If obscurity is the inevitable fate of almost every AMV ever uploaded to YouTube, the place where 99.9% of fans go to watch them, then what future waits for an AMV that’s never even uploaded to the site? I honestly don’t know why slackergirl never bothered to upload any of her AMVs to YouTube, but fortunately I was able to get her permission to do so with one of her works. In hindsight, I almost wish I’d gone all in and asked to upload her entire oeuvre, because I think it’s one of the most underappreciated collections of work to come out of the hobby in the 00’s.
It wasn’t always that way. I get the impression that her AMVs were reasonably well known and respected in the realms of the animemusicvideos.org community back when they were first released, though never really coming anywhere close to the popularity of anyone like Koopiskeva, Nostromo_vx or Sierra Lorna (which probably goes without saying). She released a half dozen AMVs between 2003 and 2009, with her final video released in 2014. “Spiritgazing” was the only entry on CrackTheSky’s best AMVs of 2014 list that wasn’t available to stream online, its absence equally frustrating and intriguing, as well as personal confirmation that I’d fully bought into an idea I once thought I despised: it doesn’t make a lot of sense to spend time on a video if you’re not going to play the game and aggressively share it. I don’t agree with this idea at all…right? Like, if the work is good and speaks for itself, then it’s truly worth viewers’ efforts to actually track down and obtain outside of the YouTube content abyss. In a perfect world where people still knew how to use the Internet outside of a half dozen websites, I guess that would be true. But as it’s been for over a decade, YouTube is perceived as the site for online videos, not only hosting content but subconsciously legitimizing it by association in the eyes of most viewers. Try getting a friend or family member to watch something on Vimeo and you’ll understand.
(Tangent: this mentality is reflected in the anguish of any editor, established or completely unknown, who’s had their AMV taken down from YouTube due to a copyright strike or other reason. I want to tell them that YouTube isn’t the only site where they can host their work, but I understand the dread behind their grief. Even years later, I’m still smarting that just one of my AMVs was taken down from the site due to a copyright claim, which left me feeling like it had literally been deleted from all existence (despite still being available for download on a-m-v.org). Hopefully the video I embedded at the top of this post doesn’t meet the same fate. Every time I’ve ever clicked “Publish,” I never know if I’m in the clear or just moments away from being flagged or suspended.)
“Look How They Shine…,” slackergirl’s first AMV, isn’t her best video, as every one she ever released was a noticeable improvement on what came before, working in new and fully fleshed-out ideas while still building upon the mastery of concepts introduced in previous works. But for a first AMV it’s an extremely focused effort that never feels like it’s overreaching, succeeding not only on a technical level but achieving a meaningful and magnifying cohesion between the sentiments of both the music and the anime featured in the video. Few of the expected rookie mistakes of a “first AMV” are found here. It’s technically sound with precisely-timed cuts and a solid sense of pacing that’s consistent but never monotonous. This AMV is now fourteen years old, featuring video from an anime that debuted over twenty years ago, but in spite of its age I’ll say with no reservations that “Look How They Shine…” still looks great, or at least as great as a simple video featuring non-remastered, 4:3 full-screen anime from the late 90s can ever be expected to look. slackergirl’s next video (“This Lonely Place“) would display a much more impressive handle for utilizing internal sync, but even here she shows an intuitive knack for sensing when to drop the perfect clip to match moments in the song, both subtle and bombastic, to perfect emotional effect.
First and foremost, though, the video is primarily driven through lyric sync, a blueprint that might not look especially promising on paper, but in this AMV it’s never followed at the expense of flow. The lyric sync in “Look How They Shine…” is never especially clever or surprising, but it works far better than one would ever imagine, especially for a first-time editor. There are a few moments where the literal interpretation of the lyrics is tossed aside (perhaps just enough to save the video, especially if you’re not a fan of this approach), but it’s a common thread that gives the AMV a loose but consistent structure. It also left me feeling like the AMV was a true expression of fandom, a love letter to Cardcaptor Sakura in the same way that a work of fanfiction or a Geocities shrine still was back in 2004, which looks naive and quaint in hindsight but feels motivated by a kind of passion that’s personal to a degree that’s all but extinct today.
“Look How They Shine…” is the very definition of simple: all straight cuts, very minimal use of zooms and pans (which may already have been present in the source material), and a strong focus on characters. I honestly don’t expect anyone to be impressed by this in 2018, but I really wish I could make newcomers to the hobby sit down and watch it before trying to release their own first video. Making a video like this isn’t a prerequisite to moving on to more complex works, but I really feel like there are so many lessons to learn from it that would provide a valuable foundation for editing or a basic understanding of what makes an AMV “work” on the simplest levels. This includes choosing an appropriate song, editing with simple cuts, learning when you should edit to a song’s lyrics and when it’s fine to ignore them, recognizing chances to match big changes in a song to an eye-catching clip, how scene selection is exponentially more important than effects, why working with quality footage matters… I could go on but I don’t want to make the point that this AMV is a rigid how-to manual for video editors. Maybe it just seems that way to me in how it was the jumping off point for this editor to go on to trying a bunch of new things in subsequent projects, rather than spinning her wheels and making the same mistakes over and over again (which many, if not most editors do, including myself).
The tone of this video is predominantly breezy and sentimental, fully milking the Magical Girl-shoujo vibes of Cardcaptor Sakura to its idyllic extent and capturing the nostalgic feeling that’s associated with the series today but hadn’t quite taken shape back then (translation: most old-school AMVs made with the series haven’t aged as well as this one). slackergirl’s next AMV would also explore Cardcaptor Sakura, but through a darker and more atmospheric lens, experimenting with basic effects and weaving in sophisticated internal sync in unexpected ways. “Where Am I NOW?!” steps into the realms of multi-anime AMVs, working with a unique theme that’s hard to explain and hiding subtle surprises that most viewers won’t catch on a single watch. “Personal Space Invaders!” takes a more upbeat approach to editing, utilizing faster cuts, camera movements and a somehow even less-predictable, even harder to explain theme for a multi-source video. “That’s Charlie Fineman” ditches anime completely, working with live action and video game scenes. “Spiritgazing” just might be her most conventional work, a comparatively unsurprising way to cap off a decade of editing, but nonetheless a genuinely sweet and sincere video that features what’s easily the most obscure anime she’s ever worked with. “I have lots more ideas than vids,” slackergirl says on her Org profile page. “Spiritgazing” may have been a fine finale to go out on, but here’s hoping that honor eventually goes to one of those ideas that might still be kicking around in her head. Things have changed a lot since “Look How They Shine…” was first released, but the fundamentals of editing and composition at the heart of it are still relevant as ever. Not a bad place to start from in any case.
I haven’t even gotten into any of the ideas that lead me to want to write this entry in the first place, how this AMV makes Cardcaptor Sakura look cool in a way I never expected it to, how it gave me a whole new appreciation for “Yellow” that I never had before or how it contains possibly the most perfect final shot I’ve ever seen in an AMV. I don’t think this is a flawless AMV, but for the past few months it’s been a reliable comfort video that I’ve watched… more times than I count or want to admit. When I use a word like “charm” in a case like this, I’m trying to refer to good vibes or intangible qualities that are hard to easily pin down or sum up. “Look How They Shine…” definitely has a charm to it that reminds me of how I used to feel watching AMVs back in the day, certainly due in part to its age and its simplicity but also its optimism and sense of wonder and the love that feels inherent in its creation. “Basically, CCS is one of those shows that just makes me happy, and Yellow is a song that, likewise, just makes me happy. So it seemed a natural fit,” slackergirl writes in her description of the video. I guess that’s how most editors get their start, but I rarely get caught up in that kind of enthusiasm, at least not as much as I did with this AMV.
The history of jazz in AMVs is as scarce as you’d expect, the vast majority of which is made up of videos featuring music from Yoko Kanno’s Cowboy Bebop-soundtracking jazz project The Seatbelts. Sure, there’s a “Take Five” AMV out there if you look for it, but most instrumental jazz AMVs I’ve been able to find feature bigband/swing classics, not really the era of jazz that I’m into or curious about. There’s no good reason for me not to include AMVs using songs from Louis Armstrong or BillieHoliday, other than doing so would quickly blur the lines between jazz, blues and a whole world of pre-rock music I’m not quite ready to parse. Nor would I include lo-fi hip-hop AMVs, no matter how prominently their music samples the kind of classic jazz that I’m looking for. So what I’m “looking for,” anyway? AMVs like LowEffort’s “Giant Steps,” for sure, a seemingly abandoned work in progress that I’m more than happy just to get a minute’s taste of. And there’s not one but threeSunRaAMVs edited by emerpus , all released back in the mid-aughts. Oh, and there’s this AMV, one I only stumbled across during a YouTube deep dive in search of… I don’t even remember anymore.
No matter how much I actually want to, I’d be hard pressed to recommend Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou to anyone who hasn’t seen it before, although this AMV does as good a job as any I’ve ever seen of accurately depicting its source material (more on this in a minute). This two-episode OVA from 1998 is unlike anything I’ve ever watched, evoking a pastoral, peaceful tone to a degree I never thought possible. It’s a quiet, slow, reflective anime, perhaps more so than I should assume most viewers will have a desire to sit through, regardless of how much of a pleasure it was for me to do so or how good for the soul I truly believe it is. And even while I sincerely believe YKK (and its 2002/2003 sequel, Quiet Country Cafe) to be a worthy investment of any anime fan’s time, I think it’s best experienced as a personal discovery to go into with as few expectations as possible. Unfortunately, “just watch it” is never a compelling imperative, but I feel that preserving the simple surprises of this beautiful little show is key to a rewarding experience with it. No one needs to be told how a work of art is going to make them feel, and I feel that an authentic response, be it rejection or boredom or confusion, is more valid and worthwhile than a positive one that’s been coached.
The music in this AMV is jazz as I enjoy it most, composed in a classic tradition that evokes a specific feeling that I can’t describe without bringing up a bunch of clichés. Because this is a feeling I rarely get from any jazz recorded in the past 40 years, I was surprised to find this was a relatively new composition. It took time for me to sort out my confusion towards its unexpected source: a Nintendo DS game I’ve never played, one originally released in Japan for the Game Boy Advance back in 2004. I’m well aware this is a very famous series of games, the very definition of popular media, not at all the strange cultural oddity that I’m approaching it as. That one would feature a character theme popular enough to be covered by a “real” jazz group and even performed by a full orchestra, racking up millions of views by enthusiastic fans who’ve come to appreciate the piece as, uh, “rainymood” music… probably shouldn’t surprise me at this point. I’ve been to the video game symphony. The future of classical, jazz and all music that hasn’t been destroyed or absorbed by pop will probably be found here, as video games continue to consume every last crumb of our entertainment and culture, but that’s one of those safe bets that almost goes without saying.
This AMV is, without a doubt, one of the smoothest and most relaxing I’ve ever watched. It may also be the simplest AMV that I’ve ever enjoyed, its slow pacing allowing shots to run their course much longer than most editors would ever dare. Just following YKK‘s main character through the course of an uneventful day in which she never leaves the house, brewing coffee for guests who never arrive and watching the day pass through the windows of her idyllic, seaside breakfast nook, the video achieves the long-awaited realization of the “ambient AMV.” By including the original audio of every scene that appears in the video, the editor achieves an intimate effect that, at least for myself, made the scenes feel more real. Due to the quiet nature of the original clips used here, none of which originally contained any background music or more than a few short lines of dialogue, the decision actually works, giving the viewer a real fly on the wall-sense of watching someone going about their day with no drama or interruptions.
This AMV was a beautiful introduction to this both YKK and its sequel, two hours of truly unique animated science fiction that I’d never have seen otherwise. Even after watching the series, I can still come back to Mei Linwau‘s work and appreciate it was an quiet ode to simplicity and solitude. But the degree to which this video is her “work,” well, how do I finally get around to this…
“Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou + The Fragrance of Dark Coffee” is nearly six minutes of unedited video taken from episode 2 of the original YKK OVA. The visuals and the sound play out exactly as they do in the episode, only with the first 5 minutes and the final 12 minutes of the episode cut out, and with Godot’s theme from the Ace Attorney games playing on a separate audio track. This is every bit the “lazy” editing I so love to complain about, and certainly moreso than any other AMV that I’ve ever criticized for it. This time around, for whatever reason, I don’t really care. The fact that anyone even thought to try something like this is unlikely enough, but for it to actually work for nearly six minutes is either the product of very clever juxtaposition between the source material or just great luck. It’s not Dark Side of the Rainbow, but… well, maybe it actually works better than that pairing.
I “officially” got into anime during the early 2000s, but unlike so many other Americans at the time, my introduction to it didn’t come through Toonami or Adult Swim. Still, I was definitely aware of how popular some of the series were that aired in those programming blocks and how they pretty much defined what it meant to be an anime fan during those years. Some of those anime series weren’t currently airing or even the least bit new by the time they became staples of Adult Swim’s regular anime programming (Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop or Trigun, to name a few that had already been around for a few years but were nonetheless aired and consumed by fans as perennially-relevant titles). Others like Fullmetal Alchemist or Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (perhaps even One Piece, I don’t really recall), which weren’t being simulcast and may have even been a few seasons behind with whatever English-dubbed episode was then being aired, still passed for anime that was “current,” giving viewers that sense that they were watching something that was happening now. Maybe back in 2004 there was a way to download fansubs of last week’s episodes in Japanese, putting the tech-savvy fan far ahead of the casual TV viewer, but the process to do this was either too inconvenient or too slow for my tastes. Besides, I preferred being able to kick back on the couch and watch this stuff on a real television. I’m not making excuses for being a lazy fan, that’s just how I rolled.
As time passes, it’s no surprise that the flagship series that defined anime as a whole would pass their torches onto new franchises. So it goes for anime or film or popular music or any ongoing platform that people consume culture through. A dozen-plus years later, however, and half the anime-themed spam that finds its way into my email is pushing the latest One Piece movie, another Dragonball video game, new Sailor Moon projects, rumors about the eternally-in development conclusion to the Rebuild of Evangelion films or the perpetual memorialization of Cowboy Bebop (the 25th anniversary is only five years away). Lost in all of this is almost any mention of Inuyasha, a series familiar to millions of anime fans that has lost most of the relevance it once held to the community. Looking more and more like a relic of the early 2000s, Inuyasha seems to have lost its status as a gateway/must-see title for anime neophytes, rarely discussed any longer as an essential series that every anime fan needs to see. Even if it still is, at 167 episodes it’s an imposing commitment for any viewer to sign up for (a heavy regimen that doesn’t even include the additional 26 episodes of Inuyasha: The Final Act), one that would necessitate time spent not watching new anime, an inconceivable venture for the typical anime fan in 2018.
I would never include Inuyasha on a list of my favorite anime series, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was still a foundational experience to watch, both as mindless escapism and the kind of timeless quest story that we don’t get very much of these days. I watched many English-dubbed episodes on Adult Swim back in 2004 and 2005, the first time I ever had cable TV and the last instance of my life when I felt perfectly content to sit back and watch hours of it in a single sitting (time moved slower back then and I had fewer distractions on my mind, unfortunately this is no longer the case). I eventually watched the entire series in Japanese with English subtitles alongside with my girlfriend soon after we started dating (she owned the entire series on bootleg DVDs, fansubs that occasionally took hilarious liberties with the dialogue). Even at the time, the series had a comforting air around it, one that’s only been inflated by the nostalgia appeal it’s picked up on as the years have passed. It’s so unlike anything airing today, clichéd but not to the cynical degree we’ve come to expect. Yes, it’s a padded with filler that you could skip, but at the time I didn’t know any better and was content to watch it for what it was. I don’t begrudge anyone for not sharing this attitude. Life felt simpler back then, I guess, and watching an Inuyasha AMV like this reminds me of how little urgency or impatience I experienced while watching the series, a mindset I really can’t return to but can still get a familiar taste of in a small dose like this.
Even by the standards of 2006, “A Step Back” is not a technically impressive video. moinkys claims, “I used my own DVDs to create this, so the quality is pretty good.” Why the vertical resolution comes in at a sorrowful 240p, then, is anyone’s guess. More troubling than the resolution is the 15 fps framerate, which becomes especially apparent in the many, many shots composed of lateral and vertical pans, or any clip where there is movement across the frame. Looking again at my original written opinion of the AMV (written all the way back in 2009), I see that I somehow not only overlooked these flaws, but actually praised it for its video quality (awarding it an 8 out of 10), remarking “Good quality footage and sound. What this lacks in high-resolution it more than makes up for in clean and crisp clips.” It’s definitely possible that I was watching this AMV in the same mindset as if I were reading a comic strip or graphic novel, taking in the characters and the setting and the general sense of what was happening in each frame and letting my brain fill in the blanks. Like looking at a static page covered in drawings and perceiving characters who are moving about in a living, breathing world, perhaps my imagination was willing to override the fact that I was looking at a hideously manged video clip, preferring to delude myself into seeing fluid, smooth motion that just wasn’t there at all. I suppose I am somehow able to still do this today, for I can watch “A Step Back” and still completely lose myself in the illusion that the editor is trying to create. Asking every viewer to do this is probably very unrealistic or even hypocritical given how I’ve slammed other editors for making very minor technical errors compared to the parade of mistakes that undermine moinkys’s efforts here.
The many technical shortcomings of this AMV are unfortunate, because it’s edited with a patience and a smooth sense of pacing that’s a huge step up from her first AMV. It’s structured in the basic character-focused montage style of countless AMVs from this era, an approach that’s time-tested and not the least bit surprising but feels refreshingly thoughtful compared to the basic mode of AMVs today. Less concerned with the overall plot of the anime than crafting a sentimental romance video, moinkys crafts mini-character profile segments for Inuyasha and Kagome in the first and second verses of the song, before finally bringing the two together in the final round of the song’s chorus. The pace of the editing picks up significantly in this final segment, bringing the video to a satisfying climax. It’s the basic roller coaster theory of editing, the kind of thing I used to think viewers would internalize and respect the more they were exposed to it, but some days it feels like a misunderstood lost art from another age. In the scheme of things, however, maybe that’s exactly what it is.
I wish I could smoothly segue from discussion of both Inuyasha as well as the editing of this AMV into this final chunk of the entry you’re reading right now, but I’m not quite sure how to do that. It’s probably where I should have started since I’m pretty sure it was the reason that I found this AMV in the first place, as the seemingly random AMVs I was downloading and reviewing back then were almost always chosen because they contained some music I either loved or somehow related to, for better or worse. Oasis were never a favorite band of mine growing up, just an ever-present popular group who were always there and always sort of hit and miss for me, although never to such extremes that I either bought any of their CDs or bothered to turn off the radio if one of their songs came on. At their height, I was only dimly aware of their status in the UK but knew they were as big here as any group was between 1994 and 1996 (that strange time after Nirvana and the peak of Pearl Jam, where they could have been the biggest band in alternative rock if it weren’t for Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day, Nine Inch Nails or Rage Against the Machine…even the worst of this stuff at least possessed a sense of personality that’s completely lost in rock music today, to say nothing of pop as a whole). I was content to passively absorb their music, although completely confused by how hard they seemed to be trying to copy The Beatles and even more so as to why no one else seemed to notice or want to say anything about it. As time passed, the inevitable nostalgia for their music or what it represented to me began to kick in, persisting even as I finally bought some of their albums and found them literally painful to listen to even at very low volume.
“Wonderwall” does not suffer from the overdriven, mutlitracked production of so many of their other hits…which is certainly my opinion, as I’m sure the case has been made elsewhere that it absolutely does. Every time I hear it, I’m brought back to afternoons spent at a friend’s house, baking in the sun as we jumped on the trampoline in his backyard. Even faint memories of it playing on the radio as I was getting my ass kicked in wrestling practice somehow feel delightful in spite of the fact that every one one of those afternoons was a completely miserable experience to endure. In spite of its clichéd reputation, it’s a song that remains unsullied in my memories, a timeless example of classic songwriting that I reflexively reach for as a “back in my day, we had…”-song whenever some annoying indie folk music invades my airspace. The same radio station I’d heard “Wonderwall” on dozens, maybe hundreds of times, ostensibly never changed their alt-rock programming at all. Yet it’s now dominated by a mix of said indie folk, macho synth pop and second generation Passion Pit-clones. Complaining about this or remarking upon it as somehow being strange is futile and stupid, as if trends in music shouldn’t change, as if trends have ever meant anything at all but appealing to the lowest common denominator and this is somehow a grand revelation that’s suddenly just dawned on me. I guess this is that weird part of growing up where you really get a taste of how impermanent everything is, not just understanding that “change is inevitable” but really feeling the weight of that reality when it finally sets in. Yeah, some of us take longer to reach this truth than others.
I don’t expect this video to click with contemporary viewers, even as it stands as an example of so many things that I love about AMVs. I wish that more editors would return to editing videos with this kind of mindset, sitting down with a song that resonates with them and an anime they love and trying to suss out how those pieces can reinforce one another in a unique way that’s personally meaningful. Even if it looks unpolished by standards set over a decade ago or occasionally indulges in unnecessarily literal lyric sync, a simple AMV that’s made with a sense of sincerity and patience is something I value and place a priority on as a viewer. This would seem to hold a more universal appeal than AMVs as memes or as a means to prop up editors’ egos, but again, things change.
moinkys seems to have disappeared from the world of AMVs shortly after releasing “A Step Back,” with a third video that never saw the light of day. Based on stats from the Org, her videos were rarely watched, her participation in the community was nonexistent outside of the act of uploading the two AMVs she was able to finish, and her probable departure from the hobby went as unnoticed as her initial forays into it. This was a shame, as her most accomplished effort was obviously the work of someone who had quickly developed a good sense of scene selection and sync. With better tools at her disposal or some constructive advice for getting the most out of what she already had, the technical flaws in her work could have easily been corrected. Even if further efforts never built upon the simplicity of “A Step Back,” never even working in transitions or effects, I’m confident that her basic intuition for how to edit an AMV would have paid off in bigger ways than the potential hinted at here.
I do this every year, or at least I have for the last few: my favorite AMVsof 2017 list is finished, but here are some more AMVs I really love but didn’t see until early this year. I’m sure that I’ll find even more in the future, but this will be the first and last addendum to my end of year list.
It’s been a while since I last watched Mushi-Shi or any AMV that featured it as prominently as “Quintessence,” so maybe coming back to it from such a long hiatus helped it leave an especially fresh impression, its gentle but ominously supernatural scenes feeling more even intriguing and majestic than I anticipated. The haunted bossa nova music soundtracking the video is unlike anything I’ve heard before in an AMV, setting a very unique tone that every clip, cut and transition reinforces. Mushi-Shi is not the only anime featured here, but every other source that’s folded in around it compliments it beautifully, shaping into a video that’s the closest you’ll come to a truly dreamlike AMV experience.
Not even sure where to begin with this one, since UnluckyArtist would surely be one of the first names I’d rattle off my list of favorite editors. Yet I somehow passed on this AMV, possibly due to, um, issues I had with its title (I’d rather not try to explain this, thanks) or maybe just because I’d long since filled my annual quota of UnluckyArtist videos to obsess over by the time I noticed it. Anyway, this was definitely the most fun video he released in 2017, even surpassing the nu-retro sugar rush of “NØ Limits!”, one of my favorite videos of the year. Completely unfamiliar with the source material, which at first glance looked like (pardon the prejudiced first impression, just being honest here) yet another cookie cutter cute-girls-doing-cute-things, moe-blob otaku-bait series, my expectations were set as low as they ever get for anything that I’ll still go through the motions of actually watching. Even more than it does on a regular basis, language defies me in my quest to explain why I actually really loved this and, in spite of a lack of traditional Artistic Substance as I know it, find it so endlessly rewatchable and filled with an unexpected sense of subtlety that comedy AMVs rarely play with. Oh yeah, it also made me a better-late-than-never convert to a song I totally, completely didn’t get whatsoever the first dozen times I heard it.
Fall Out Boy songs are a staple of action AMVs. Even when they don’t make a lick of sense to use, they can still inject enough dramatic swagger into a video to work regardless. That potential sets up Bimyou’s “A Real Hero”to succeed as a satisfying but very standard shonen action video, but the editor misses no opportunity to tie the substance of My Hero Academia to the song’s lyrics (a song I didn’t even hear until coming across this AMV — this band is still releasing #1 albums, what on earth happened to their radio play?). The result is a video that succeeds in its specifics, distilling the most appealing qualities of the anime into a potent, tightly-edited work that’s both an adrenaline-pumping action video and a truly spirited primer to the series for the uninitiated. I realize that on paper this sounds like any other My Hero Academia AMV, but speaking as a fan of this series since its debut, no other tribute to the series has gotten it right quite like this.
Take Pills editor: Bry_
anime: various
music: Panda Bear – “Take Pills”
Grouping these videos together probably undermines any point I’d want to make about how they’re not like anything else I watched from the past year. I definitely think they’re both unique, but they inspire me in a similar way. This has less to do with their respective styles than a feeling I got while watching them, a hunch that that neither leolide or Bry_ edited these videos according to any preconceived notions of how an AMV should look or feel. Sure, there’s precedent here, and I’m certain that they were both influenced not just by other AMVs but the wider world of YouTube as well. And yet, I appreciate these as uncompromising personal visions made without any concessions to the average AMV fan’s tastes or preferences. While both leolide and Bry_ do indeed have (rarely-touched) accounts on the Org, they find viewers without participating much in the AMV community outside of YouTube, an arrangement that’s worked out pretty well for them but leaves me wondering if success like theirs is a bad thing for the future of the hobby. If the height of risk-taking and creativity in AMVs can be reached by casting aside all of the norms that hold the community together, what future does the community have?
These kinds of thoughts do not clutter the minds of creative and productive people who start and actually finish projects of their own outside of pontificating on other people’s work. Neither of these AMVs looks like something made by someone who sits around complaining about the hobby or how it’s changed. It’s always changing, and to fight or even resent that fact is to throw my dwindling time and energies down a hole. There is much more I could say about it, probably to no important end, but that’s time that would be better spent editing if I want to finish more than one video this year. While the creativity of these two AMVs is inspiring to me, neither looks completely out of reach in terms of my abilities or the tools I have at my fingertips right now. I don’t want to copy either of these videos, but they’re a timely reminder that there’s so much I feel I could do that I’ve still never even tried.
One of the biggest inconsistencies in my writing, a source of frustration I haven’t been able to identify or think clearly about up to this point, is an inability to stick to an objective or subjective voice in my discussion or critique of any of the AMVs I post about on this blog (and even framing most of the observation-based writing I dump here as “critique” is really pushing it, but that’s a whole other matter). Discussing why an AMV “works”/is good/is worth watching is not the same as explaining why I like it, but I often conflate these ideas without a second thought. Likewise, discussing why an AMV does not work is not the same as exploring why I think it’s “overrated” or exploring possible reasons for why I don’t enjoy watching it. Once again, I would love to discuss this video in terms of how it succeeds by obeying the “rules” of AMV editing or how it demonstrates the intangible qualities of flow. Whether it’s due to my own shortcomings as a viewer or writer, or that I’m just projecting a host of very personal ideas and feelings onto it that few others will experience as they watch it, I am almost certain my efforts to build a case for this AMV in objective terms is already doomed, try as I may to convince myself and anyone else reading this that I’m doing just that.
Posts like these are where I usually echo the virtues of old-school AMVs, how they stand the test of time because they excel in the timeless basics of good editing, “rules” as true today as they were back then. This usually boils down to rehashing the concept of sync, whatever form it may take, a quality that the video I’ve posted above is almost completely devoid of. Without traditional lyric sync or internal sync, and an observable but barely-there sense of external sync, there won’t be much here for fans of modern AMVs to grab onto. I still believe there’s value to this stuff outside of the dopamine rush we expect it to reward us with, but honestly I have no idea what anyone’s experience of this video will be or what other rewards it could possibly deliver.
Even in the heyday of the golden age of AMVs, TaranT’s “Only Time Will Tell” surely felt like an old-school throwback of a video when it was released in 2004. That’s inevitable given the extremely-dated footage from 1986’s Windaria, an anime of a certain visual aesthetic that’s aged in fascinating ways by today’s standards (judging solely by the clips seen here) but likely looked static and bland to anime fans in the early 2000s. The song, an early effort in the brief career of country/disco diva Susan Anton, was the somber closing theme from Ralph Bakshi ‘s 1977 science fiction cult classic The Wizards. Needless to say, this stuff wasn’t going to blow people’s minds, a fact conceded by TaranT in the video description: “Technically, this video was an exercise in creating cinematic crossfading. It works well with this music and theme, but the result is not something that will get people hopping. This video is for those more contemplative moments.” Re-write that statement into its complete opposite and it would be a good description for the most popular AMV released on that same day. You can probably guess which of the two I’d rather watch in 2018.
“Only Time Will Tell” is as low-key of an AMV as you’ll ever find, composed of barely over a dozen cuts of low-quality footage and an mp3 that sounds muffled and muted compared the best quality version of the song that I can find online. These may be technical shortcomings, sure, but they don’t necessarily undercut the video in what it sets out to achieve. If you’re going to actually watch this AMV, you’ll have to lean into it a bit, listen more closely and look at it with a little more attention than you’re used to, handle it with the attention and care you would an old book with a loose binding and brittle pages. Allowing yourself a purposeful two minutes with it won’t change your life, but if you’re the least bit nostalgic for old AMVs or this particular bygone era of their history, experiencing this video on an intimate level might be the sort of thing you’ll dig.
That said, AMVs from 2004 are neither rare nor necessarily all that old in the scheme of things, but given the age of the sources in this video, it’s easy to mistake it for a lost video from the early 1990s. But on a deeper level, “Only Time Will Tell” is a sincerely thoughtful meditation on the passage of time, conveying a certain bittersweet nostalgia that’s likely grown more profound with each passing year since its creation. Whether or not the editor intended for the look and feel of this AMV to reinforce those themes, I can only guess, but they really, really do.
In spite of all its technical shortcomings I made sure to rattle off, so obvious that they barely require a mention at all, I still maintain that “Only Time Will Tell” is a competently-edited video. The use of crossfades and slow motion, which often seem smooth and fluid in concept but messy in actual practice, are incorporated expertly enough to give the video a soft, comforting and unhurried feel. Even the feathered masking, as unsophisticated and possibly clichéd as it is here, achieves the desired effect. If you can’t conceive of a simple video like this succeeding as a touching love letter to the past, whether it’s to the films the editor once enjoyed or in reverence to a more romantic ideas, I doubt this AMV will have the emotional heft or editorial chops to convince you otherwise. And that’s fine. “Only Time Will Tell” probably works less effectively as a traditional AMV than it does as a time capsule from a nebulous, simpler time.
Plenty of high school and light novel series attempt to create “complex” characters, place them in settings the audience will find familiar and create a situation that viewers perceive as both mundane and deeply profound. The Oregairu series is one of the few I’ve seen that really succeeds in doing this in a way that feels authentic or relatable (imho), a process that takes two seasons to really stew and reveal themes that would be otherwise hard to swallow delivered by a story more eager to oblige viewers’ fantasies and preconceived notions right off the bat. “Stay the Same” takes a nuanced approach to the complex sentimentality of this material, not trying to explain the series or dumb it down into a more easily digestible form but leaning into its melancholy tone with no hesitation. Hanging these scenes on a warmly bittersweet-sounding Japanese hip-hop tune–a unique sound with no English-language counterpart I can think of at all–leaves viewers like me to soak in the emotional resonance of the lyrics, which convey a feeling of weary patience and assurance despite the language barrier that’s keeping the true meaning under wraps for me. The editing is as smooth as the music, punctuated by well-timed quick cuts and occasional zoom-outs that don’t betray the understated, gentle flow that makes this AMV relaxing, for sure, but also disarmingly intimate and comforting.
9. Blood Stained Uniform
editor: lunalove125
anime: Kill La Kill
music: In This Moment – “Blood”
If you’ve stumbled across this blog from animenano (please tell me someone has in the last five years) or from who knows where on the Internet, the following disclaimer will probably be helpful in getting a feeling of where I’m coming from. I really don’t listen to nu metal or metalcore or whatever you want to call this stuff. I didn’t when I was younger, and what I listen to now probably sounds like this to most people. There’s no better word for it: musical prejudice probably keeps me at arm’s length from a lot of AMVs, meaning a lot of good videos will need some other tantalizing bait to lure me in. In this case, that would be Kill La Kill, which I like, maybe even love, the more I think about it. And while rage is not an emotion I really think I need any more of in my life, I can’t deny that a ferocious-sounding woman like this at the mic is going to win me over more times than not. The song itself is that perfect example of how packing enough hooks in a piece of music that I think I won’t care for will inevitably convert my tastes and make me forget why I put up walls in the first place. Oh yeah, this is some of my favorite action editing of 2017. It’s as straight-forward of an approach to this material as you can imagine but it all works, resulting in an emotionally-charged, intense celebration of KLK‘s excess of violence and other concerns that just floors me every time I watch it. This editor (going by lunalove125 on the Org and a different name on Youtube, take your pick) got considerably more attention for her other video released in 2017 (and c’mon, it was totally deserved) but “Blood Stained Uniform” was my go-to action AND rock video this year and maybe my favorite Kill La Kill video of all time, no small feat when you realize that it does all this without the one thing that editors and viewers love most about the whole series.
8. 100% Salt
editor: PieandBeer
anime: Mob Psycho 100
music: Cold War Kids – “Miracle Mile”
Most Mob Psycho 100 AMVs I watched last year were very focused on its action scenes, playing up this angle with heavy, intense music that accurately showcases their brilliance but at the expense of exploring everything else that made the series so wonderful. Not to keep praising videos for all the mistakes they don’t make, but “100% Salt” does not fall into this trap. It’s another persuasively fun PieandBeer AMV that oozes the same joy of videos like “Minimum Wage” and “Something Fishy,” balancing the most kinetic visual scenes with elements of drama and humor. I first saw this video during this year’s AWA Pro and it was definitely one of the standouts. Since then I’ve realized it’s not just one of the best videos of that contest but one of the most interesting visions this editor has shared with us yet.
7. No Limits!
editor: UnluckyArtist
anime: various
music: 2 Unlimited – “No Limit”
This is the first year I’m bothering to actually rank any of my favorite AMVs with this year-end list, but if I’d made the hard choices last time around, UnluckyArtist’s “Blithe and Bonny” just might have been number one on my 2016 list. “No Limits!” is a work of somewhat less sophistication or, um, artistic maturity, but I love it all the same. The second of his decade-themed AMVs, “No Limits!” is inevitably tied to our nostalgia for the 90’s anime series featured or our feelings for the general aesthetic of this kind of anime from those years (again, secondhand nostalgia, you probably weren’t watching this stuff when it was airing, and that’s fine); it’s old enough to look dated but still undeniably cool enough to impress us, especially if you’ve come to take it all for granted some twenty-odd years after it was fresh and new. Imagine the biggest, coolest Toonami bumper collage ever assembled, one you’re 12 years old and up watching with friends sometime after midnight, maybe not necessarily what that would look like but what it would feel like to experience. I don’t want to get your hopes up too much but this is as close as you’ll get to that moment.
These kind of AMVs are fast becoming their own genre if they haven’t already, and they’re one of the few where I feel that excess is a virtue in achieving the editor’s ambitious goals. You can’t really have too many sources in one of these, nor have I seen one yet that gets to be too sentimental. hamstar138 definitely brings more to this video than to any past-to-present “ode to anime” I’ve seen before. While the concept isn’t new, nor is hamstar138 really putting any kind of a fresh spin on it, I believe that anyone who likes this kind of thing will be deeply satisfied by the effort that’s on screen here.
“Wake Me Up” isn’t a bad song. If there’s anything bad to say about it at all, its greatest sin is being overplayed in chain restaurants and sporting events, but over the past five years I’ve grown pretty sick of it. I really don’t like bringing so much discussion of these videos back to my feelings about the music they use, but it’s worth mentioning here because I think it actually matters this time. I loved every second of this video, felt that the song was fittingly uplifting and not just employed for its recognition, and when I hear it on its own now, I can’t help but smile. This is a bigger achievement than you could possibly imagine. This isn’t the first video to follow this formula and it won’t be the last, but even if/when it’s topped by whatever work inevitably includes more titles and spans an even greater history of anime, duplicating the heart of this AMV won’t be quite such a simple matter.
No, I don’t consider 2 Unlimited or any of the 90s Eurodance groups to be “techno” (this is my prerogative but probably a bad opinion). Nor do I really consider Scooter or The Prodigy or anything in this to be techno, either (just to be clear, the AniMix is awesome either way). The kind of music I do think of as techno has never been very appreciated by people involved in making anime music videos, a fact that’s probably not surprising at all to anyone but myself. This is a very long-winded, unfortunately snobbish way of getting to the point of how I’ve always wished there were more techno videos in this hobby, a lament on the level of complaining about the dearth of polka or blues AMVs. Don’t hold your breath, they’re just not gonna happen. Yeah, lolligerjoj’s “GEHIRNSTURMEN” certainly does the trick, but speaking solely of the music alone, it’s packed with more violent aggression than groove and is deeper into the realm of dungeon torture music than I ever really want to listen to.
Röyksopp are not the techno gurus I was expecting to inspire such a video, but I also didn’t know they’d transitioned from tasteful downtempo tunes to banging tracks like this. Bauzi’s synthesis of the track with the eternally iconic cyberpunk masterpiece Serial Experiments Lain and Perfect Blue animator Hideki Futamura’s contribution to the film anthology Genius Party (still unseen by yours truly) is as perfect a blend of the kind of the sounds and visual themes you could ask for in an AMV like this, but as a capital-T Techno AMV, the editing of “HYPERLUST” is also a creative reflection of these sources. Bauzi refers to his creative approach as glitchart, probably as accurate of a description as possible, but one I’d rather leave out of the discussion. This isn’t a meme, it’s just great editing and the product of recognizing the common themes in sources that work across different mediums toward a common vision. The premise of the video (calling it a story is perhaps stretching the term a little too far) is easy to follow, the inventive and dazzling visuals, standing as some of the most compelling effects I saw in anything last year, never overwhelming the viewer’s ability to keep up. It’s an uncompromising and kinda brilliant work of art.
Despite my occasional correspondence with this editor, shumira_chan remains an enigma as I still don’t understand exactly when all of her AMVs were actually made or why she’d release them at a slow drip of two or three every year instead of all at once. Just to be clear, I’m okay with this, especially when her works are consistently as good as this one. Like last year’s “Back When We Belonged” (which I’d uploaded to Vimeo until my channel was shut down a few months ago, a problem I’ll finally get around to fixing some time soon), “The Last Dance” is an Ah! My Goddess video, a series I’ve never actually watched but already sort of love thanks to her works. There’s a sincerity in her AMVs that’s at its strongest here, with fundamentally strong effects-free editing that makes the most of every cut and every opportunity to slip in effective internal and lyric sync. The romantic sentiment of this AMV feels strangely quaint today, but that’s part of what makes it feel so unique. Like a love letter or a handmade gift, it’s the kind of work that expresses feelings from the heart in a way we rarely see today.
It’s barely been three years since the conclusion of Your Lie in April and as time goes on I’ve struggled to relive the emotions I felt when I first watched the series or encountered so many of the AMVs it initially inspired. It’s hard for me to shake the sense that the dramatic juices of it have been permanently squeezed dry by overexposure; this is more the inevitable fate of any popular series than any sort of critique directed towards this one. I wasn’t expecting anyone to do anything new with this series any time soon. Thing is, pwcagal didn’t really have to. “Audacity” is a traditional AMV in every obvious aspect of the sense, but the use of a song like this injects a new attitude and perspective into the material. In the hands of a lesser editor this might come across like a parody, but “Audacity” is never anything less than thoroughly convincing.
Maybe it seems like a sensible match after all. Your Lie in April and “Lose Yourself” both deal in the sort of serious tones and subject matter that look as compatible as anything could ever be for an AMV. But the dramatic stakes of the series are twisted in a different direction than we’re used to as Kousei’s motivations take a very different turn than we’re used to seeing. I’m sure this AMV will look good and work on a viewer who’s unfamiliar with the series, but those of us who know it well might feel a little more astonished by how much this really flies in the face of everything we’ve seen before. The first 30 seconds gently lures the viewer in, giving them a chance to recognize that familiar intro and acknowledge that, yeah, this is a “clever” idea. Trust me, you might think you’re prepared for how this will play out, but it’s more than you’re ready for and nothing at all like the joke you might have been expecting. The basic premise of this series is rarely questioned by most editors who sit down to work with it, and while pwcagal doesn’t tear down every established plot element or character trait, just coming at it from a slightly different angle helps it feel fresh in ways it hasn’t in a long time. The editing is fluid, confident, somehow reflects both the heavy and delicate elements of the music and illustrates nearly every line of the song except for the few that were edited out so skillfully that you’d never know they were gone if you didn’t read it here.
I was reluctant to include this on the list at all just based on the promise that there would inevitably be more to it in the future, but what’s here is not what you’d expect at all from a typical work in progress video. As the video description suggests, this is part 1 of 3. The final version, as envisioned by the editor, could be at least 10 minutes long. Not knowing what’s going to happen or when, acknowledging that the four minutes of this video had me more excited than anything else all year long, it’s here with no hesitations, a more complete and imaginative work than most editors’ finished Evangelion videos.
Compared to Bauzi’s “HYPERLUST,” (another Techno AMV, the beginning and end of similarities between the two) this video is decidedly lo-fi, an aestheticchoice that’s fitting the eternally 90’s-bound source material. Edited in a rigidly linear fashion, it retraces the episodes from the beginning to end (or at least through episode 24), cutting scenes into short snippets that are instantly familiar-looking but shown in way we’ve never quite seen before. As many iconic shots as there are in this, there are just as many that I’m sure I’ve never seen once in an Evangelion AMV. The heavy repetition of this track and the “flawed” video quality might send even the biggest Eva fans running back toward more traditional tributes to their favorite anime, but then I again I can’t say for sure as this editor has never seemed particularly eager to beg for anyone else’s approval of his work, let alone the focus group-like process of putting it out there into the fandom or the competitive AMV world. I sincerely hope that fans who love this series, electronic music or truly unique AMVs somehow find it, but even if it remains largely unseen by those viewers, that’s probably okay. You can tell that this is a deeply personal creative response to the material that most people just aren’t going to get. It’s not a vehicle to evoke familiar emotions or imitate tropes you know and love, but a mirror held up to your own ideas or nostalgia for Eva, an ink blot test in AMV form.
1. Fine Without You
editor: DeadInside
anime: Flip Flappers
music: Tame Impala -“The Less I Know the Better”
When I found this video in the last stages of making this list, I barely tacked it onto the very end as an afterthought, perhaps an interesting or unexpected bookend to the back of the list that I definitely felt good about but otherwise had no idea what to make of. In the week or so that followed, my affection for it just grew and grew every time I watched it, to the point where I knew just had to include it in the top ten. Little time would pass before I realized that this video from God knows who was just everything I never I needed right now, the fulfillment of everything I love about AMVs and the cure to my ever festering cynicism about everything that ever makes this hobby frustrating or disappointing. If that sounds absolutely miserable, no, I’m really not. (I loved making this list and I love finding stuff like this that I’d never have come across otherwise if I didn’t have an occasion to desperately poke around for anything interesting or different or attention-grabbing that just wasn’t going to land in my lap if I didn’t try to dig it up myself.) If it sounds hyperbolic, I’m sure it is, but I can indulge in that if I want.
I’m not completely unfamiliar with this anime series. No, I haven’t watched it and I know nothing about it aside from hearing its name in passing a couple times over the past year. I had watched one AMV made from it, one I liked a lot but which I’d rather not compare to “Fine Without You.” I’d never heard this song before, either. Glancing at the lyrics–which I am apparently too hard of hearing to simply understand by turning my ears to them–breaks the illusion of the wonderful lyric sync in this video. This is another video that doesn’t succeed in literal lyric sync as much as it does in honing in on the emotion in the lyrics. That’s as effective and emotionally resonant approach as you want it to be, save to say that I never needed any nudging for this AMV to unequivocally convey a meaning found between the song and these clips edited in this order with whatever fingerprints the editor found fit to leave all over it. Not that DeadInside (AKA SaltElementals AKA Salt AMV) was really leaving any that would distract from the gorgeous, beautiful flow of this AMV. This is a pretty simple video, which I suppose is one good reason why it was as taken for granted as it seems to have been. 500 views in eleven months is neither a lot nor a little, depending on what you’re comparing it to, but I feel it’s not quite enough in this case.
Or maybe this isn’t the simple video I’m quick to judge it as. There’s a lot of effects here, masked transitions, wipes, zooms and camera movements. They’re really all over the place, but at least compared to how I’m used to seeing this stuff happen in videos of this style, they’re often deceptively subtle. It took several viewings before I really noticed many of them at all. Even without an extraordinary amount of rotoscoping (or perhaps any at all, idk), I had to watch the whole AMV at 0.25 speed to finally see some of the seams in this thing and appreciate just how the editor was using effects to create such a fluid sense of movement between clips. Maybe the editor is really going overboard here and it’s just the kind of indulgence in over-editing that’s managing to get me hooked. Maybe I’m willing to overlook some of this video’s flaws when there’s just enough effects and pretty scenes to distract me. Or maybe not. The first ten seconds of this AMV contains some of the most simple yet purposeful editing I’ve seen all year. It’s nothing but simple straight cuts, certainly not “impressive” by any technical measure, but it accomplishes so much in hooking the viewer, introducing the characters and providing a springboard into the rest of the video as the song blossoms into its true form. And as busy as this video gets, there is an unedited 10-second clip near the very end that’s just the most wonderful climax of any AMV I can ever think of. Granted, it’s the sort of beautifully-animated scene that editors salivate at the sight of, usually overuse and abuse, but I love that it was saved for just the right moment here because it’s a perfect reflection of the shimmering beauty of the music and a much-deserved emotional payoff to the scenes that played out in the two and a half minutes that came before it.
Even after “Fine Without You” is over, I don’t really know anything about Flip Flappers that I didn’t before. And yet I do know that I’ve just followed a story I implicitly understood outside of any cues besides the odd lyric or two that somehow stuck to my brain, leaving a well-timed impression that’s the only place where language ever intersects with my instinctual attachment for this stuff. I really don’t know if this is a Flip Flappers summary or just the editor’s private vision of how the series feels to them or something much more random than that. My experience of it isn’t a state I can put into words. Euphoria is too strong a word to use for this emotion, but it’s an irrational sense of well-being and good vibes that I’m content to feel without understanding.
This list will be a little longer than those in years’ past, so I’m breaking it down into two posts. My usual top 10 is now a top 20. A few of these AMVs may have been submitted to contests in the 2016 calendar year or perhaps edited even earlier than that, but as far as I can tell were never debuted on Youtube, animemusicvideos.org, AMV News or anywhere else until 2017. Videos #20 through #11 will be covered in this post along with a couple honorable mentions. I hope to post the top ten in another day or two. In the meantime, a more comprehensive and better-researched list can be found at my friend’s site, which I can’t recommend enough if you like this sort of thing or just are curious to dig a little deeper into this stuff beyond Youtube recommendations or Reddit posts.
The first time I watched “Anime MasterChef,” I was so appalled by its similarity to another AMV that I remember complaining about it to anyone who would listen. The past six months haven’t changed my opinion that, yeah, this video probably was inspired by AmvLuna’s “Anime’s Got Talent.” Is that a problem? One of my favorite AMVs of all time (mostly for sentimental reasons, I guess, but that’s a whole other discussion) is an even more blatant ripoff of another video, a fact I was never not aware of but also never the least bit conflicted over. Why it should suddenly matter now is, well, a really good question I don’t have an answer for. “Anime’s Got Talent” was possibly the most successful crowd-pleasing AMV of all time; there are more “Anime’s Got Talent” reaction videos on Youtube than I would like to count, probably averaging thousands of views each. Just how “Anime MasterChef,” essentially following the same concept and not really crafted in any significantly different way, could work as a grower of a video, I have no idea. Still, that was my experience with it. Superficially, I prefer the music of AntaresHeart07’s AMV (I’m definitely no k-pop expert, but this guy’s haterscome on too strong for me) to the uninspired remake of a song from my youth that I never even think about but feel weirdly possessive of, and I like cooking more than the obnoxious, desperate quest for viral fame that is TV talent shows. None of that really explains what I like about this video or why it finally won me over. Must be the secret ingredient.
There seems to be much more to the concept of entropy than the “movement from order to disorder” definition that is commonly used in layman’s terms outside of scientific fields. But in a general sense it’s still real and inevitable and could even be used to describe what’s happening to AMVs as a hobby. Thoughtfully edited works that communicate meaning and affection for the source materials that continue to slowly be replaced by very short videos containing sources and effects that feel selected by random processes. I suspect that the energy needed to reverse this trend would be greater than the energy of the entire system itself, a longwinded way of saying that we can only glimpse our certain future but it probably looks like this. (In layman’s terms again, that’s just a theory.) For now, I’m sure the sun will still rise tomorrow and I can still take solace in the fact that as long as there are people still making old-school Inuyasha action/drama videos like it’s still 2005 (mind you, looking better than ever, whatever new sources they’re using or magic they’re working to make the old footage look as good as this). I won’t pretend that I like this song or that it’s not a new height/depth of the O.A.R./Lifehouse brand of rock that helped get us to this point, but I don’t care. A little bit of sincerity goes a long way with me and I appreciate editors who reach for the least trendy materials imaginable and give it their all to make it work. None of this stuff will be around forever, so let’s appreciate it while we still can.
It’s not quite the Shinsekai Yori AMV that I’m still looking for, but I get the feeling that Lightning Arrow was out to make it with this edit. He comes awfully close with this moody, atmospheric and very glitchy video that, for all its eye-catching effects and busy visual pacing, captures the mystery and dread of the series more than any AMV I’ve seen yet. I’ve got no idea if the effects in this video were homemade or out of a box, but even if they’re the product of popular and soon-to-be-overused filters, they’re employed wisely and with enough variety to never grow stale or let the viewer catch on to whatever pattern they’re following. An undercurrent of malevolent doom runs through the video beneath a catchy visual rhythm that’s incredibly complex but never excessive, but for two minutes that’s really all it needs to justify its existence. There’s more than enough material in this anime for Lightning Arrow to have crafted an edgy gorefest of an AMV, but what’s here (still undeniably graphic, just not in your face about it) is infinitely more interesting than what most editors would instinctively craft from these pieces.
Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid wasn’t the best anime I watched in 2017, but it was definitely the most surprising. Just calling it a feel-good anime doesn’t do it justice. It was an uplifting and positive experience to watch that really took me by surprise, especially as its best qualities slowly snuck up on me over the course of several episodes. The good-natured portrayal of unexpected friendship (or romance or the rewards of opening one’s life up to new experiences and new relationships, whatever, the series never forces any one message at the viewer) comes through just perfectly in this AMV. Granted, I watched a couple Dragon Maid videos this year and they all channeled that vibe to one degree or another. None of them featured a song this joyful or did so much to convey its feelings so effectively, no small task with a song this genuinely sunny and timeless.
16. Najee – Laid Back
editor: Israel SkunkWorks
anime: The Big O
music: Najee – “Laid Back”
The title of this AMV, amounting to a simple listing of the song title and the artist it’s credited to, is the first tip off that you’re watching something from an editor who came to AMVs from this scene. Indeed, most of ISW’s videos are of the looping gif variety with music almost exclusively from Soundcloud artists (with some notableexceptions, including this video). A closer look at these videos shows there’s more than first meets the eye: lengthy sequences of pure repetition are often bookended by introductory scenes and eventually give way to actual endings, perhaps suggesting that this editor is looking to do something more creative than just spin his wheels in the gif video sub-for-sub world. His most recent video is a fully-fledged AMV, maybe not a conventional one by any means, but one that definitely makes sense based on his short time spent making videos where, well, let’s just say fast-paced visual changes were never put on a pedestal. Set to an impossibly perfect blend of g-funk and smooth jazz (and from 1994, probably peak vintage for this stuff), there’s not much more to this video than watching the the coolest guy you’ll ever meet cruising around the city in a fantasy version of a souped-up Cadillac, dropping by a bar for a quick drink, stopping at his luxury penthouse for a break before heading out to, I don’t know…fight crime, I think. Even compared to even the slowest AMVs you’ll ever find, none of this plays out with any urgency at all, which is the whole point. When you’re this smooth, there’s no reason to rush anything.
“Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” never needed a snarling hard rock cover or a slow, “epic” movie trailer treatment. It conveys a sinister but confident, cool mood on its own just fine, traits that UnluckyArtist recognizes in both the song and the Satoshi Kon-directed mix of visual sources that he brings together. It’s a beautiful, disorienting dream-like experience, with some subtle but really cool original music in the introduction (serving as a good springboard into the main video, don’t skip it) and some truly weird audio edits toward the end that always mess with my head. It’s another dazzling work from one of the most imaginative editors out there today. No, it doesn’t quite unseat my favorite “Sweet Dreams” video, perhaps too tall an order to ask for (look, that thing re-wired my still-developing brain in ways I’ll never fully grasp, there’s no shame in second place here). Over the course of making these lists for the last couple years, UnluckyArtist always made it very difficult for me to stick to my one-AMV-per-editor rule, so difficult that I finally just gave it up this time around and probably for good. Expect more to come.
The dreamiest fantasy AMV I saw this year, Elcalavero’s “The Red Book” is as relaxing yet engaging of a video as you’ll watch any time soon. The little technicality of whether or not its source is truly anime or not (a debate I’m not eager to revisit anytime soon) was just one factor that held it back from getting the credit and views it deserved, which is a shame since it’s probably my favorite work from one of my favorite editors. The beautiful visuals and haunting but mellow song just kind of melt together. Minor flaws notwithstanding, it’s a subtle masterpiece.
Another year, another chance to say that I’ll finally get around to watching Metropolis. Yeah, I still haven’t watched this film but if you’re in the same boat, trust me, that’s not a prerequisite for enjoying this AMV. Actually, going into this fresh might be the best way to experience it. This might not be the first time you’ve seen an AMV that places this much focus on its gritty
cyberpunk/noir setting, but I can’t think of any that use music to such an effective degree to make you feel like you’ve been dropped straight into the bowels of it. Gidge seem to be classified as ambient music, but the percussive elements of this song give it lonely Burial-esque quality that compliments the dystopian visuals to a very immersive effect. The metal-on-metal, off-beat accents remind me of steps heard down a dark corridor or a rhythmic process beating from machines in a smoke-filled factory. Other elements of the track echo as though reverberating through a large corridor or a twisting stairwell descending down to unknown depths. There’s a big sense of space at work here even as scenes slowly transition from a focus on atmosphere alone to a slow work up towards action in the second half. Yeah, six minutes does make for a long AMV to sit through. Sometimes I wish this one was even longer.
The audiovisual aesthetic, gaudy fashion and unhinged enthusiasm of the 1980’s aerobic exercise industry has aged into one of the campiest cultural phenomenons of the last thirty-odd years, one that either embodies the worst of 80’s excess and vanity or is the most potent bomb of ironic nostalgia you’ll ever find. It’s as dumb as it was beautiful in its endless optimism, a reality that was somehow more crazy than any of the day-glow vaporwave montages dreamed up by people who weren’t even alive to experience it for themselves. “The Champions!” is yet another product of this retro archeology, but unlike so many “80’s AMVs” that amount to a kitchen sink-pile up of day glow memes and references, the thematic focus of this video is consistent and extremely surprising considering how the editor maintains it so perfectly for a whole two and a half minutes. The dance scenes are as in sync with the music as I’ve ever seen in a dance AMV, and the material that pads out the rest of the runtime feels like the perfect homage to the training montage that was was a staple of 80’s films.
Nothing against his single-source works, but my favorite KazKon AMVs (or at least the ones that have stuck with me the most) have been his videos that pull material from multiple sources. Looking back at thosevideos, I’m a little shocked to see that neither contains more than a half dozen different anime titles, as the experience of watching them has always given me a feeling of sensory overload that I’ve scarcely ever encountered in AMVs, to say nothing of any other visual medium. His second of three AMVs released in 2017, “V” incorporates more sources than he’s worked with to date but never approaches the overwhelming effect of some of his previous works. Even if he doesn’t dial back on some of the graphic imagery he’s kind of becoming known for using (albeit in a strangely tasteful way that’s not quite like anything I’ve seen before), “V” may be one of his most accessible works, yet still as provocative and unique as ever. To be clear, this isn’t what most viewers expect from an AMV, but the same could be said for lolligerjoj and qwaqa, two uncompromising, experimental editors that have managed to leave big impressions on casual audiences and changed how people think about AMVs. Maybe it’s time to include KazKon in the same conversation.
I reject the complete title of this AMV and won’t use it here, because describing this work simply as a pastiche of the visual or musical aesthetic of an entire decade isn’t just misleading, but sells it short on a number of levels. Execution of the general concept of the “80’s AMV” has been done more effectively since this was originally released by editor Ultimatetransfan in 2010, but I guess credit is due for even conceiving of such an idea at all in a world where vaporwave, future funk and VCR grain worship were still years from really catching on as ideas to plunder for likes ‘n subs.
My first impression of this AMV was inadvertently colored by the lackluster quality of the occasionally-corrupted footage that I was able to download when I got around to finally watching Gunbuster last week. By comparison, the video quality of this AMV is absolutely pristine and shows off the still amazing-looking level of animation in the series that helped put Gainax on the map. To say it looks objectively better than, well, a lot of very popular computer-animated anime of very recent years probably isn’t even a daring statement anymore. It probably helps that Ultimatetransfan (UTF from here on) consistently works in some of the best-looking scenes from the series, their vivid animations flowing beautifully with the music in a very standard but effective display of consistently-great internal sync that brings this video to life, heightening its emotional peaks at all the right moments and achieving a sense of flow that makes this AMV feel so alive and inviting. I suppose some of the scene selection here was a no-brainer, but no single scene or cut feels chosen to stand out on its own, nor do any iconic scenes feel exploited in their use. There’s a logical progression in the editing that works on a narrative level but, more importantly, feels right on a gut level that viewers will understand and effortlessly follow.
I’d like to hold back on throwing superlatives at a video I only just found yesterday, but UTF’s “Invincible” certainly checks most of the boxes I can think of when it comes to being a good candidate for one of those kind of AMVs. UTF captures the dramatic spirit of Gunbuster in a fittingly upbeat but equally serious tone, breezing through the series through consistently great lyric sync that never breaks from a chronological flow of scenes that basically recaps the series. (I’ve been critical of this approach to series-focused AMVs in the past, but that’s critique at its most misguided. When an editor approaches their material with a such a fundamentally solid grasp of internal, external and lyrical sync, the choice to appropriate the material in a linear or nonlinear fashion is much less a significant creative choice than it is simply one aspect of the work that barely bares any meaningful mention in discussing it, or certainly no more than I already have, in this case.) The use of Pat Benatar’s “Invincible” doesn’t work because of its synchronicity with Gunbuster as a product of an arbitrarily decided ten year-long block of time, but because its empowering, dramatic tone is an uncanny match to the larger-than-life stakes of the story. The lyrics are vague enough to graph an array of scenes onto, yet specific enough for the viewer to infer an undeniable connection between the song and the anime being used, giving the editor a clear path to follow with generous room for creative interpretation. It’s a golden opportunity that UTF milks for all it’s worth, resulting in a video that’s instantly pleasing and accessible, even to viewers who’ve never set eyes on the source material.
UTF was not an editor that I was at all familiar with going into this AMV, or so I’d thought. A glance at his profile reminded me that I had in fact viewed one of his videos a few years back…one that left a very different impression on me than the one I’m writing about here and which I’d rather not revisit at this time but perhaps owe a second chance in light of new evidence. Actually, there’s nearly fifteen years’ worth of videos in his body of work to comb through. It’s a contradiction, I know, but finding another old-school flavored gem like “Invincible” in the mix feels both inevitable and like a total longshot. Hopefully I haven’t oversold this one, but it’s just the right kind of simple brilliance and joy in editing that I love best.
Red Alert, edited by Kwasek in 2001, was one of the earliest AMVs I ever stumbled upon, maybe even the first, leaving just the kind of big impression on me than you’d expect. It’s been nearly fifteen years since I first saw it, and more than any other video, it’s probably formed my baseline of what I think an AMV should do. Granted, if I’d come into this game just a few years later via the flood of rushed-out Naruto AMVs in the mid-2000s, my first impressions could have been molded in a very different direction, and there’s no telling if I would have latched onto this whole thing for more than a couple of weeks, if that. I’m sure that both this blog and any videos I’ve cobbled together over the years would never have come to be if not for the existence of this AMV and the auspicious forces that brought it into my life. That might not be the most profound of any of my real-life sliding doors scenarios, but it often leaves me wondering just what on earth I’d be doing right this minute if turned my attention to anything else on that day (for instance, unplugging and packing up my computer to move like I was probably supposed to be doing that afternoon).
I ought to add that Red Alert has not solidified my expectations for how an AMV should look. The visual quality of this work is by far its weakest link. Time has not been kind to it, perhaps rendering it totally unwatchable for a vast segment of younger viewers for which even DVD-quality anime in a 4:3 aspect ratio can be a hard sell. I’m accustomed to the flaws of this video, the blocking and ghosting/aliasing that’s evident in most clips, and am not the least bit bothered by any of them. I’d be intrigued to see a remaster cut with Blu-ray footage, but I expect that would be a very different video altogether and I wonder if I’d even recognize it at all. While I’m suspicious of people who would try to exalt the virtues of certain pieces of media due to their inherently undesirable flaws (“it takes a special kind of person to appreciate pops and clicks and imperfections in their music,” etc.), I have to admit that the 240p resolution (or 232p, to be more precise), complete with awkwardly-handled speed changes in certain scenes, gives it a dated look and a magical quality that I can never get enough of (forget artificial VHS grain, I’m still waiting for a handy filter that will give all new AMVs this turn of the century-flavor). As a product of its time, I doubt that many viewers were troubled by its less-than-pristine video quality when it debuted, so aside from pointing out the obvious, it seems rather pointless to grouse about it any further today.
It could be the rare dichotomy between Kwasek’s confident editing and the lackluster video quality that gives this video a character that I can’t quite put my finger on. There’s no breakthrough idea here that’s really groundbreaking, but this video shines with clever moments of sync, some competent, tight action editing that knows when to give way to slower scenes or even (during brief moments where sound drops out of the song altogether) the occasional blank space on the timeline. The dazzling scene selection nails both the distressing and celebratory nature of the song, capturing both the elegant beauty and effervescent, bubblegum-packed fun of the series. While Kwasek only occasionally pairs the lyrics to scenes in any literal fashion, every element of the video works together to channel a vibrant sense of excitement. It’s a great example of a simple but solid concept that communicates a passion and enthusiasm for the anime being used. It’s what I’d consider a “pure” AMV, an elitist distinction for sure, but one that persists in the taste-centers of my brain. Despite being a fan of this video for a long, long time, it’s never quite managed to nudge Sailor Moon anywhere close to the top of my watchlist, so I sometimes wonder if I’m grasping what this editor has set out to channel or if it’s all just my personal interpretation of the series. I hope I still get some fan points for playing through the arcade game (and not on a ROM, but on one of only two existing machines in the USA).
Even if “Red Alert” is one of my favorite songs of the 1990s, I have never been the biggest fan of Basement Jaxx, or at least not compared to some of the other “big” electronic artists from that same era. That said, I just picked up a copy of Remedy at Goodwill for a dollar, and was surprised to find myself familiar with and really digging most every track on it. The album holds up in surprising ways, not just in itself over time, but against the contemporary inheritors of its legacy in 2017. Basement Jaxx run circles around all the bad boys of EDM in songwriting, production, musical chops and the conviction in their fondness for the different sounds they explore and styles they borrow from. For example, it wasn’t until very recently that I realized I’d probably heard this song no less than a hundred times over the past year; I can sort of understand how a flaccid, soulless skeleton of a song like that can fit into the muzak playlist I’ve been subjected to at my side-job since some time last year, but much less so how it could be a global sensation without ever leaving the smallest impression on me whatsoever. I mean, sure, on an abstract level I understand the social climate of our world, the economics of the music industry and how the most passive consumers of pop music would be as receptive as they were to an offering like this one. Maybe it’s still hard to accept that this would be the song that people would latch onto, but the winners and losers of music the music world have never had to make perfect sense.
Why bring up “Closer” or this AMV (edited by AceMVFX in 2016 and closing in on a million views) at all? I had a point I wanted to make about “modern” AMVs like this and how workshopped and formulaic they feel, especially contrasted with an AMV like Kwasek’s…and how, wouldn’t you know it, it kind of reminds me of how a bland, by-the-numbers, superficially raunchy but calculatedly inoffensive product like “Closer” feels next to a fleshed-out composition like “Red Alert,” which channels a dynamic and eclectic mix of house, funk and soul music, conceived by human beings for a purpose other than racking up Youtube plays by the billion. But that’s a battle I ought to know better not to fight.
Like most pop songs that achieve some level of success, “Closer” owes its appeal to its chorus, in which Halsey and Andrew Chainsmoker recall some of the seemingly inconsequential and mundane, yet privately significant details from the scene of a failed relationship. My feelings about the song aside, it could still be fertile ground for an editor up to the challenge of pulling off some of the most difficult lyric sync I can possible imagine:
So baby pull me closer in the backseat of your Rover That I know you can’t afford Bite that tattoo on your shoulder Pull the sheets right off the corner Of the mattress that you stole From your roommate back in Boulder We ain’t ever getting older
AceMVFX doesn’t completely ignore the lyrics of the song, as there’s just enough lyric sync to suggest that he’s indeed not only fluent in English but actually set out to edit with the lyrics in mind (or at least in the beginning). But while scene after scene soon drift past with little to no connection to those lyrics, the editor treating them as universally-applicable signifiers of vague romantic sentiments instead of the hyper-specific details they are, the failure to pair every insipid detail of the song with an appropriate visual is not where this video slips off the tracks. It’s not even a matter of the editing itself or any technical issues in the video (although the aspect ratio errors beginning at 3:12 should have been caught and could easily have been corrected). Because the “story” in the song is personalized, focusing on the details in the lives of a single couple, any attempt to illustrate it in a fan video using two dozen different characters from completely different anime series just shrugs off the narrative of the song altogether. What’s left is a series of random clips starring a constantly-changing cast of characters, wiping out the element of the intimate and personal altogether. Bouncing from series to series, invoking one ostensibly romantic scene after another with no context or apparent confidence in their ability to carry the weight of the video for more than a couple of bars, the emotional weight of each clip is sucked dry and feels dead on arrival before it’s able to communicate any feeling whatsoever. No amount of lyric sync or editing savvy can rescue this defiantly ridiculous concept. But because the simple thrill of recognition (Koe no Katachi! Sword Art Online! Z-Kai Cross Road!!!) is the payoff that viewers are trading in their time and attention for, and because more sources in an AMV is almost always perceived as a mark quality and sophistication, the simple fact that the video makes no sense at all is not a complaint that viewers of these kind of AMVs will be lodging any time soon.
Of course, I realize this AMV is not made up of “random clips” at all. That may be the best way to describe their effect, but even the most casual viewer will observe that the titles pillaged for the video are all obvious choices; they’re relatively new, boast a high production value and have been road tested in countless other multi-source AMVs, usually multi-editor projects, which this AMV bears a peculiar resemblance to in its segmented blueprint and could easily pass as. Granted, there’s no indication that it is an MEP, neither in the video description nor mentioned in the end credits (or lack thereof). The increasing homogenization of MEPs, in which editors are selected based on their ability to work in an impersonal style, crafting an assembly line product devoid of any personality or individual touches, may very well have come full circle and be driving the creative direction of single-editor AMVs like this one (or so I can only speculate). After all, if the Youtube AMV scene is driven by these piecemeal projects, in which networks of contacts are formed for the purpose of trading likes and subscriptions, breaking from the now-popular format of these videos stands to be a risky move for any editor looking to continue building their brand and amassing followers.
In conclusion of this arbitrary comparison, likely performed as an excuse to marinate in the comforting familiarity of my own preferences and biases, my preference for one of these two AMVs over the other is strong. I could double down and say what I think this means about the state of the hobby, or I could disown my convictions with an apologetic shrug (your opinion is as valid as mine, etc). You’ll get neither of these today.
Did you know “kwasek” is Polish for acid? Other sources translate it to “citric acid,” and is sold to the masses as a food additive. A very quick Google search tracks down the real-life Kwasek himself, still alive and well on social media, but if I ever reach out to him for anything, I’ll try to think of a better way to break the ice than that.
This blog isn’t dead, I’ve just been very busy for the last two months with work and other responsibilities. And the free time I’ve had to write has all been devoted to this very entry that you’re reading right now, which was intended as an analysis of the world of vaporwave, lo-fi hip hop, and “future funk,” and specifically, how these sounds are paired with visuals in the form of looping anime gifs on Youtube. I’m talking about massively successful channels like Artzie Music, Axian, Emotional Tokyo or ChilledCow, to single out just a few. Several re-writes and a couple thousand words later, most of my thesis was built on speculation and a lot of baseless assumptions about the people who make and consume this stuff. I was still a long way from really understanding what was happening here, so I was in no position to try to explain any of it, much as I wished that someone would eventually do so from an informed and somewhat unbiased position.
Yesterday I woke up to find that Digibro had done all that and more, explaining the background of this nebulous scene in a way that I was completely blind to and discussing why it’s happening right now in a very simple but nuanced fashion. I’m a little irked to have gotten scooped like this — although, now that I know what to look for, I see there was already plenty of discussion about this phenomenon out there already — but I’m also grateful to have the gaps in my knowledge filled to a degree that I just wasn’t going to accomplish on my own. You can just watch this and get an idea of what is going on here, it provides more than enough background for what I really want to talk about.
To say nothing about the creation of the music itself, the act of choosing an animated gif to accompany one’s track of choice isn’t the sort of mindless exercise that I’d once felt tempted to write it off as. Having a sense about what sort imagery is most appealing to viewers doesn’t come naturally to everyone, but the most savvy creators of these videos aren’t simply selecting these clips for how eye-catching they might look on the surface. On the contrary, the most effective of these videos will often present a brief loop of video depicting a moment in time in which very little is actually happening on the screen at all. The repetitive nature of these clips is pleasantly reassuring to just zone out and stare at and even easier to just ignore if you so choose, or so I imagine as I try to put myself in the head of the stereotypical fan of this stuff. For those who are watching, does a scene like the short loop in Digibro’s video — or this or this or this, just to pick a couple off the top of my head — invite the viewer/listener to identify with what’s happening on screen? Does this romanticize the kind of mundane and quiet moments that make up the day in a way that certain viewers will be inexorably drawn to? Does it hammer home the stated emotional theme of the music in a way that the tracks themselves are simply not able to fully convey on their own?
I don’t know if I’m asking honestly or just stating rhetorical questions. I’m hesitant to come out and really say what I think because, quite honestly, I find a lot of this music hard to take for more than a few minutes at a time, and I like Nujabes. I love J Dilla (who doesn’t?). And I find most attempts to emulate or pay tribute to either of them to sound hollow or superficial, which is probably inevitable when listening to efforts from people who’ve been editing music for mere months or weeks. I can’t put my finger on exactly why, but if the running similarities between all of these tracks are a big part of the appeal for many fans, it’s probably the single factor that I enjoy the least about this music. But just as soon as I feel resolved in settling on such an opinion, I’m reminded that I’d probably be totally immersed in this world if I was the same age as most of the people getting into it (or that I would be now if I wasn’t so jaded), and that I’ve always wanted electronic and sample-based music to cross paths with anime in some way that wasn’t tied up in the hedonistic, garish worlds of EDM and J-dance. So in many respects, this phenomenon is everything that I ever wished for, technically speaking.
Even more pertinent to the concerns of this blog are the many creators on Youtube who work with lo-fi hip-hop (or related genres like future funk or vaporwave) and anime visuals to produce similar videos, ostensibly with the same audience in mind, but employing more complex techniques in the process. In short, these creators are video editors in the same sense as everyone who’s ever made an AMV, selecting and cutting together scenes that flow with the song in one respect or another. And yet, describing these works as anime music videos is something I’m hesitant to do for a number of reasons, the first and foremost being that, on the surface, any congruence between these videos and the world of AMVs feels completely coincidental. Youtube’s lo-fi hip-hop scene seems to have come into existence completely independent from any aspect of AMV culture, and while it’s probable that at least some of these creators know about AMVs or have even watched a good share of them, they’re still content to operate in their own sphere far away from the Org or AMVCentral, AmvNews, anime conventions, or any of the institutions that make up the fractured but widespread community around the hobby. Call it a case of parallel evolution, I guess.
If I was going to dig even deeper — and I realize just how problematic this kind of territory really is — I’d say that the creative motivation for these kind of videos is so different from that of most AMVs that they ought not to be considered in the same terms. Just like users of Tumblr will post, reblog or like an anime screencap for its intrinsic visual qualities, I honestly feel like the creators of the animated gif-based videos that inspired these works are just as unconcerned with the original context of their sources. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, and as a fan of many AMVs that could be accurately described as containing little more than “random scenes,” I’m aware that this is a critique that could be thrown back in my face just as easily as I project it onto others, but that’s an issue I’ll confront another day. And like their gif-looping progenitors, these editors rarely grant their videos the artistic prestige of any traditional titles. Almost always, the video is labeled strictly to identify the artist of the music and the name of the featured track. In that respect, these works serve a utilitarian function, promoting the artist in the same traditional sense that music videos were intended to do in the first place. I suppose there’s something kind of beautiful about that, as it seems to be as big a sign of genuine appreciation as there can be in this little scene. Is the finished video a standalone piece to be understood on its own terms, a product of the editor’s vision and unique relationship with the sources? Or is a video like this created to fit comfortably into an already established mold and not stand out? Is it just a gateway for followers directing them from one piece of content to another? This brings me to 1171domino, an editor who probably represents the Zeitgeist of this kind of work better than almost anyone else right now.
1171domino has only been releasing videos for the past year or so, but when I first sat down to write this piece, he/she had over 40K subscribers. Two months later, that audience has swelled to over 56K subscribers, and if their most popular videos for producers like saib. or jinsang didn’t turn those producers into lo-fi hip-hop superstars, they certainly provided a level of exposure that they just weren’t going to get from any traditional outlet (just imagine writers for Conde Nast-owned Pitchfork.com slumming it in the ghettos of Soundcloud for actual underground music, it’s not going to happen). Like any editor who doesn’t arrive on Youtube fully-formed, 1171domino’s works range from flawed early efforts to more complex videos that demonstrate a more realized sense of sync and flow, defying the minimalistic, proudly-repetitive videos that the aesthetic of all this stuff was born from. Little by little, 1171domino’s works have begun to look more and more like the AMVs we all recognize, to the point where most viewers would find no meaningful distinctions between the two. There’s still a looseness to their work that feels entrenched in the less-is-more approach of the the gif-videos, a sense that the editing is never taken too seriously or fussed over, which is probably necessary for anyone who’s going to release so many works in such a short period of time. Standard AMV wisdom does not encourage this kind of casual approach, but it’s hard to advise an editor who is, by almost any account, extremely successful at what they set out to do (even if that’s only making “anime/beats“).
If I had to choose one of 1171domino’s videos to watch on repeat or to show off to anyone else, it would be this one featuring music by producer Ljones. It’s got a nice flow to it (as vague of a complement as that is, I hope the gist of it is apparent), feels laid-back in the most pleasant way without succumbing to tedium, captures that carefree and bittersweet feeling of “nostalgia” that so many editors try to convey, and marries its sources together in a way that feels natural and fittingly timeless.
Despite my wishy-washy misgivings, watching this video I find myself unable to make a persuasive argument that it’s anything other than an AMV. How could it be anything else? Well, real or imagined, I perceive a certain difference between the creative intent of most AMV editors and a videomaker like 1171domino, not to mention how their respected viewers will consume their respective works. Is that enough to put videos like these in a whole other box? What I can’t get over is my unfounded suspicion that the use of anime in these videos is coincidental…I guess, and that if this editor knew that he or she could reach a bigger audience by editing with old commercials, found footage or video game clips, that they’d do just that and reap the rewards. I realize that sounds like an attack on the authenticity of 1171domino’s creative motivations (or those of, say, ElFamosoDemon or yotsu, just to name a couple other creators in this space) and that’s really what I wanted to get away from in this entry. But as much as these videos traffic in a certain sense of cool that’s almost never been associated with AMV culture, I rarely get the feeling any of these editors hold any intentions to use the medium they’re working in to say anything at all about the anime source that they’re working with (such criticisms are regularly lobbed at AMV editors, there is nothing new under the sun, I know). Is 1171domino an anime fan? Wouldn’t they sort of have to be, at this point?
Lo-fi hip-hop and anime fan videos existed long before any of this stuff and will be with us until the end. I respect that, at least on the surface, these works have given rise to a community that’s inclusive, promising to connect people across the world in shared moments of solitude and in quiet celebration of simple pleasures. I hope it makes a difference in people’s lives for the best before it faces whatever inevitable backlash it’s headed to and that the toxic irony that will surely suffocate it — a predictable byproduct of anything born out of meme culture — doesn’t infect the minds of any more kids than it already has. Looking at this stuff through the lens of AMVs is interesting, but it’s probably not the best way to understand any of it. What kind of influence this will have on AMVs, if any at all, I can’t begin to predict. I hope this editor continues to investigate these realms of remix culture, to keep creating and eventually spin something out of it that transcends its rigid formula. The last time I had such hopes for an editor (who was, in hindsight, part of this same phenomenon in their own unique way), they quickly disappeared from the Internet along with all of their work. I’ll wait for it to happen again before I start to worry.
RT @PhilipSherburne: Online media increasingly has no idea what to do with hyphens and "years old." It's "the 30-year-old singer" or "the s… 6 days ago
