of "📺ON". Daram progresses through a rapid series of match cuts, each depicting her in a different outfit, in a different scene, with the exact same pose and expression. She makes several movements during these sequences; the cuts continue during these movements without affecting Daram's pose.
• Mime and Music-Only Cartoon: Most videos have music as the only sound.
• Mind Screw: Kind of inevitable due to the style of the series.
  • What order do the videos occur in?
  • Which events literally happened and which were metaphors?
    • And if they were metaphors, what did they represent?
  • Does Sue have a time machine, and has she used it?
• Motifs and Symbolism: Used very extensively in Underfity, often presented non-diegetically.
  • Sue and candy, handguns, and mandalas.
    • Including a variety of sweets with seemingly different meanings, such as hard candy, lollipops, and strawberry shortcake.
  • Kawa and bills of cash.
  • Connie and yellow ice cream cones.
  • Lemon and, well, lemons.
  • Pizza and clocks, especially when disappearing in slices, seem to relate to Daram's former foster families.
  • Disembodied molars appear non-diegetically in several episodes.
  • Connie's medal.
  • Many episodes have motifs unique to that episode, such as peaches in "💊Side B", broken glass in "📺Mistakes", and rubber tires in "💊LET IT OUT".
  • Other recurring motifs include dice, telephones, strawberries, cartoonish horses, and cacti.
• Mundane Utility: Sooyoung can control water, which she uses to carry objects, transport Bada, and make iced tea.
• Ominous Visual Glitch: Featured extensively throughout the series.
  • “Two time - meme” features multiple glitchy, stuttering cuts.
  • “💊Hydra”, “💊MAMITA”, and “💊DEW” are also particularly glitch-heavy.
  • Error message popups appear frequently, and range from common Windows error popups to “you don’t exist” in “💊Know U”.
• Public Domain Soundtrack: Many of the videos, including all of the "💊Underfity" videos, are set to copyright-free music.
• Sad Clown: Dew is the playful, flamboyant, Plucky Comic Relief. She is also suffering through losing her memory and identity.
  • More literal in "💊DEW", which uses circus imagery.
• Sinister Sweet Tooth: Sue has a fondness for candy, which also serves as one of her main motifs. Her other associated objects include handguns and bloody knives.
• Smoking Is Edgy: Daram smokes often. When she is shown smoking, it's usually a sign that she is not in a great mood.
• Underwater Kiss: In "💊 Side B", between Bada and Dew. The former is underwater; the latter is peering into the water from above.
• The Un-Smile: Played without comedy. Daram basically never smiles, even in happy situations. The rare exception appears in "💊UNDERFITY ISLAND", after Daram escapes from Underfity laboratory. As she looks upon the crumbling building, she cracks a rare smile - one that is wry and unnerving.
• Vaporwave: Underfity videos often contain visual elements adjacent to vaporwave and related genres.
  • "Soda City Funk", "Two time - meme", "💊MAMITA", and "📺Let You Get" contain particularly vaporwave-like elements, such as vector landscapes, corporate iconography, and early Microsoft Windows.