Synopsis

A surreal animated drama unfolds inside a strange hospital, where a young patient is subjected to repeated injections while a nurse attends to her. The clinical setting gradually gives way to dreamlike transformations involving apples, butterflies, experimental substances, and shifting bodies. As the patient's treatment reaches its unsettling conclusion, the boundary between human, animal, and machine dissolves. The video's hazy colors and constantly floating movement create a fragile dream world that becomes increasingly disturbing, pairing Cuushe's airy electronic sound with imagery of innocence, experimentation, and metamorphosis.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video was created from approximately 3,000 individual hand-drawn illustrations.

• It began as an animation graduation project. Yoko Kuno contacted Cuushe by email after asking to use "Airy Me" as the basis for the work.

• Production took almost two years, making the video a notably time-intensive example of independently produced animation.

• "Airy Me" originally appeared on Cuushe's 2009 debut album, "Red Rocket Telepathy." The music video arrived several years later, in 2013.

• The video opens with "Steamy Mirror," a track from Cuushe's then-new album "Butterfly Case," before moving into "Airy Me."

• The version used in the video received a mix and treatment from Yasuhiko Fukuzono, who also releases music under the name aus.

• Cuushe described the video's subdued palette as dreamlike: soft colors shaped by memories and visions of the future rather than bright, vivid tones.

• In Cuushe's explanation of the narrative, the hospital's doctor conducts mysterious living-body experiments, while the recurring injections represent the patient's daily treatment.

• Butterflies were an important recurring image for Cuushe, symbolizing a connection between dreams and reality, as well as creativity, transformation, and new ways of thinking.