birchpunk is a Russian (English captions available!) Science Fiction Mockumentary Satire Anthology live-action Web Series. It is set in near-future Russia and tells the stories of people living there in the form of short, VFX-heavy films.
There are currently 12 episodes:
- RUSSIAN CYBERPUNK FARM
: Nikolay gives a tour of a totally normal farm in Ryazan county. - RUSSIAN CYBERFARM (NEW YEAR SPECIAL): Nikolay celebrates the coming of a new year.
- RUSSIAN SPACETRAIN: Anya the train conductor makes a video about her job.
- RUSSIA TOMORROW NEWS: A news episode from Russia 2Morrow.
- AI-VANICH: An inspector arrives to Nikolay's cyberfarm.
- RUSSIAN CYBERPOLICE: A cop from Staritsa shows off his job to his girlfriend Jessica and captures a dangerous criminal. A Robot Dog assists him.
- RUSSIAN CYBERMUSEUM: Russian school students visit a museum of the 21st century.
- RUSSIAN DUNE: Nikolay follows his grandma's recipe. A crossover episode with Dune.
- JOIN THE RUSSIAN SPACE MARINES: Join the Spacemarines! A crossover episode with PUBG.
- HEART (Musical premiere) (the name in the title card is RETROZAVODSK, though): A rap music video discussing What Measure Is a Non-Human? that's supposedly set in the birchpunk universe.
- RUSSIAN CYBERHOSPITAL (Episode 1, Episode 2): An American doctor goes to investigate a Russian hospital. He ends up having to participate in a "Fantastic Voyage" Plot with a Russian doctor and an ex-taxi driver to save the life of an alcoholic.
In September 2023, a full live-action series named Cybervillage was released, using the characters and concepts from the channel. It is centered around Nikolay trying to save his farm from Baragozin's attempt to build a factory in its place.
The series provide examples of:
- Alien Geometry: Residential complex Tesseract: the ability to live in impossible geometry!
- Ambiguous Time Period: While a date is given in the New Year special (the year being celebrated is 2098), the cybermuseum episode mentions historical events taking place in 2100.
- Androids Are People, Too: Many places have non-human workers, which still get treated with respect. This is specifically highlighted in AI-VANICH and CYBERPOLICE episodes.
- Cool Car: the ambulance in "CYBERHOSPITAL" can shrink, go extremely fast, and swim like a submarine. Oh, did we mention it has missiles?
- Crapsack World: Played for Laughs. Despite the advancement of technology, Russia's problems remain.
- Did Not Do the Bloody Research: In the first video, the Farmer casually says "bullshit". The Russian subtitles suggest he meant something like "hogwash", which is definitely more appropriate.
- Expressive Mask: Justified. In the HEART music video, the main singer wears a respirator with a cartoony mouth projected via a hologram.
- Expy: There are lots of them here, most notably, Izhevsk Dynamics (see below) and its CEO, Konstantin Baragozin, who is an expy of Roscosmos' former head, the very controversial Dmitry Rogozin.
- Expy Coexistence: Izhevsk Dynamics is obviously an Expy of Boston Dynamics. However, in "RUSSIA TOMORROW NEWS" the CEO of Izhevsk Dynamics exclaims "How do you like that, Boston Dynamics!" at one point, suggesting it exists in this universe.
- Foreign Cuss Word: Some of the videos are filmed mainly in English with a heavy Russian accent, with stray Russian swears slipping in.
- Future Imperfect: The CYBERMUSEUM episode is made of this trope. For instance, a plastic bag with more plastic bags inside (a common storage method in Russia) is treated as a religious artifact, while a crypto mining farm is thought to be a device to warm the house.
- Gratuitous English: Most episodes are mainly in English. Justified In-Universe, with a lot of them created for international audiences.
- High-Speed Missile Dodge: The blood clot in CYBERHOSPITAL does this completely by accident, dodging two or three of the ambulance's missiles.
- Hologram Projection Imperfection: Very frequent whenever holograms are involved. The projected world in the cybermuseum is full of these, to the point of crossing into Ominous Visual Glitch territory.
- Homage: Many to Soviet cinema. Also, CYBERHOSPITAL has an extended scene that’s an homage to Interstellar, of all things. RUSSIAN DUNE is obviously one to Dune.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Titles: Every episode title is in ALLCAPS, features the word "Russian" and usually some portmanteau with "cyber".
- Move Along, Nothing to See Here: It's unknown what is behind the giant gates in the Izhevsk Dynamics factory, but workers really don't want news to cover it.
- That Russian Squat Dance: Shown at the end of the news episode.
- Sequel Hook: At the end of CYBERPOLICE, a holographic "wanted" board is shown. Suddenly, Nikolai’s mugshot appears on it.
- The Internet Is for Cats: Cybermuseum workers mention having to go through a lot of cat pictures and junk data just to find something interesting in the ruins of the Internet.
