AMV chronicles #28: Faithless

Hold on, how did I go ten years without ever watching this AMV? Okay, I guess I didn’t actually watch Evangelion for the first time until about 9 years ago, but still…

If we must play the genre game, then I guess this is an action AMV. Kinda hard to call it anything else, what with all the fighting Evas and scenes of certain NERV pilots in dramatic scenes piloting said Evas. And as an action AMV, it’s really superb. But all that action is carefully arranged around a surprisingly thoughtful treatment of characters. Not every character that the editor could cram into a three minute video, just Shinji and Asuka, and that’s where it gets really interesting for me.

Interesting? This is an Evangelion AMV set to “Numb!” Fair enough. But while it highlights so many of their most dramatic moments in clips that you’ve seen in countless other Eva AMVs, this video never lapses into any of the predictable troughs that so many others like it regularly do. It never descends into mindless violence. It has a certain respect for its characters and never treats them as emotional punching bags or punchlines for cynical fans to mock. It’s really well-crafted and captures the emotional essence of the series without attempting to make it any more “epic” than it already is.

This is one of the best AMVs I’ve ever seen and it’s all done without any effects at all. I don’t want to turn this into a 00’s vs. 10’s AMVs bitchfest but I love the way this looks. The cuts are placed at specific cues according to the music, and that’s why it works. It is very simple. 480p never looked so good! And it’s absolutely a product of someone’s affection for the series. Remember when people used to actually like anime? Imagine that!

Also, “Numb” is a really good song and anyone who ever thought that mocking Linkin Park was a fasttrack to getting their cool kid badge probably has a superiority complex and lots of personal issues they’re afraid to deal with. I mean, I do too but at least I realize that Imagine Dragons and AWOLNATION are the problem here, not the band that paved the way for them.

ACEN 2014

No attempt to write a convention report this year, this post only exists to note that yes, I went to Anime Central again this year.

We went to a couple of panels, watched some AMVs and walked around a lot. I wore new shoes and did my best not to step in anything with them.

Here’s some sushi. I couldn’t find my real camera so this was never going to be a decent photo.

Here’s a random photo of the hotel lobby, focused on nothing in particular at all.

I didn’t take pictures of any cosplayers, nor was I really compelled to this year. Sorry! Also, I bought almost nothing at all, save for this book.

It’s been roughly ten years to the day since my first convention, which was ACEN in 2004. Browsing some stranger’s photos online, in the vain hopes that I might spot myself in the background somewhere, I was expecting to notice a big difference in how much has changed, but on the contrary, it seems like very little has changed at all. I suppose this is reflective of my time at the convention yesterday. What once felt like a surreal and unique experience now feels comfortably familiar, not at all in a bad way, and while the popular cosplay of the year will always be different, something about the weekend feels frozen in time and eternally detached from everything else going on in the world and I don’t get the feeling that anything is changing here except for my age. I didn’t feel surprised this year. No, I don’t feel entitled to a totally novel experience every time out.

Kinda sorta planning on making a whole weekend out of it next year instead of the last-minute scrambling that barely fit the day in around our work on Friday-Saturday. ACEN 2015, here I come! Yeah right.