AMV chronicles #085: All of The Above

Their similarities aside, I don’t believe for a second that HiikariAMV’s “All of The Above” (2018) was anything close to a deliberate rip-off of “Neapolitan” (2015) by Copycat Revolver, nor do I necessarily assume that HiikariAMV has ever watched “Neapolitan” in the first place. But when I first watched HiikariAMV’s video nearly three years ago, I found it impossible not to compare the two works. CR’s work is a little more polished than “All of The Above,” though not to a degree that kept HiikariAMV’s work from getting under my skin and staying there for over four years now. As a showcase of pure sync in nearly every shot it employs, it’s hard to deny that “Neapolitan” goes places that this AMV never really does, although there are several moments in “All of The Above” that do successfully utilize internal sync to a much more subtle degree. Getting that out of the way and hopefully moving on, these two works have nothing to do with one another and I’ve only recently come to understand that on a level that’s opened the door to my independent and hopefully unbiased appreciation of each. So yeah, enjoy this reappraisal of an AMV that I’ve never given its due but have never come close to forgotting about.

Its obvious and hopefully universal charms aside, I think that no small part of the appeal of this AMV me is the fact that I’ve made individual AMVs with all three of the anime sources that “All of The Above” uses: Neon Genesis Evangelion, FLCL and Alien Nine. Having spent so much time with each source during the editing process (to say nothing of all the times I’ve watching them for pleasure as they were meant to be experienced in the first place), I feel a personal bond of sorts to each and I know that’s affecting my experience of watching HiikariAMV’s edit. I’m not sure that most people will understand this kind of thing, as talking with other editors over the years has left me with the impression that most people feel downright sick of the anime they’re editing with by the time a project is finished, certainly eager to move on, sometimes ready to never watch a second of their source again unless they’re forced to (few editors take this feeling to such an extreme, perhaps the few I’ve encountered who’ve claimed to didn’t mean it as literally as I took it). Although Eva and FLCL are as perennially popular as ever, I’m always intrigued by AMVs that continue to incorporate source material as old as this, which is also psychologically working me over as I clearly remember a time when the last words you’d ever use to describe any of these anime were “old” (or its optimistic synonym: “classic”). It feels particularly weird and incomprehensibly poignant to see all three of these anime in one video, including Alien Nine, which feels like an unexpectedly left field-addition to this mix.

Rather than digging into the structure of this AMV or actually analyzing it (maybe I’ll get around to this eventually), I’ll continue to focus on the extrinsic factors that color my opinion of it: I really like this song! “Riot Van” is from an album that is now 5,966 days old and “new” to pretty much no one besides myself. As a rock song written and played by young people, it feels like it’s from a completely different era… which of course, it is. Maybe one of the last gasps of indie rock and even the whole concept of the four-piece band before it was all ground to dust by pop, rap and electronic music, a backlash that was long in the making and not entirely unjustified, the hype preceding the first Arctic Monkeys album was nearly unprecedented. It’s all but forgotten today or at least much easier to ignore, so maybe there’s been no better time to appreciate its songs on their own terms. The sparse arrangement and unhurried, laid-back tone of this song casts its narrative in a far less confrontational light than the lyrics alone would suggest, painting a portrait of chav mischief at its most mundane. While the occurrence of cops rounding up and arresting youths for non-violent offenses–perhaps with a certain degree of unnecessary force, depending on what a listener may read into the final lyrics–might be analyzed with greater scrutiny and seriousness today than it was fifteen years ago, the song treats the confrontation as a lamentable but routine sort of incident. It’s a slice-of-life sort of song, one that’s over before you know it. If the simplicity of that kind of thing appeals to you, this might be your jam.

Unnecessary song analysis now out of the way, I think that with one or two notable exceptions, the lyric sync in this video is practically non-existent. This is typically a big hang up for me when it comes to trying to connect to an AMV where the lyrics are so front and center and the visuals appear to be riding on a completely different thematic track from the words I’m processing in my brain as I watch them. Does this ruin the video for me? I mean, I’m updating and finally posting this entry, which has been sitting in my drafts folder for nearly two years, and I probably wouldn’t be wasting my time on discussing and promoting an AMV that I didn’t enjoy… so yeah, in this case I definitely don’t mind this disconnect one bit and it’s entirely possible that it’s actually contributing to the unique feeling I get out of this video. It’s relaxing in a way that its occasionally violent or visually busy scenes ought not to be. In terms of what it is trying to provoke in the viewer, “All of The Above” is one of those extremely subjective works that never makes its theme or purpose too overt or obvious. HiikariAMV does not hold the viewer’s hand in leading them to predetermined messages, meanings or feelings. It’s definitely not an experimental or difficult video, but it’s certainly not the stuff you harvest easy rewards with.

The video thumbnail gives away the basic structure of this edit: there are three video tracks playing simultaneously, but each is allowed to dip in and out with the music, often synced to the lead guitar melody. The way each video track will slowly begin to fade to black, only to suddenly cut to a new shot before the transition is completed, provides an unexpected sync technique that’s reflective of the empty spaces in the song. Surely it’s an approach you’ve probably seen somewhere before, and I doubt it will leave any viewers in a state or shock or awe, but it’s very effective in setting up these narrowly-cropped clips to leave a certain kind of impression that’s difficult for me to put into words. Ultimately, this is another one of those AMVs that stirs up ineffable emotions, nothing soul-piercing or life-changing, but unique enough to move me to want to share it with others, an act that I won’t put the effort into for at least 99% of AMVs that I would admit to thoroughly enjoying.