Welcome to the latest edition of my favorite AMVs of the year. Over the next five (5) days I will be counting down my favorite AMVs from 2023. If you want more showing and less telling about how this goes, take a look at some of my past years’ lists to see how this has shaken out over the years. Or just keep reading and stick around for the next few days as we’re about to jump into yet another one.

This is not a list of videos that I consider to objectively be “the best.” Thank goodness it isn’t because I have no idea where I’d even start with such a preposterous assignment. This is just a rundown of videos that I like, for a variety of reasons and motivations that I may or may not do an effective job of explaining. You’ll find a wide variety of different kinds of AMVs on this list, a subjective statement that I doubt you’ll strongly disagree with, but maybe it still won’t be diverse enough for everybody reading. There’s a huge part of modern AMV culture that’s absolutely not accounted for in the days to come. In other words, there’s not going to be much of anything here that’s going to make it to the top of Reddit’s crowdsourced consensus or YouTube’s search results for those three letters all typed in a row like that. My tastes are probably a little… atypical, I guess. But if you’re here reading this, then I guess yours probably are as well.

This is the ninth edition of this list, meaning that at this time next year (2025, already?), I’ll be posting my TENTH AMV countdown list. That feels like a good occasion to finally stop doing this, except that it won’t actually mark the tenth anniversary of me making these lists, which will happen another year after that and I know will be calling out to me as the real logical point to put an end to these long blog posts once and for all. Yes, I’m looking to eventually wind this project down, even though it is a ritual I look forward to every year. Again, however, it is always a difficult project to complete on time, regardless of how much planning I try to put into it in advance. Apologies if you’ve already read some variation on this sort of whining before. Blogging is hard and relatively unrewarding work, made no easier by the once-user friendly but now impossible to parse WordPress interface, which no longer supports the most basic text formatting functions that it once did when this blog began. Believe me, I would love to reformat this blog or these entries into an easier to read format, or at least be able to adjust font size, but I’m afraid this is what we’re stuck with. If you’re looking for a more fun or easier to read version of this sort of thing, please visit my fellow bloggers CrackTheSky and Katranat as they embark on their own year-end countdowns of their favorite AMVs of 2023.

Checking the account I use on YouTube for all of my AMV needs, I’m currently subscribed to 571 different channels. I’ve gone out of my way to avoid subscribing to non-AMV channels with that account, so I’m estimating that I’m subscribed to nearly 500 different editors or AMV channels. Sure, many of those are not currently active, but that still leaves me with so many new videos in my feed that I can barely keep up with them. And keep up with them I do, but it’s left me with little time to explore elsewhere for new editors that might be making exciting or challenging new works. So while I’ve gone out of my way to try to cast as wide a net as I can here, I feel that in the process of doing so, I’ve siloed myself off from the rest of the world simply by surrounding myself with editors who I’m always going to follow and watch. In the process of compiling this list, it slowly became clear that this year’s was going to be dominated by established editors who I’d already included on it in years’ past, with a few special appearances from, uh… established editors who are somehow appearing on this list for the first time. Have I settled into a comfort zone? Will I ever pry myself out of it? Only time will tell.

There are many AMVs and other edits coming out of this hobby over the past year that I really enjoyed that won’t be appearing on the Top 50 list. That’s what the rest of this entry is for. Some of these edits are not AMVs. Others are but just didn’t seem appropriate for placing in my ranked list. There were several other live action videos or anime “edits” that I wanted to place here, and this bonus list might have been twice as long if I’d given myself enough time to make it so. These are in alphabetical order by title. That’s really all there is to the order I arranged them in.

The real top 50 list will begin after this entry, with ten AMVs posted daily (at 6:00 pm CST) until the whole thing is done. There will probably be a playlist of everything at the end if you just want to bask in the videos without any of my blabbering to distract you. Bon appétit!

AMV POTS be like
editor: TheLazyDaze
anime: Ascendence of a Bookworm
music: mxmtoon – “Dizzy”

The shortest video anywhere on this list might also be the most personal AMV I include in this whole rundown. Any attempt to explain this would take longer than all 27 seconds of it, so just watch it and read the editor’s description for further clarification. This is sweet, sad, kind of funny–look, if the editor didn’t want us to smile then I don’t think she would have made this video this cute–and a masterclass in how to smuggle sincere, autobiographical editing into the sort of bite-sized short video that’s usually reserved for memes and parodies. This is oozing with adorable charm but I’ve got a feeling these scenes hit closer to home for the editor than almost anyone would ever understand or want to understand from experience.

Beautiful View
editor: purple bell
anime: Windaria
music: Hannah Georgas – “Beautiful View”

I’ve seen a handful of Windaria AMVs over the years but never watched the anime itself, so I don’t know what’s actually happening in any of these scenes. All I see is an idyllic seaside utopia, a simple community filled with happy people, cute girls–somehow this sounds less weird than what was in the first draft of this post: “charming young women”–and not a single car in sight, a technologically advanced society that’s still living in harmony with nature (but with personal speedboats, you gotta have speedboats). This picturesque setting feels like a perfect match for a song this sparse and shimmering, purely acoustic in its production save for synthesized textures that ripple like raindrops smacking the surface of a still pond. Everything about this place looks and feels so perfect. It’s a three and a half-minute glimpse into a fantasy world grounded just enough in the possible that longing to escape to it feels justifiably reasonable and not the least bit delusional. The first time I watched it I was completely enraptured. This was a world I wanted to live in. This held true on a second and third viewing. Was this one of my favorite videos of the year?

Some time after this honeymoon I happened to glance down at the viewer comments and suddenly realized that my entire impression of what was happening in this AMV was purely based on my own desires and preconceived notions and not the plain truth that was in front of my eyes and being spelled out in no uncertain terms in the song’s lyrics. What I’d assumed was a glimpse of an ideal society and a gallery of completely contented characters was suddenly revealed as nothing more than an illusion, perhaps one of my own making. What appeared to be one character’s solitary walk to the “beautiful view” of a seaside cliff was… perhaps much more grim than my brain was capable of recognizing. Suddenly, the sunny experience I’d so easily gotten out of watching this AMV was impossible to recapture. I’d felt nothing but fondness and empathy for the characters on screen, but somehow I was still blind to the reality of their situation, or at least to one of them. And now it’s too late and I have no one to blame but myself! If I’m this out of touch with a plain and simple AMV, then how much more useless might I be when it comes to understanding any of the complicated, protectively deceptive real people in my own life?

I assure you that I’m not as torn up about this as I might sound here, but my experience with “Beautiful View” has left me unexpectedly conflicted and likely far more reflective than I’ve ever felt in the process of engaging with an AMV. Now what do I do with this video? Do I “like” it as much as I used to? I don’t think I do! But I’m also sort of in awe of how it pulled a trick on me that no other video ever has. Or maybe that’s not as impressive as it sounds because, keep in mind (or if you’re new around here, take note), I’m a huge dumbass! Who knows what else I missed when I thought I was paying attention?

Because We Care
editor: F-Zero TV
video: Kyuukyuu Sentai GoGoFive
music: Faith No More – “We Care a Lot”

It doesn’t get any more Japanese than a source like this, but without a lick of animation in this video, I can’t and won’t try to place “Because We Care” anywhere in the list of my favorite AMVs of the year. Kind of a shame because this might be my favorite live action edit of the year. I don’t know if F-Zero TV (somehow both a super unique and completely unsearchable channel name) really had to grind these sources into anything remotely compatible or if the two fell in love at first sight, but I’ll be darned if this footage doesn’t feel like the perfect visual expression of this song. The dramatic poses and exaggerated gesticulations of these masked heroes turn out to be way more effective than you’d ever expect at selling the illusion that the characters might as well be singing the entire song: the editor gets this across as well as any of the best AMVs attempting actual lip sync. Yes, at its core this song is so biting and cynical that it’s toxic to any notion of genuine kindness or altruism, and the extremely sardonic tone of this video does not downplay that in the slightest. Yet the video works in twisted sort of way that brings it all the way back around to a post-ironic celebration of selfless heroism and the timeless power of teamwork. Also, the action editing is fantastic.

Betamax Track 43
editor: Honou Productions
anime: Cardcaptor Sakura
music: Whitney Houston – “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)”

Originally created as a segment for an MEP that was never completed, Honou Productions completed this short AMV back in 2005. Digging back through that announcement thread, we see that the editor claimed the track, and possibly even started work on editing it, a whole four months before YouTube was even “born.” Rediscovering the file nearly 18 years later on an old hard drive, it finally sees the light of day as a standalone AMV, an enticingly sweet time capsule of a bygone age. Obviously, this is a 480p video, but it looks a lot nicer than half of the “new” AMVs I was downloading when I joined the Org back in 2009. Anyone could make a video with these sources today, sure, but I really don’t think it would turn out like this. The ineffable “this” I’m referring to? Um… something to do with a collective sense of innocence that this video embodies. If you don’t understand what that is or realize it’s been taken from us, then why does literally every new AMV now look like this? Look, I don’t really have anything to say about “Betamax Track 43.” I just get weird kicks out of lost media being rediscovered, even when it’s a small scale affair like this.

Game Grumps Animated – Subway
editor: SpuddStaaa
anime: Nichijou
audio: Game Grumps

I have almost no idea who the “Game Grumps” are, but this cracks me up every time I watch it. I have almost nothing else to say about this except I don’t often include this kind of thing here, which I hope means that I’m really hard to impress and not just a cranky idiot who hates to laugh. This isn’t the only hilarious video that SpuddStaaa made last year–including the ridiculous and briefly poignant “Lil T-Anya”–and going into 2024, I think it’s safe to bet that it won’t turn out to be the last.

i’m not here, this isn’t happening
editor: Abrogate Need
video: One Million Kingdoms
music: Radiohead – “How to Disappear Completely”

This is a tough one.

I’ve never seen an AMV or any fan-edited video that “gets” the sense of loneliness and isolation present in this song as well as this. The melancholy in this video runs deep, channeling a particular flavor of teenage ennui that, despite being a pretty common theme in AMVs as a whole, is almost never as completely realized as it is here. I love AMVs where characters just walk around. If this reads like sarcasm then you’re probably better off just scrolling down to the next video. I’m not here to try to convert you and I doubt I could even if I wanted to. This is fine.

Watching the original source video before or after Abrogate Need’s edit, it might appear that he hasn’t done anything at all to it besides swapping out the audio for a Radiohead song. A closer look reveals this is not the case at all, as a handful of strategically-placed cuts help sync the visuals to different movements in the music, not to mention also cutting a lot of lip flap out of the finished work. In terms of editing finesse, there’s not much to talk about when it comes to technique, but this is one of those cases where an extremely simple approach can still yield profoundly moving results. For such a slow-paced work, there is a surprising amount of sync in this video. Some may be accidental or unintended, but I don’t know if I’ve seen an AMV that’s maintained such an effortless illusion of it, for so long, with so little.

Besides the visual sync, I’m also not certain if the ever-flickering backgrounds, subtle color banding around edges, scanline-like artifacts or other visual “flaws” are deliberate choices made by the editor, the product of the dirty business of downloading and converting footage into new formats, or some combination of the two. Perhaps a “cleaner” version of this AMV better resembling its original source was possible. I don’t know if it would have looked or felt as interesting as what’s here. For years I have been fascinated with how AMVs can embrace the glitches and byproducts of the editing process that editors once struggled in vain to completely eliminate from their work, most of which now feel like improbably awful relics of some distant age that, for those in the hobby who are who are old enough to even remember these things at all, are almost totally associated with the era that these two sources of this video were released in (2000 and 2001, or the early 00s, broadly speaking).

My reluctance to include this on my “real” list has less to do with the lack of big changes to the source material (this video, containing no cuts at all to its original footage, is one of my favorite AMVs ever) or its Western origins (despite literally being made with Japanese animation), as I’ll never hesitate to include edits of non-Japanese animation on here if I ever feel the urge. Maybe I’m conflicted because the original source material is, in many of the same ways that AMVs are, a transformative work using preexisting audio and animation. Or perhaps because I find meaning in the act of recontextualizing/repurposing Japanese anime or Western commercial animation, because there’s something subversive about the act of using these commercial products in ways their owners never intended them to be used. No, I don’t think it’s a meaningful political statement, nor do I think it’s an act of “culture jamming,” as they used to call it. I don’t have any idea what it really means anymore, but I find that applying the treatment to avant garde animation somehow changes the equation in my mind, deep behind the scenes where I can’t reach the wires or see how they’re all connected. This isn’t me saying that I don’t think people ought to edit with such sources. I want to watch and enjoy them! I just don’t want to weight them on a scale that was never built for them in the first place.

The Man
editor: Video Baths
video: Rocky (various)
music: The Killers – “The Man”

Editing with older films like these, classics they might be, will rarely win you views or clout. Outside of the highly unlikely scenario of it falling into the lap of some old source superfan–the kind of viewer who, let’s face it, isn’t watching this kind of stuff to begin with–your work is simply not going to be received with the enthusiasm of an audience still buzzing on some hot new show or meme-able movie. Without this built-in excitement or wave of hype to coast on, your fan edit is simply… there. And if you if you don’t genuinely love the material you’re editing with, you won’t be able to hide it for long.

Does Video Baths truly love Rocky? Does Video Baths love Apollo Creed? “The Man” ends with a title card that suggests it was made for a fellow live action editor on YouTube, a gift or an exchange and possibly not the labor of love that I’m going out of my way to ensure you that it absolutely must be. Nevertheless, I’m convinced that VB gets these films and this song, because this video feels like a match made in heaven. There’s a silly swagger to this that’s a welcome relief from the “literally me”-themed gloomy seriousness that so many editors build their brands upon. “The Man” revels in the goofiness that these movies slowly slipped into over the years, but that’s not a bad thing!

(PRE VO ALPHA) Many Faces, One Story: The Battle of Port Arthur
editor: Paul Geromini
anime: Golden Kamuy
audio: Ensemble Nipponia – “Edo Lullaby”

This is not the “official” version of this AMV, a video that I first viewed as part of 2023’s RICE contest and which is also available to watch on the editor’s YouTube channel. The two versions are extremely similar, but I have not conducted a shot by shot comparison beyond the first minute or so, so I can’t definitively say how they might differ beyond changes in the timing and order of certain clips (the editor goes into a more detailed description of the process in this blog entry). The biggest difference between the two is the “official” version containing dialogue as read by a professional, excerpts of a firsthand account of a battle between Japanese and Russian forces in 1904, while the version I’m sharing here was likely uploaded as a rough draft or proof of concept, in which the editor himself reads the lines. In the description for this version, the editor apologies for the “misread lines and mispronunciations.” He’s not wrong about this. But there’s something really compelling in this imperfect version of the AMV, something I connected with on a surprisingly deep level in a way I never quite did with the final version. I wouldn’t go so far as to call the “PRE VO ALPHA” version to be the better video of the two. In terms of creating an AMV that attempts to use the medium as a way to craft an authentic historical reenactment of the battle, this version does not and cannot realize such lofty goals. But it got under my skin and communicated something real, nonetheless. 

The editor’s somewhat dry reading of this text does not realistically convey the horror of a man who witnessed such violence firsthand (nor does he ever attempt to do this, just for the record). But in a counterintuitive fashion, listening to someone speaking my own language, unmistakably recorded in the 21st century, urges me to identify with the speaker in ways that make these events of the now-distant past feel… not so distant after all. I doubt there’s any version of me that would rise to the rank of a lieutenant in the army like the narrator of this story, but there’s no good reason that I shouldn’t have been born in a time and place where fate would find me pulled into a battle like this and mostly likely meeting the wrong end of a bullet or bayonet. Millions of men have gone out like this. Tens of millions? More? They died awful deaths and never got to tell their stories. Meanwhile, I get to live most of my life in an era of relative peace… and complain to strangers on Discord about how much of a pain it is to set up a banking app on my phone. The fact that I’m using this as an opportunity to actually say that no one should live as a slave or die in a plague or get their brains blown out on a mountainside (or if anyone had to, maybe it ought to have been me instead?), like that’s some grand revelation, is probably proof that I need to get outside a little bit more this year.

Taking a Break From Editing
editor: Pablo Shoe
video: various
music: Sarah Bareilles – “What’s Inside”

Originally titled “I’ve Decided This Is My Last Video,” I knew from the first time I watched this one that I’d have to include it on this list, not because I wanted to pay tribute to the editor or mourn his retirement, but just because it’s one of the more interesting blends of animation and live action that I’ve ever seen in a fan edited video. Video compilations of “sakuga” food scenes have kind of become their own thing on YouTube in the past couple of years, so that’s sort of what I was bracing myself for as this began. But Pablo Shoe’s scene selection is much more interesting and diverse than that, and what comes out of the oven (sorry!) is far more intriguing and thoughtful than anything I was expecting. If the assignment was to make something comfy and relaxing, Pablo Shoe absolutely delivered on it, but once again manages to do so in his own unique style.

This anime is a lot…
editor: Caribou-kun
anime: Brigadoon
music: Joji – “Glimpse of Us”

The built-in editor’s greeting and AMV explanation at the beginning of “This anime is a lot…” (perhaps the only time I’ve ever encountered anything like this in all my years of watching AMVs) is hard to separate from the actual video. Does Caribou-kun’s introduction get me more interested in the video than I’d be simply going into it as cold as possible? I mean, it might! I love listening to editors talk about their work. I love listening to Caribou-kun talk about anything. With that in mind, does this segment nudge me towards a favorable viewer response? What on earth do I even think of this video? It’s a weird one and I don’t say that lightly.

In the past, I’ve been somewhat critical of AMVs that deliberately emulate the original music videos of the songs they use. In hindsight, I don’t know what motivated this shitty attitude other than a desire to point out what the editor was doing, just in case any potential viewers assumed the concept at work was wholly original (or to prove that others may be fooled, but certainly not me). At long last, I think I’ve grown past this tendency, whatever stupid motivation was driving it. Caribou-kun does not attempt to recreate this song’s original music video in a shot-for-shot fashion, but places cuts at identical timecodes and uses native audio from Brigadoon scenes in the same instances that director of “Glimpse of Us” does. If the goal was to recreate the occasionally silly but mostly chaotic and violent feeling of the original, then this anime was possibly one of the most appropriate sources to pull from. It’s shocking, borderline-disturbing and probably not like any other AMV you’ve ever seen. It got me to finally watch all 26 episodes of Brigadoon this past summer. In that regard, it was a more persuasive AMV than anything else I watched last year.