AMV chronicles #33: Counting Stars

When I first got into AMVs, it was solely as a viewer. I definitely wanted to get join in and make my own videos, but for a few reasons — technical and financial — I had to put that idea on hold for a couple of years. But I still enjoyed downloading and watching AMVs, and although it seems like an unnecessary hassle today, I enjoyed writing reviews about them. More specifically, they were “opinions,” which is how editors used to get feedback from viewers on the Org back in the pre-Youtube days. I tried to put a lot of thought into what I was writing, which was never difficult because I really relished the opportunity and always had a lot to say in terms of praise, criticism, or general observations. I’d regularly pump out paragraphs and paragraphs of this stuff with little effort at all.

I like this Tsuritama AMV. But I can’t put my finger on exactly what it is that I like about it, or what separates it from all the other AMVs I’ve seen that follow the same blueprint. I think it’s well-edited but I don’t know how to expand on that. My basis for forming opinions about these things is stuck in the mindset of the now-obsolete Org opinion format, where categories like “visual” and “audio” are no longer relevant given how easy it’s become to obtain high-quality footage with almost none of the knowledge that was previously required to get started.

I think this is a well-paced AMV that flowed pretty well from beginning to end. I think the song is a good choice for this series and that this wasn’t a coincidence, but a factor that the editor took into consideration. Sometimes you can just tell these things. This AMV is a good summary of the series (with spoilers) and one that really captures the spirit of it. I know that doesn’t matter in itself, but it’s the sort of thing I always appreciate. Maybe it’s actually more difficult to recontextualize anime clips into something that feels completely different than their original source, but I suppose neither approach is necessarily better than the other. This kind of AMV isn’t very original, but it wouldn’t be fair to hold that against it. Some of my favorite AMVs are obvious knockoffs of other AMVs. Perhaps I should have watched this a few more times before trying to write anything at all about it, but I’ve been really busy over the past few weeks and it’s not going to let up any time soon. Hopefully I’ll be able to allocate some free time into editing and not mindlessly browsing the Internet. After all, I’d like to be able to make at least one AMV that people would enjoy as much as this one.