The Underdog is a 2018 South Korean animated movie directed by Oh Sung-yoon and Lee Chun-baek (who both worked on Leafie, a Hen into the Wild). The plot centers around Moongchi, a dog abandoned by his owner who then teams up with other stray dogs to find a place where they can live in freedom in order to escape abuse from local humans, particularly an evil hunter.
The Underdog contains examples of:
- Bad People Abuse Animals: The hunter fits this trope to a T, and not just because he cruelly hunts dogs without a care. It's revealed that he had forced Bami's mother to breed and was ready to do the same with her before she escaped.
- Egomaniac Hunter: The hunter, of course. He relentlessly and sadistically hunts down stray dogs purely for its own sake.
- Funny Animal: The dogs have shades of this, using their limbs like human arms and legs.
- Happily Adopted: It's revealed halfway through the film that Bami is not Tori's biological sister. She nonetheless considers her adoptive parents her real family.
- Humans Are Bastards: Almost every human in the movie is flat out unkind towards stray dogs, especially the hunter. However, the restaurant employee who gives handouts to Jjangah and the others as well as the couple who owns an animal shelter in the countryside are exceptions.
- I Ate WHAT?!: Jjangah has this reaction upon finding out he had mistakenly eaten elk feces (which he mistook for dog food due to hunger).
- Kick the Dog: Almost literally so, in the case of most humans shown.
- Once Done, Never Forgotten: Jjangah mistakes elk poop for dog food and eats it, on which he is teased by Tori a couple of times.
- Shout-Out: Jjangah has a plush of Mayor from Sung-yoon's other animated movie Leafie, a Hen into the Wild which he holds dear to him.
