Favorite AMVs of 2022 (#10-#1)

10. Hands – A Unico Tribute
editor: Arthas James
anime: The Fantastic Adventures of Unico, Unico in the Island of Magic
music: Jewel – “Hands”
VPR warning: flashing images

This blog has a habit of going dead for at least a few months every time I finish posting one of these year-end lists. If that’s the case once again, then we’ve got a while ahead of us where this post will be the first one that loads when visitors occasionally stumble in here from only God knows where, meaning this AMV and its embedded YouTube will be the first thing (and sometimes the last!) that any of them see. If anything should happen to me this year, maybe this AMV will have the headlining spot on this URL for as long as Automattic keeps the now archaic and surely unprofitable WordPress.com service up and running. So yeah, I’ve spent the last dozen-plus years here on a futile quest to find the absolute coolest AMVs that I can vicariously attach myself to in perpetuity here, and I’m leaving the door open for that to end in the most fittingly ironic way imaginable.

I started playing guitar again this year. I’m hesitant to bring that up at all because I worry it sounds boastful, yet the sort of self-deprecating addendums I feel compelled to add to such a statement–“no, I actually suck, you don’t want to hear me play, you’d hate it, trust me!”–are possibly even more insufferable to read, so yeah, I don’t know what to tell you. My point is, I’m suddenly drawn to playing trying to play music that I used to want nothing to do with. Maybe there were a lot of reasons for these feelings in the past, but they usually included not meeting a certain standard of coolness that, as the leading teenage authority on in the entire Midwestern United States (a position I held for several years before resigning to take a leadership role in our regional online chapter of the Twentysomethings With Amazing Taste organization), I knew in my heart mattered very, very much. Suddenly realizing that these things aren’t as set in stone as I used to believe has rocked my world to its core. “You Were Meant For Me” is a song I enjoy playing. It’s a good exercise in simple fingerpicking. I guess her lyrics are “sentimental,” a word that always has pejorative implications, but there’s something refreshingly raw and direct and free of the all-knowing worldly artifice that’s now draped over every song that gets a go at the Top 40. “Hands” is even more vulnerable and precious, maybe even pushing the limits of how far that approach could really go in the last days of the pre-Internet world (yet still easily piercing the top ten, albeit for the last time in Jewel’s career). It’s a song I had almost completely forgotten about until this AMV appeared in my feed.

“Hands” (the AMV by Arthas James) is not an impressive technical feat, although I’m confident in saying that it’s exactly as polished and tuned as it needs to be to work on its own terms. It’s somewhat loose in terms of flow but the scene selection here works miracles for me. There are a couple of moments of perfect sync that happen just when they most need to. And there’s a disarming sense of sentimentality flowing through the whole thing that I rarely encounter in most AMVs, unsurprising given that most AMVs are an editor’s attempt to isolate a sense of “cool” in their sources or even to embody it themselves. This video takes me back to a childhood I never had where this cartoon was my favorite thing in the world. To put it mildly, this AMV was an unexpected delight.

9. Same, Sis
editor: CamiChan19
anime: Shugo Chara
music: The Veronicas – “Revolution”

I’ve been “into AMVs” since the very early 2000s but didn’t become any sort of active participant in the hobby until 2008 or 2009. “Same, Sis” feels like a time capsule from that era, maybe for reasons that are super obvious, maybe for others that I was going to go into here in excruciating detail but will hold back on for reasons. Future Me may want to talk about a certain AMV that came out around that time (one that I can’t quite put out of mind while watching this one) and I don’t want to steal all his thunder right now. And just comparing this AMV to different one that CamiChan19 might not have ever seen feels a little rude, for lack of a better word, not to mention that it might imply that this AMV isn’t an original idea that succeeds completely on its own terms.

“Same, Sis” is the antidote to the cynical posturing that now passes for the norm in this hobby. It’s a joyous celebration of that stupid euphoria you can only experience in your tween years. It’s a wholesome sugar rush of an AMV, the kind of naive joy you used to have with this stuff but somehow got inoculated against years ago. It’s a perfectly-synced “fun” AMV in every sense of the word, coming right out of the gate with the sort of intensity that shouldn’t be sustainable but somehow is, reaching new heights and rebuilding its own ceiling when that shouldn’t be possible. There’s a lot of nostalgic appeal here–I shouldn’t even be the audience that can experience that feeling for something like this but here we are–but look, I’ve never seen this anime and have no attachment to it. This AMV just goes. It’s a love letter to the MySpace era and it channels the potential that “simple” AMVs always had to make people like us feel like the deranged freaks we are.

8. Venture
editor: ClaiN
anime: Wings of Honneamise
music: Sea Power – “Want to Be Free”

Unlike the typical Wings of Honneamise AMV, “Venture” contains absolutely zero shots of the instantly-recognizable protagonist or any other characters from the film. There’s the occasional clip here or there where there’s an actual person somewhere in the frame, certainly never shown up close and never onscreen for more than a two or three seconds. Most of the focus of “Venture” is on shots of the film’s climactic rocket launch and scenes of aircraft taking off and in various stages of flight, soaring majestically through the air or tragically plummeting back to earth. This probably sounds incredibly grand and adventurous, and it is! But this is absolutely not the celebration of the joy of flight that I might be making it out to be. Nor is it a “sad” AMV but it is a decidedly somber video from beginning to end, not exactly “tragic,” per se, but far more understated and brewing in complex emotions than the palette of its vivid and dynamic animation tends to be the typical building blocks for. Military otaku of yore likely adored this movie for its detailed renderings of planes and tanks; this visual appeal is no small part of what I loved about this AMV, but I also found the entire experience of it, the gradual ascension away from the violence and chaos of the surface and even the skies themselves, the leaving behind of all of that stuff, to be an unexpectedly profound payoff. If anything, it’s a rebuke of all that “heroic” violence that old audience probably would have loved it for. The last thirty seconds of this video is one of the most understated but fittingly perfect endings to an AMV I’ve ever seen.

7. Vision
editor: vivafringe
anime: various
music: El Búho – “Island of Socotra”
VPR Warning: motion, strobing

As the spiritual cousin of “Sit Around the Fire” and two sibling AMVs that vivafringe all released this year, “Vision” feels like a return to those videos’ themes of nature, existentialist thought and the cycles of life and death. If I’m already losing you here then you’ve obviously never watched one of his AMVs before, and if you’re not up for that, well… how did you find this blog, again? Sure, these are heavy themes to work with in theory, but this is art that you feel and not a manifesto requiring philosophical proofs or answers to the most difficult questions of life. It is also a very different experience from anything that almost anyone outside of a very tiny corner of this hobby commonly recognizes as an AMV in terms of what that can look or sound or feel like. Yes, this is a fan edited music video in every sense of the word, but it’s one that you (yes you, Random AMV Fan, sorry to pick on you here but you knew I was coming back for you, didn’t you?) are just not going to be able to approach on the same terms that you’re used to. That’s just how it is, I’m sorry.

There are a few editors who made multiple AMVs this year that I especially enjoyed and admired, in which case it’s sometimes difficult for me to choose a single work as a favorite that really stood out or personally appealed to me on some deeper level than any of their others. Perhaps I felt this most with the work of vivafringe, and depending on the day I probably could have picked one of four or five of his 2022 edits as a favorite that spoke to me on some subconscious level or just clicked with me in terms of how well its flow synced with whatever was happening in my brain on this day or that. “Vision,” released in early November, had the honor of getting a last crack at me, so maybe there’s some recency bias, or perhaps the sense that it exists as the latest in the editor’s ongoing investigations of life, the universe and everything else, getting us just a little closer to the spiritual sense of closure that we’re all seeking. The opening half of this AMV is vivafringe at his loosest and most relaxing, employing beautiful scene selection that invites the viewer to pause and meditate on soothing visuals that play out with an unhurried pace. The second half of the video takes a very different approach, not just in terms of visual content but pacing and flow as well. AMV editing is not necessarily a binary between those two modes, but “Vision” is a wonderful example of both at work and easily one of this editor’s best creations to date.

6. I got fired so I watched anime, fell asleep, and woke in a new world
editor: Paul Geromini
anime: various
music: The Midnight – “Gloria”

Ideally, I’d like to point out a bunch of small things I like about this video while slowly working my way up to the what it is that I love most about it, but I’m afraid I have to do just the opposite simply to get this mini-review off the ground in the first place: all this works as well as it does because the editor knows these scenes inside and out (sure, as most of us do or come to do through the course of making any AMV) but also because he has a gift for subtle physical comedy that comes through in every scene, always delivering a punchline that’s easy to understand, usually with no dialog at all, and never upstaging the other onscreen characters in the process or coming close to breaking the illusion that he’s so painstakingly crafting here. I can see the temptation to really ham it up to sell these jokes, which are only ever given a few seconds to register before moving on to the next one, but what I love so much about this AMV is how effectively the editor (presumably the person who’s inserted into all of these scenes) only ever does just enough to step out of the would-be motionless presence of an anime background character. Via the simplest of gestures or actions during these often mundane moments, like standing in a crowd or waiting in line at a store check out, the concept of the video is executed with an unexpected subtlety that was the last thing I was expecting from it.

I love the many comedic moments of this AMV, but I found the overall experience to be poignant and oddly emotional in ways that I never saw coming–no, I’m not forgetting about the joke this whole thing closes on–and that I think it’s fair to say very few editors or filmmakers would work towards such ends with a concept like this. Yes, this could all be solely in my own subjective experience of the work, which could be very different form the editor’s intent or any other viewer’s response to watching it. But I do think that “I got fired…” operates in the same space that he was exploring in a previous AMV that also combined anime with his own live action footage, a video that was an unapologetic celebration of daydreaming and escapism, themes explored once again here against the backdrop of, let’s face it, a depressingly relatable fate that I’ve never had to endure but imagine would personally crush me if it ever came to pass. I mean everything I just said with all the gravity that entail but I want to make this much clear: this video is not the downer I’m probably making it sound like, there’s just an unexpectedly bittersweet undercurrent that runs through the whole thing, admittedly buoyed by the emotive song but but also by the scene selection and unexpectedly dry humor of the whole thing. It is hilarious and inspiring and one of the few times that I feel like really seen someone take risks and put themselves out there in a way that this hobby, by design, shields its creators from. This is not my favorite AMV of the year, but it’s one of the very few where there’s not a single element or a single frame that my usually-hyper critical, control freak brain wants to see changed in even the slightest of ways.

5. I Don’t Believe in Titles
editor: Pablo Shoe
anime: various
music: My Chemical Romance – “Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)”
VPR Warning: flickering images

Composed entirely of storyboards, animatics, and various anime production materials, “I Don’t Believe in Titles” feels like a rebuke of the modern world of AMVs in all its fixation on “better than reality” animation, hyper-stretched out framerates and pointlessly bloated resolutions. This is an AMV that, for much of its runtime, is literally comprised of pencil and ink drawings, to the point of even including a blink-you’ll-miss-it shot of an artist flipping through a sketchbook. Modern anime being what it is, most of this AMV’s shots are digital animation sequences in various incomplete stages of production, all likely originally gleamed from DVD or Blu-ray bonus features before making their way to Sakugabooru. This is an original idea that I’ve never seen attempted before, but I can’t emphasize enough how the effect of watching these scenes torn down to their unpainted bare essentials is so much more fun than the already intriguing concept ever even hints at. Maybe anyone could have tried this and I certainly would have taken notice, but we’re talking Pablo Shoe here. I’m not picking an Editor of the Year, but it’s impossible for me to come up with a short list that doesn’t have his name on it. This was his most unconventional work from last year, but it has the hallmarks of all of his “normal” videos all over it: terrific sync and flow and a real knack always coming through whenever I needed to watch something fun and uplifting.

4. Blood In The Wine
editor: Silent Hero Studios
anime: Princess Mononoke
music: AURORA – “Blood in the Wine”

I’ve had plenty of time to think about how my favorite AMVs from Silent Hero Studios succeed as well as they do or even win me over on a personal level and it’s embarrassing to say but once again I’ve got nothing for you. His editing can be extremely expressive and engaging and while I recognize the techniques he’s using to achieve these goals, I really can’t articulate just how he’s using them better or more effectively than anyone else who’s operating with the same toolbox. “Blood In The Wine” is a rather straightforward action/adventure AMV that presents scenes from its film in a fairly linear fashion. Again, you’ve seen these kind of videos many times: they’re usually enjoyable or moderately successful, as the movie and its gorgeous visuals either do the heavy lifting on their own or have a way of inspiring editors to step up their game to meet the material halfway. But I don’t know if I’ve ever seen an AMV that captures the grand scale or the spirit of Princess Mononoke quite as well as SHS does here.

Like the best of his work, it’s a masterclass in sync and pacing, stringing the viewer along from one big moment to the next. The Morricone-esque soundtrack adds a timeless feel to this that is a wonderful fit for these scenes. Analyzing this too closely actually kicks the legs out from under my critique: this AMV was a Secret Santa present for another editor who happened to be a fan of the singer of this song, so that’s pretty much the whole explanation behind this combination. I’m still sold on how perfectly the spaghetti western-tinged track lends itself to a mystical feudal Japan setting: maybe music is only ever as “fitting” as an editor can convince you it is, and since I’m left with the impression that this song is an absolutely perfect expression of this film, there’s only one person who’s truly responsible for making that happen. The lyric sync in this achieved with a sense of effortless subtlety, introducing scenes and shots that never feel too on the nose but are specific enough to preserve a constant sense of narrative and meaning in every visual. AMVs like this, which don’t introduce groundbreaking techniques or eye-popping effects, are easy to take for granted. “Blood In The Wine” doesn’t invent anything new, but it’s as ideal of a refinement on the past thirty years of AMVs as you’ll ever encounter.

3. Attack on (Some) Titans – Part 1
editor: Under The Box Productions (Davis 51)
anime: Dinosaur War Izenborg
music: The White Stripes – “Seven Nation Army”
VPR Warning: zooms, flashing images

I realize that editing with a series like this at any point in the last thirty or so years (at least) requires an editor to be in on the joke and aware of the visual absurdity of this material; even the most obsessive Godzilla fan or tokusatsu otaku has to know that Dinosaur War Izenborg, for all its charms that I will not deny, is not exactly a high water mark of the genre. So yeah, I’m absolutely certain that this editor knows how silly this all looks and is leaning into it by choice, because how could he not be? That’s probably where a video like this would begin and end for most AMV editors, but Davis 51 (AKA Under The Box Productions) goes the extra mile and creates… my favorite action AMV of the year.

There’s never a moment in “Attack on (Some) Titans” where I’m not smiling ear to ear. The internal sync in both the animated and live action shots is never less than superbly pulled off. I really can’t say if this video will connect with viewers who love traditional action AMVs without a trace of irony or comedy in them, but since I’m the opposite of that sort of fan, this hooked me from the start and I instantly had a feeling that I would be sitting here five months later trying to think of a way to talk about it without just pointing at all of its best parts (everything from 0:01 to 4:15, I guess) or flashing my Attack of the Super Monsters DVD just because I finally have a reason to. “Seven Nation Army” is now twenty years old and doesn’t need anyone to point out how great it is, but watching this AMV finally broke down the last of the walls inside me that kept me from realizing it’s, like, the best song of this whole worthless century so far. This video is a celebration of animation and filmmaking and easily the biggest and boldest work this editor has ever released. I should learn not to get too excited about AMVs that appear to be promising future sequels, but if “Attack on (Some) Titans” really does get a Part 2, I will be there for it at midnight!

2. Like The Rain
editor: janken
anime: NieA_7
music: Simon & Garfunkel – “Kathy’s Song”

There’s a real sadness at the core of NieA_7 that can be uncomfortably relatable and which inevitably swallows up the goofy humor that first draws viewers in and defines the first half of the series. I have always wanted to see an AMV that “gets” this. I tried to make my own but… well that just didn’t really work out. When I first watched “Like The Rain,” I realized I was watching the NieA_7 AMV that I’d always wanted to see or even make on my own, yet it encompassed so many emotions I’d never considered trying to wring out of such a project. It and also helped me realize why I connected with the series as much as I did years ago. The setting of the story, a desolate small town on the outskirts of the Tokyo suburbs, has never looked and felt as hopeless or isolated as it does here. I’ve watched this series three times over the last twenty years. Maybe I just needed some more distance from my initial impressions of it, or maybe something in my older age has given me a different perspective on the story. I really can’t say for sure. After watching this AMV, I feel like something about its essence is finally clear to me for the first time, which is funny because I’ve been staring it in the face all along.

Growing up in a rural small town that could barely be described as a suburb (though never by anyone from the major city near me or any of its “real suburbs”), I grew up feeling trapped and bored and inferior to everyone else who lived anywhere else but here. It is peculiar how those feelings can follow you into the big city when you’re finally stepping out there on your own for the first time, and how the journey to from your childhood home to that place that was supposed to fulfill you never delivers on its promises, but just asks more and more of you the longer you stick with it. The commute kills you; endless trains or traffic jams suck hours out of your day and where you can never fully be in the moment. The work drains you; tedium you could find anywhere, but a hollowness to the core of the work that you had to go out of your way to experience for yourself. You’re never dressed well enough and you still wouldn’t be “cool” even if you were, but you’re a broke country boy so even that’s nothing but a hypothetical what-if. There’s something there you’re longing for but it’s always going to be just out of reach because most of you is always going to be stuck here. Maybe some people can get out and leave, you even knew some of them back then, but you were never going to be one of them, were you? Of course, by all this “you” I’m still just talking about myself. But maybe you’ve been there. Or maybe you will someday.

Fortunately, I can’t relate to this series’ protagonist when it comes to losing a parent, but that feeling of being rudderless or no longer even knowing what you really want anymore is the sort of thing that hits close to home and is the sort of narrative that we don’t get anymore from anime and probably never will. Even when it was released in 2000, the setting of this anime felt antiquated and completely removed from the optimism of the new century or the excitement of being young and on the cusp of the rest of your life. It is a story about watching the world from the outside in and being too consumed with just scraping by to have anything left you could use to pierce that division except the people around you who you’re just stuck with, an absolutely quaint and unthinkable notion today as we simply take for granted that we can customize our social lives down to the most specified list of needs or wants that we can imagine. (Maybe the fifty-five year old song this AMV is much more fitting for this old world setting and its reflective, listless mood than any song I was imagining would pair with it “so perfectly.”) NieA_7 is about so much more than all of that, I don’t mean to reduce it to a late coming of age story (which we’re always up to our neck in, though never with the sorts of stories we truly need). Yes, it’s currently pulling a 6.86 on MyAnimeList.

“Like The Rain” is one of the simplest videos on this entire list. I can picture it being released twenty years ago on the heels of the series’ initial DVD release and still getting overlooked or even critiqued for not incorporating any of the series’ slapstick comedy or science fiction elements. It is not a complete NieA_7 AMV, but I think it’s one of the realest depictions of late adolescence I’ve ever seen, at least in terms of what I can relate to (whatever stock you’re willing to put in my one-sided perspective), but its honesty concerning such matters is so unglamorous that it’s just not going to excite or flatter most potential viewers. “Like The Rain” sticks to the absolute basics of AMV editing, clearly expressing a theme, emotion and syncing extremely effectively to a song that’s not laying out a rigid blueprint for when and where to cut clips. I love this video. Please settle into something cozy and watch it if you haven’t already. Drink it in attentively and with an uncluttered mind. Unlike a lot of AMVs on this list, it’s simply not going to fight its way through everything else that’s vying for your attention right now. Search high and low, you won’t find much else quite like it.

1. untitled4
editor: Abrogate Need
video: Possessioner
music: gavagai – “untilted4”

There are about ten discernible cuts in this nearly three minute-long edit, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Abrogate Need makes no discernible effort to hook viewers off the bat or indulge the cravings of any “normal” audience with this edit of a mid-90s Japanese computer game, visuals that are decidedly retro in all the best ways yet nothing quite like anything I’ve seen in any AMV old or new (or GMV, in this case). This is an incredibly slow video that’s alienating in its pacing and completely icy in its tone, mostly thanks to the distorted, lo-fi soundtrack that feels poignantly fitting to pair with a game that looks like it’s been lost to time. I keep harping that this video is a slow one, also conveniently omitting the fact that animation in these clips is kept to an absolute minimum even by 90s videogame cutscene standards, but it’s paced with the exact velocity that it needs to ease viewers into its cold and seemingly lonely world. As far as I can tell, this setting is not a ruinous cyberpunk hellscape by any stretch, yet something still feels just a little off about the future world that’s depicted here, and way these scenes unravel gives the viewer plenty of time and subtle cues to lose themself in the mystery of just what that might be. Gazing into these scenes and getting lost in the detail of them is a time-bending experience for me. There is movement in these scenes, actual animations, and the contrast between the stillness in every frame and the elements that do change and move completely transfixes me. It is like a series of paintings, not literally of course, but never before have I felt so prompted to just drink in every nook and cranny of every shot in a way that feels like it’s a series of works all painstakingly crafted to individually draw the viewer in. I’ve watched this video enough to anticipate every cut and every shot, but I’m continuously surprised by how abruptly it unfolds and eventually draws to a conclusion. This editor and his work have taken me to some strange places over the years, but maybe none as strange or unexpected as this. “untitled4” is not his most ambitious effort, and even acknowledging that many of his “experimental” videos have proven to be unexpectedly accessible to an audience bigger than you’d expect, I don’t really expect this AMV to join those ranks. What this video really means to Abrogate Need or will ever mean to anyone else, I have no idea. It just clicked with me and lead me to acknowledge possibilities in this medium I’d never considered (why aren’t more MMVs done in a low-key style like this?). You might feel the same. Or you might experience a reaction so contrary and so powerful that it will prompt you to discover new truths of your own! Find out for yourself.

A complete playlist of my top AMVs of 2022, including the top 20 listed on this blog along with a bonus 20 AMVs that I failed to write entries for, can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc3GuT5JoUhP4UD0iYnQN-rxrtG9FYPgK

If you want even more good AMVs from 2022, here are even more that I enjoyed (presented in alphabetical order): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc3GuT5JoUhMFaKicoj3xJrw8ks8SU_VU

Favorite AMVs of 2022 (#20-#11)

20. Congratulations! You Deserve a Prize
editor: Kanada Jin
anime: Neon Genesis Evangelion
music: Matt Maltese – “You Deserve an Oscar”

Kanada Jin’s “And I Run” is one of my favorite Neon Genesis Evangelion AMVs and one that’s always struck me as a work that marked a transition in the way that AMV editors approached the series over the years. Since then, I’ve been waiting to personally connect with another AMV by this editor in a way that would capture the same feeling. It’s not that Kanada Jin ever stopped making thoughtful and interesting videos, but there was just something difficult to pin down about “And I Run” that clicked with me just right. Rather than replicating the magic of that video, this editor has clearly been too busy… living life? Making what they want on their own terms? Busying themselves with pursuits unrelated to finding that needle in a haystack for me a second time? The nerve of some people…

“Congratulations! You Deserve a Prize” somehow captures that elusive feeling I was craving. This is a lighthearted Eva AMV but never silly or overtly sentimental. It’s full of weird contradictions, but it’s not the easy mode-juxtaposition of happy music/dark scenes (or vice versa). It ends on the same ostensibly happy scene that’s provided the conclusion for countless other Eva AMVs, which I suppose is a happy ending no matter how twisted the path was that got us to it, so in that respect I guess this is a feel-good video? It’s not an easy AMV for me to talk about, so yeah, you’re not getting anything here in the way of substance or a failed attempt at analysis. It’s just one of those one in a thousand-sort of AMVs that I just want to use this blog to say, “hey, look at this!” Maybe you’ll catch my drift.

19. Calm Snow
editor: VRSaskayzx
anime: Ex-Arm
music: I See Stars – “Calm Snow”
VPR Warning: strobing

If anyone from Crunchyroll/Sony is reading this, please take note: thanks to this AMV and this AMV alone, I am absolutely going to watch this anime (on your streaming platform as the loyal subscriber I already am, of course). Please tack that up on your bulletin board for the next time you have a discussion about letting fan edits run rampant on YouTube and whether or not this needs to be the time you finally put your foot down over it. I know Ex-Arm was your baby and you probably spent much of the last two years trying to promote it but unfortunately none of your efforts even came close to reaching me. I had never even heard of this beautiful series until now! I’ve watched this a dozen times (today) and I don’t care that I still can’t tell what VRSaskayzx really set out to make when they edited this. But even if I could ask them, I still wouldn’t want them to tell me. Magicians shouldn’t reveal their tricks!

I do enjoy a truly strange AMV where it’s difficult to tell what an editor’s intention is. I also suppose that making sure that your concept and intent are completely clear to the viewer is probably one of the lowest baselines of what constitutes competent AMV editing, so I realize how I’m trying to have it both ways here. But for all the AMVs you’ve seen that left you asking, “uh, what did I just watch?,” how many times did you really mean that? VRSaskayzx turns in a surprisingly decent and tightly edited action AMV here, but builds it around clips that are… let’s just say unexpected and leave it at that. Some of these scenes might be more (in)famous than I was previously aware of, having taken on a life of their own outside of the anime they appear in, so I imagine that the editor might be playing to a crowd here that knows exactly what they’re getting into. That premise sounds like the setup for a low effort YTP-style video, but that would be the complete opposite of what this video is. The complete absurdity or what’s onscreen aside, the internal and external syncing on those drum fills is a thing of absolute beauty.

18. Clair de Lune – Akage no Anne AMV
editor: takara
anime: Akage no Anne
music: Claude Debussy – “Clair de Lune”

I won’t pretend that “Clair de Lune” is a work that I have some long held passion for or deep understanding of. I’m just another one of those people who doesn’t listen to classical music so I will often go months without hearing this piece or even thinking about it at all. But I will say that every encounter I do have with it compels me to drop what I’m doing and give it my full attention and imagination. Sometimes I can do that. Sometimes I can’t. Fortunately, takara has forced me (and now you!) to sit down and give myself fully to it once again. I’m going out of my way to explain all this because I want to admit that this music is probably doing a lot of the work in winning me over to this AMV, generally putting me in a much more open state of mind than any other piece of “similar” music would in its place. It’s doubtful that takara will ever read this but just in case they do, I really hope they don’t take that statement the wrong way. When I edit an AMV, I genuinely hope that the viewer will enjoy the music on its own terms and that it works as an “in” to the complete experience that I’m trying to craft. I hope that takara feels the same way.

This AMV would not be included here if the visuals of this anime did not capture a very specific sense of time and place I’ve always associated with this music, or more specifically, if takara didn’t have such a good eye for scene selection that’s so effective in conveying the complex and often ambiguous emotions of this piece. I appreciate the resistance to using crossfades, the default transition applied along with any music that’s allegedly “soothing” or for any AMV that’s supposedly “relaxing,” in lieu of the hard cuts that appropriately sync to the nimble melody of this music. There’s an understated sadness to this music and to this narrative, and while I haven’t seen this anime I can still piece the fragments we’re shown together into a loose story that contains drama and pathos. These wistful end of a century/end of childhood themes are somehow transformed into something that’s transitory and hopeful. This is an extremely sentimental AMV, but not in a way that ever feels sugarcoated or forced. It captures a very specific mood I love; you will find one of your own in here somewhere.

17. Starlighted Stage
editor: Synæsthesia Productions
anime: Revue Starlight
music: Babymetal – “The One”

Completely cutting out the all of Revue Starlight‘s famously compelling moments of after school drama and planning committee scenes, Synæsthesia Productions somehow finds a way to scrape together the leftover clips of this anime into something special.

But seriously, in terms of its concept and what it’s trying to do with this material, “Starlighted Stage” isn’t too different from any of the other Revue Starlight AMVs you’ve already seen. But it’s so tightly focused and consistently engaging that it realizes the dream of so many other similar efforts that never quite captured the magic or grandiose ambition of the anime in its most fantastic scenes. This song is the perfect soundtrack for the spectacular theatrics of these scenes, and it provides ample opportunities for lightshow-style sync that the editor makes full use of. This AMV is relentlessly intense for almost all of its four and a half minutes, but every big moment feels like a natural and earned extension of what came before and the whole thing never wears out its welcome. While its conclusion arrives suddenly and somewhat arbitrarily, its climax still provides a satisfying punch. You can’t complain that someone is clocking out early when they’re working as hard as Syn is here.

16. Guesthouse
editor: Apus
anime: Violet Evergarden
music: Hiatus – “Arrival”

I love the slow fades and zooms that open this AMV. I love how the editor doesn’t just coast on a chill out track built around a sentimental monologue but actually strives to build meaningful connections between its lyrics and the scenes that they’re working with. I love how the second half of this AMV effectively expands on those themes without a single lyric telling us what to think or feel. Depending on your expectations for this kind of thing, “Guesthouse” might feel like it’s surely going to lose its focus or collapse under the weight of a heavy message that, maybe just maybe, AMVs aren’t the best medium to convey. But this is a quietly inspirational video that really isn’t trying to give you a lecture, but gradually leading you towards a state of peaceful contemplation. It’s a structured video that slowly builds, but never in service of a dramatic payoff or massive drop. The entire AMV is wonderful, but in its final minute it dials into a specific visual motif that’s one of my favorite things in the world. Even if it doesn’t impress you on a technical level, which was never the goal of the AMV in the first place, I’m confident you’ll find it a fitting and rewarding conclusion to one of the most low-key remixes of this anime that I’ve ever seen.

15. O Amor é a Pedra Filosofal
editor: Lobo Lualua
anime: Tokyo Babylon
music: Espelho Mágico – “Bola De Cristal”
VPR warning: flashing images

I’m often extremely distracted by orphan frames in an AMV, either frustrated that they ruined a perfectly good video, or worried that they’ll pop up in the next could-have-been-great effort from an editor who I must inform about their mistake before it happens again! Don’t panic, Lobo Lualua already knows. “there are some buggy frames as always…. my notebook is not very good for these editions ^^,” their video description reads, as run through Google Translate. Reflecting on the presence of these little split second blips–which you likely wouldn’t have seen if I hadn’t pointed them out, and probably still won’t notice–it’s surprising how little they really matter in this AMV, and how misguided my old convictions were that this editor’s path to “growth” was somehow attached to achieving a sterilized technical mastery of the editing process. In this AMV’s animation and live action shots, as well as its native visual effects and those applied to the original footage, there’s a rustic and almost analog feel to the clips. A few cracks in the seams between them almost feel natural.

Lobo Lualua’s videos often feel stuck out of time somewhere, and maybe that’s never been more true than with “O Amor é a Pedra Filosofal” (“Love is the Philosopher’s Stone,” just to use Google Translate again while I still have the tab open). This editor has been editing dated-looking footage (not a synonym for “poor quality” footage) with retro songs that the algorithm is still years from finding for you long before it was remotely cool. This is an impeccably stylish edit, set to one of the coolest and most obscure songs I’ve ever heard in an AMV, where the editor basks in the surreal glow of 90s OVA anime aesthetics at its most iconic. The retro appeal of this is incredibly potent, evoking a new wave vibe that’s commercially glamorous but still visually experimental. If this isn’t this editor’s most defining work to date, then I’ve really misunderstood what they’re all about.

14. The Courage to Change ( the things I can )
editor: UnluckyArtist
anime: various
music: Kate Bush – “Running Up That Hill”
VPR Warning: flashing images

Absolutely stunning 4:3 magic from the one editor I’d trust (with my life!) more than anyone to weave these anime into something greater than the sum of their parts. Of course UnluckyArtist would make a fantastic Magical Girl AMV. I mean, that’s kind of what he does. But despite a few choice clips from these series, this probably isn’t the transformation-themed mashup you were expecting. Or is it? There’s an uncertain feeling of metamorphosis throughout this AMV, the sense of stepping into the unknown in all its wonder and its dread, with the unspoken suggestion that everything in these characters’ lives might never be the same again. Is that a little too dramatic? Too specific of a reading for a video that’s such a mood piece? I don’t quite know how else to put it, but there’s something much more weighty and pensive here than the effervescent or goofy rush that these stories and their most dynamic and high quality animation tend to convey or that editors love to focus on with this material.

Look, I know even that isn’t a wholly original concept, but here’s one of my favorite editors editing with one of my favorite songs, so this was probably always going to touch my heart and bypass the measly thought process I’m stuck with that tries to rationalize how or why these things happen. I actually sat on this video for a few months before ever watching it. Why not pack something like this away for a rainy day and see if you can build up a little suspense before popping the cork on it? This time around I tried really hard to approach this editor’s work with a sense of skepticism or critical distance. I was not going to mindlessly fawn over another UnluckyArtist AMV, not like I usually do. Yeah right.

13. In The Air Tonight
editor: Node of Contention
anime: Neon Genesis Evangelion
music: Phil Collins – “In the Air Tonight”
VPR Warning: flashing images

The same criticisms I made of this editor’s other Evangelion AMV could apply to this one just as easily. There are some clips that feel like they’re here solely because they’re the closest thing to a literal interpretation of the song’s lyrics that the editor was able to find. But in every instance of this I ask myself, yeah, but does it look good? In terms of using clips with interesting composition that maintain the mood that Node of Contention is building here, yeah, I think almost always does! And while there are plenty of very static clips in this video, there’s something about this song that feels like an invitation to just pause and drink in these kinds of scenes and the intriguing atmospheres they suggest. I found some of the most satisfying internal sync in this video to be some of its most subtle:the distant electric guitars at 0:06, the red glow reflected off the windshield at 1:51 or the brief flash of the helicopter spotlight at 2:10. All the same, the editor understands the big moments in this song that require more appropriately eye-popping visuals. Some you’ll see coming a mile away. Others will catch you completely off guard. The inevitable video’s inevitable big release in its final two minutes isn’t the hugely cathartic experience you might be expecting, but it’s still a fulfilling third act that feels like a meaningful payoff to the simmering disquiet that lead up to it.

12. Somedays
editor: Pablo Shoe
anime: various
music: Scuare – “Somedays”

“Somedays” is a very introspective AMV in terms of its music and the content of the scenes it employs, but every shot of this video ripples with a degree of motion-per-frame that’s usually reserved for the most upbeat or intense action videos. There’s a wide variety of animation styles across the twenty-plus sources (an extremely rough estimate on my part) in this video (some from films, some from music videos, only a few constituting anything that resembles “traditional anime”), leading to a constantly changing visual aesthetic that ought to be the recipe for a completely disjointed AMV that never comes together in any meaningful way. But in this case, nothing could be further from the truth! The “anything goes” approach is confidently established in the opening bars of this delightfully mellow rap song, although Pablo Shoe knows exactly when to reign this in, creating a nice flow of scenes that strike that perfect balance between unpredictability and undeniable structure. I love how every shot in this AMV is intensely animated or flickering with minute bits of motion that makes even its most static-looking clips feel like a natural continuation from whatever extremely dynamic shot preceded it. This achieves a relaxed but always moving sort of energy that flows through the video, one that’s not too different from the groove that flows through this song might compels you to bob your head just a little bit, even if you don’t realize you’re doing it. Like listening to a friend spinning a long and winding story that you can tell they’re really into sharing, there’s a reassuring and genuine positivity to this video that’s hard to resist. You have no idea where it’s going and what the point of it all really is, but that doesn’t stop you from enjoying it to the point where you’d really be okay if it just kept on going forever.

11. Turning Numb
editor: Tigrin – Otaku Lounge Productions
video: Turning Red
music: Linkin Park – “Numb”

I have not seen this movie. It’s not that I didn’t want to, I all but had my shoes on and my snacks in my pocket when I found out that Turning Red wasn’t going even to be shown in theaters. Maybe now I could get it from the library (though it’s probably checked out), stream it (unless it’s still a Disney+ exclusive) or torrent it (this all day-process of downloading and re-converting still feels more work intensive than any other option, and those “we know what you’re doing” warning letters from AT&T leave me shook), but yeah this hasn’t happened yet and in the meantime I’m pretty sure this AMV has spoiled the movie for me,as it also will for you if you’re in the same boat. So who knows if I ever will watch it at all?

So not having seen Turning Red, I’m still pretty sure that the movie doesn’t look like this. I have no idea how Tigrin achieved this effect throughout this video. I’m definitely prepared for someone to tell me that it’s a “simple” color filter, one I shouldn’t be impressed by, and that I’m wrong for thinking this is actually an interesting look to blanket the whole work in. Go ahead, that’s fine. I’ll find my bliss in this ignorance. I’m actually working with color-changing effects for the first time in a video I’m working on right now and so far it looks like absolute garbage, so yes I’m a rookie but I can appreciate when someone else is able to use these tools in a way that feels natural and pleasant by comparison to the entry-level button-clicking and level dragging-results that I’m currently stuck on. Would this AMV be a completely different experience if all of the scenes used unedited footage? I’d be curious to see, but I’m willing to bet that thirteen seconds into the video, that iconic moment the guitar enters the song for the first time (yes, I said iconic, we’ll get back to that), would not hit as hard if that splash of red wasn’t hitting your eyes for the first time like it does here.

I still remember the first time that I watched this, being a little skeptical about the source combination, anticipating this video to win over viewers (but not me!) based on the popularity of the film and some ironic appeal of the chosen song. I had no idea I would find the action sync as satisfying as I did. The last thing I expected was any sort of meaningful connection between the song lyrics and the narrative I’d be watching onscreen, but knowing next to nothing about the movie going into this video, I found it surprisingly easy to follow its story and buy in to how the song informed the emotions of every scene, not just in its general angst and emotion but in its character-specific details. Does this AMV clearly explain why its main character suddenly transforms into a giant red panda? That might be a little too much to ask here, but also… I could honestly care less. Maybe it is handy to have a trailer-level understanding of the film going into AMV, although I bet nearly everyone who has ever watched this is not going into it completely blind; if there are avid AMV viewers out there who also have no idea what Turning Red is, I have no idea how to find them. The big moments in this song feel inseparably connected from the most dramatic moments onscreen. Every bit of this worked on me and made me a believer.

“Numb” is an S-tier 2000s song and Linkin Park were the best American band of the 2000s. I understand that that 00s kids were subjects to a massive social experiment they never asked to be a part of, one that essentially broke their still-developing brains, but shame on all of them for distancing themselves from this band’s music. You had one of the last massive, generation-uniting rock bands to ever exist, one that wrote songs with unforgettable riffs and melodies and who were, for whatever it’s worth, humble and down to earth dudes who weren’t douchebags or rapists. Now you literally speak about them and Limp Bizkit in the same breath. Chester Bennington poured his heart out in every song he wrote with an honesty we will never see again. His kindness and vulnerability was totally lost on you: you rolled your eyes, called him “emo” (like you ever even knew what that meant) and turned his songs into memes. Maybe mocking the life’s work of a chronically depressed person wasn’t a great idea? Just a thought!

Favorite AMVs of 2022 (introduction/special mentions)

I’ve been writing annual lists of my favorite AMVs since 2015. For most of 2022, I planned on taking a break from the process and regrouping next time around. I had a few personal reasons for that. But as you can see, we’re back again at the start of yet another countdown of my favorite AMVs of the year. There’s a few explanations I could give for this but the how and the why doesn’t matter much right now. This year’s countdown will be shorter than it’s been in quite a while. There’s a long story behind that but once again, I’ll spare you the details. If you want more AMVs than I’ve got listed here, I’ll set you up with a playlist or two at the end of all this.

So here we go again: this is a list of my favorite AMVs from 2022. One minor difference in this year’s list is I’m no longer building this list around a December 1st deadline. I always knew there was a good chance I was going to miss out on videos that people released in the last few weeks of the year, and it’s not exactly fair to the AMVs released in December that I always have to form a very quick opinion about for this January writing exercise, especially compared to other AMVs that I’ve watched several times over the span of a few months’ time. For example, last year’s list included videos released from December 1, 2020 to December 1, 2021 (with the exception of one AMV that landed on my special mentions list, somehow I always find a way to defy my own self-imposed rules) We’re not doing that this year or at any point going forward. So this year’s list does include AMVs released in December of 2022. Oh, it also includes AMVs from December of 2021, because those were frozen out of the list from last year. So this is actually a list of my favorite AMVs of the past 13 months: December 1, 2021 to December 31, 2022.

Because this list is much shorter than it usually is, many of you who have seen your videos appear on it in the past or were looking forward to seeing where they might appear on it this year might be disappointed not to find them anywhere on here at all. This does not mean I didn’t enjoy your AMVs from this past year. This doesn’t mean I don’t think you’re a good editor. This doesn’t mean that I’m not looking forward to what you’ll be sharing the future. I hope this is still fun for everyone to read. Please still be friends with me!

I am also trying just a little bit harder this year to flag videos that contain photosensitive content that might be triggering not just to viewers with epilepsy, but other sensory sensitivities that don’t get quite as much attention. I realize these warnings are still not up to the full standards of the Vidding Sensitivity Relay (VPR) guidelines, but we’re a little closer than we were last year and I think I deserve a pat on that back for that!

Most readers of this blog are already aware that katranat and crackthesky have published their own lists of their favorite AMVs of the past year. But if you’re new here or didn’t get the memo, please check both of those out!

As usual, I’m beginning this list with a rundown of a few videos that did not make my final list. These videos never had a chance! But not because I don’t love them. They’re just not videos I would put on that list, either because they’re not exactly AMVs, or they certainly are but aren’t ones I can think about in the same way as all the ones that I maddeningly tried to rank (which you will see posted in the next two days). Even here, they’re just alphabetical by title. These are experiments, trailers, live action edits, other ineligible works, or simply something else I wanted to share. My actual top 20 countdown will begin tomorrow. But enjoy these in the meantime!

Canadian Revenue Agency Hold Music
editor: Zane Kordic
anime: The Wind Rises
music: unknown

About a year ago I placed a call to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois and spent about forty minutes on hold listening to a 30 second loop of uplifting Millennial stomp/clap music punctuated by prerecorded pleas to stay on the line. Endure this for long enough and your mind will drift places you never expected: eventually I found myself imagining what it might be like to edit an AMV with such music. I’m willing to bet that this editor had a similar experience, but whatever his inspiration, God bless him for following through on it and actually bringing it to life. Presenting the visuals in a phone-friendly vertical aspect ratio and completely obliterating the video resolution to reflect the horribly compressed audio of this recording takes what would be a goofy but worthy experiment on its own to some fascinating conceptual ends. Oh, by the way, the editing and scene selection of this piece is actually some of the best work I’ve ever seen done with this film in an AMV. If you squint hard enough, this might be one of the most majestic Ghibli AMVs you’ve ever seen.

Clint vs Anime!
editor: Farthest Ledge AMVs
anime/video: Girls und Panzer, Kelly’s Heroes
audio: Girls und Panzer, Kelly’s Heroes

I’ve seen a few videos like this in the course of my searching and it leaves me wondering if this is less of one editor’s inspired idea and more of a response to yet another meme that just flew over my head. Digging into that for answers will eventually lead you into the world of anime fans who are also World War II afficionados, German military otakus, the “I’m not a Nazi, I just love their fashion!”-people, and eventually… well, you can guess the rest. So no thanks, maybe I’m better off not knowing. That being said, this video and this editor have nothing to do with that world, and “Clint vs Anime!” is one of the best edited combinations of animation and live action that I’ve ever seen in a fan edit, proving that you absolutely can meld two such sources together into a single piece without a frame of the traditional character masking that you’d assume would be the first requirement to doing so. This is raw editing at its finest.

Drive
editor: Pablo Shoe
video: Drive
music: FynestLyk – “Noir Et Blanc Vie”

Perhaps no movie of the 2010s has been as influential on art and culture and our collective sense of cool as 2011’s Drive, so maybe it’s no surprise that it’s always punched above its weight in terms of how many fan edits have been made with it in the context of its status as a cult film (at least compared with the legions of videos devoted to Marvel or Star Wars). Most editors who’ve worked with the film have made the most out of either its dynamic action sequences or the moody, atmospheric and introverted tone that pervades most of its quieter scenes (in other words, the other 95% of the film that happens in between car chases). This is the first time I’ve seen an editor place their focus so squarely on its most relaxing scenes, or at least attempt to recontextualize the film in such warmly emotional terms. The dialog sprinkled throughout the video is a friendly reminder that the film is not just a vibe, but a story about people, and Pablo Shoe has a knack for using these samples sparsely and making sure that they fit perfectly and unobtrusively over the luscious laid-back funk of this [checks notes] royalty free instrumental music as heard on Nightly Juicy Memes. Ah, whatever. I’m watching this in the sick death of Midwestern winter and somehow I swear I can feel the LA sun on the back of my neck.

Flood
editor: Node of Contention
anime: Neon Genesis Evangelion
music: Jars of Clay – “Flood”

Putting this AMV on this list might come across as a back-handed compliment, seeing how I’m trying to focus on some unusual or AMV-tangential works before getting into my “real” list of favorite AMVs of the year, and this video is as straightforward of an AMV as you’ll ever get. My best explanation for this is that I’d never before had so much trouble whittling down my list of favorite videos of the year into a mere top 20 (note: at the time of writing this, I was dead set on making a top 50 list), knew this one simply wasn’t going to make the cut, but couldn’t bring myself to miss a chance to single it out for attention. Now that I’ve finally dragged it out here on stage with me, it’s difficult to ignore its faults or not apologize for them in advance. Yes, this is probably some of the most literal lyric sync you’ll ever see in your life. Yet I’m still sort of in awe that Node of Contention was able to find a fitting visual embodiment for nearly every line in this song. The sum total of this effort sometimes feels like a joke that’s never fully spelled-out. If you think it’s totally awesome or funny or just ridiculous, you’re probably right. I’m also ambivalent about the static feel of so many of these scenes. While I’m absolutely tired of videos where editors apply the Ken Burns zoom to every single clip, boy oh boy, there are certain shots in this video that are just screaming for… something to preserve the momentum of the song or break the illusion that the screen has suddenly frozen.

That’s a lot shit to talk about a video that I supposedly love so let’s fix that. Sure, this is absolutely a video where factors extrinsic to the editing itself are initially pulling me in: my love of Evangelion for sure, but definitely my nostalgia for and prevailing fondness and respect for this song. But I wouldn’t be repping this if it didn’t absolutely succeed on its own terms. This is a top-tier Evangelion edit that offers a solid and effective blend of action scenes and character focus. And while it’s never deeply explored in terms of a theme, the music and NoC’s simple but effective editing drapes the song with spiritual overtones that are there if you’re looking for them (of course, if you can’t find them then consult the AMV’s opening eight seconds, I guess). If my personal persuasions or history weren’t a factor in getting me on board with this, I’m confident that it would still grab my attention through its unpretentious sincerity alone. Also, the last ten seconds of this video might be the one of the best endings of any AMV I watched all year. Competition is fierce for that title but this AMV is absolutely in the mix for it. I have this creeping hunch that Node of Contention is going to be one of those AMV editors who appears out of nowhere and disappears just as suddenly. I hope putting that in writing helps ensure that they stick around for a long time to come.

frUitsbaSket
editor: Gina Nelson
anime: Fruits Basket
audio: Us trailer

Two statements I hold in the same time in my mind: (1) I love trailer AMVs. (2) Most are meaningless mashups of two sources that are being mixed together simply because they’re currently popular titles.

Not really a unique take since it’s an opinion that could just as easily be lobbed at the whole world of AMVs, if one felt so inclined, but if it’s a redundant statement then hopefully it’s a redundant statement that also helps reveal something about my feelings at work here. I like this video because it has a concept and it has layers. It’s a hyper-specific idea that would only work with these sources, not a general strategy that could be applied to any AMV made with a similar tone or in a similar genre, and the execution of said idea is delivered with near-perfect clarity. I guess it all sort of depends on knowing/remembering this movie (which I still haven’t seen) or its trailer (both from the sort-of-recent-but-also-distant past of four whole years years ago: a world really that may have been a very different place from “the one we’re living in now”!) and/or being a Fruits Basket fan, but you don’t need to really have any of that going in for these gags to still land with a perfect timing and an eye for ideal scene selection that might not spell out the concept right away but will still lead you there before the video is finished.

Kumoricon 2022 Contest Opener
editor: MinetChan, various
anime: various
music: Lizzo – “About Damn Time”

The last AMV contest I watched in person was in 2019. Walking out of the screening room after the announcement of the winners, the last thing on my mind was the possibility that it would be the last such contest that I’d ever see in person. Nearly four years later, for a combination of reasons both obvious and in need of a long-winded explanation that I’m not going to bother with here, I’m realizing there’s a solid non-zero chance that’s going to turn out to be the case! I haven’t participated in too many of these over the years and certainly never been “involved” in any of them, but the handful of times I’ve ever attended one have always felt like rare escapes from the real world into hyper-rare, nearly-personalized realms of obsession that I simply never encounter outside of the world behind my eyelids. So maybe it goes without saying that the AMV sub-genre of “contest intro videos” is one that I get an unusually heavy boost of vicarious enjoyment from watching.

It’s hard to evaluate or simply watch this one as a “normal” AMV, not with the thirty seconds of bits from various AMVs spliced into its midsection, but the whole video works as a fun and uplifting work that succeeds at its mission: beckoning you to relax and enjoy yourself, or if you feel like it, get hyped about the contest that’s about to begin (or not: by the time you watch this, the AMV has long since fulfilled its original purpose). MinetChan gets the job done here not with the usual all-encompassing rundown of every big and/or recent hit anime that’s been on everyone’s watchlist over the past year, but with a narrow selection of sources that yields a more focused aesthetic. There’s a lot on screen here that I don’t recognize one bit, but this lack of familiarity was no barrier to MinetChan and her mission: leaving the viewer feeling welcomed, included and a just a little more relaxed and at ease than they were just two minutes before.

Pick 199
editor: Paul Geromini
anime: Eyeshield 21
audio: The Brady 6, Tom vs Time, various NFL broadcasts

Of course an anime based on the most popular sport in the USA would have zero cultural presence here and a fanbase so small that I’ve still never come across anyone who watches it or reads it. Although I guess that last part isn’t really true any longer thanks to this video from Paul Geromini, an editor I’d never heard of before 2022 but will now be dropping everything I’m doing the second he releases his next AMV or whatever other “anime edit” he decides to make. This video, presumably a composite of a couple of Tom Brady documentaries or career retrospectives, this is less of an AMV than an exercise in lip syncing and scene selection. But those two elements are mastered so effectively that they carry this video and its surrogate protagonist in ridiculously convincing fashion. This editor’s approach to juxtaposing live action footage with anime scenes is both hilarious and convincing in the precise way that it needs to be. I love it when editors apply their skills to weird ideas like this that are so niche that most AMV fans probably don’t even know what to make of it, as if any of them have even laid eyes on it in the first place: as of the morning before I post this entry, this video has reaped a whole 25 views in the four months it’s been online. The system is completely broken, I tell you!

Save Me
editor: TRUTH CRAB
video: Jeu
music: Empress Of – “Save Me”
VPR Warning: motion, color contrast

With “only” ten or so videos released over the past year, TRUTH CRAB’s most recent year of editing was by far his least prolific since he started uploading AMVs to YouTube in 2019. Whether this and his silence over the past eight months represents the end of his channel and/or his AMV editing career, or turns out to just be a much-earned hiatus, it’s hard to deny that his interest in editing with anything resembling traditional anime seems to have been waning as of late. Most of the edits he released in 2022 were made from experimental animated shorts existing well outside of the bounds of anime or anything that even most “animation fans” watch for pleasure or enjoyment. But describing any of these anime animated music videos as difficult or unenjoyable would be as far off the mark as one could ever get.

“Save Me” is a relatively straightforward and minimal edit of a 2006 Swiss-made animated short titled “Jeu,” which is available on YouTube and worth watching for anyone craving something out of the ordinary or unexpected. TRUTH CRAB doesn’t introduce any cuts that break the linearity of the original work, but plays with framerate, adds occasional still frames or pauses and applies other tricks that effectively sync the original film to this song. These tricks are practically invisible without attempting to sync the original “Jeu” in a separate browser window just to see how this video is even working. The sync in this video is some of the best you will ever see and one of TRUTH CRAB’s most interesting works. Is it a video where he once again steps back to passively allow scenes to play out without any interruption, except when truly necessary? Or is this the most involved he’s ever been paying meticulous attention to a work on a frame by frame basis? I can’t imagine any AMV editor or animation fan who wouldn’t be captivated by these scenes, but how many would really have the vision to bring something like this video to life and pull it off so perfectly?

Super Loid Bros – (TODD ROGERS ANYA% SPEEDRUN DEATHLESS!?!?!!?!?!)
editor: SpuddStaaa
anime: SPY x FAMILY
audio: Super Mario Brothers (?)

I really ought to put in the research to understand the complete context of what I’m watching here, but sometimes I just don’t want to do that and I justify it by claiming that it would ruin the utter strangeness of a video like this. There might be something to that, but I get the feeling that this video was made for people who know all about this man and his hilarious infamy. This video is listed as the “AWA Thunderdome 2022 Winner” in its video description and… is it even possible to create a video like this in such a short time and under those conditions? Did that really happen? Or is this claim as far fetched as Todd Rodgers’ world records? If there are layers to this video that extend out into our 3D world, well then, this is a concept that simply hasn’t gotten its due. If that turns out to be the craziest and least-accurate interpretation of an AMV you’ve ever heard, then you can at least still enjoy this as one of the most impressively-synced edits of the year. The floating head might be a copyright-dodging device, but I find it so absurd that it’s just the perfect icing on the cake.

Thsnks
editor: Kirbygal
anime: Mob Psycho 100
music: lubalin – “is this available (attorney general) – internet drama part 1”

I have opinions about TikTok but I won’t be sharing them here. I will say that I’m usually a little dismayed when I come across a strange or especially funny AMV, only to find out that it’s a straightforward interpretation of a TikTok meme and not some off the wall idea that the editor brought to life on their own. Is there really a “good” reason to feel that way? Maybe, maybe not. I’m not even consistent with which editors or which videos impress or disappoint according to this arbitrary system of judgement. None of it’s fair at all and I’m beginning to suspect that it’s not the platform that’s inducing a mass psychosis onto society but my own entrenched attitudes that are the problem here. I did say I wasn’t going to be sharing my opinions on TikTok here, didn’t I?

For whatever reason, “Thsnks” passes the insane test my brain has set up for these kind of videos, and in the process, became one of those earworms and mental obsessions that I had to force myself to avoid for several months earlier this year just to get it out of my head. I think my gold standard for how well a comedy video truly succeeds is when an AMV editor’s take on it makes me laugh far harder or longer than the original that it’s based on. Because of the the strange obsession with originality and authenticity that I cling to more often than not, this is a tough hurdle to clear! I’ve watched the original TikTok this video is based on, I think it’s an original and funny piece of content creative work and I know there’s no Kirbygal video here on this list without its existence, but I know which one I have laughed harder at and which one has kept me up at night playing in my head while I struggle to fall asleep. There’s a real risk this will happen to you so if you haven’t already watched the embedded video above, maybe ask yourself if that’s worth it this week. I know warnings like that do more to tempt someone to watch than caution them to stay away, so I’ll just apologize now if I’ve lead you astray.