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.