Pilot

The three girls in the teacher’s office

The pilot is the first episode of Ongezellig, and as of November 12th, 2023, the only episode of the series. It follows Maya, the central protagonist, as she struggles to complete her history presentation, along with her two adoptive sisters Coco and Mymy.

The pilot was released in 6 parts, or *delen* (plural of *deel*, Dutch for "part"), on Studio Massa's main YouTube channel, with deel 1 being uploaded on July 20th 2018 (unlisted and later replaced with the deel 1+2 video), and deel 6 concluding the episode on October 9th, 2022. You can watch all parts of the pilot in the official playlist.

## Trivia

* The interaction between Coco and Maya in Maya's room and Coco checking Maya's browser history are both adaptations from installment #63 of *Mayo en Curry*, a comic strip series made by Massa, published on the now defunct StripSter, and Ongezellig's direct predecessor.
* Delen 2 through 6 are shown to take place on the 14th of October and Maya's phone declares that date as Monday. To determine the year the events of Ongezellig take place, first we can use Brave's (the browser Maya is seen having installed in delen 1 and 6) very first version's release, January 20, 2016, as a lower bound. Then, in deel 3 we can see Vera using Google Translate, and the interface shown corresponds to the web version's around the pilot's release (every iteration of the app's interface is different from that one), and considering the fact that as of November 12th, 2023, that interface has been deprecated, we can use this date as an upper bound. The only year where all 3 conditions are met is 2019, thus we can conclude that the events of the pilot take place on October 13th and 14th, 2019.
* At the end of deel 6 we get a small glimpse of what seems to be the girls' parents
* In deel 4 Maya is seen winning a game of *Mens erger je niet!*, a board game similar to Parchisi, after presumably playing it for hours. Despite this, she still refuses to join her sisters in that same board game at the end of deel 6.
* In deel 3 and deel 5, professor Cornelis Flabbergast can be seen in a portrait hung in the wall behind Vera's desk and as the author of the book Coco uses as a reference for Maya's history presentation. Flabbergast is a character that was featured in the longest animation Massa had made to date, which goes over the history of the Netherlands' occupation of South Africa.
* Mymy's drawing, shown next to Maya's island drawing in deel 1+2, is a reference to the song Jeremy by Pearl Jam, specifically to the first verse of said song.
* The pilot was animated with TV Paint, as shown by a community post on Studio Massa's main channel.

## Reviews

After the release of deel 6, some small creators have made reviews of the entire pilot, contributing to the spread of the series. These are, in no particular order:

* ГОЛЛАНДСКИЙ METAL FAMILY? by RoSoEro
* The Best Web Animation You Never Seen by Based President
* Ongezellig | The Internet's Most POPULAR UNPOPULAR Show by MSunday
* Ongezellig Review (& Watamote Comparison) by Thrift E Gaming
* Forever... Ongezellig by The Ivory State

As well as a fan trailer for the series, made by Blitzø.