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I said I wasn’t going to do one of these again, but here we are. One last entry on a couple of cool videos I missed out on last year but can’t live without.
Robots in Motion
editor: Allaire
anime: Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou
music: Racoon Racoon – “Young Wolves”
Despite its beautiful animation, sparkling with the sort of retro charm that’s a lost art in the world of pure CGI we’ve been living in for most of this century, not to mention its unique approach to worldbuilding, non-traditional or at least unexpected characters and a plot that’s so actually slice-of-life that it makes most modern titles in the genre feel like contrived and busy sitcoms by comparison, there really haven’t been very many AMVs made from the Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou OVAs. Then again, most OVAs released in the late 90s and early 2000s are just as commonly overlooked by AMV editors today, assuming they weren’t already given a pass when they were fresh and new, so this probably isn’t the newsflash I’m building it up to be. Since watching YKK and its sequel (Quiet Country Cafe) last year, I’ve found a handful of great AMVs cut from its four episodes: BarnardNG’s “A Lonely Fairy,” kyle_m’s “Yokohama Weather Report” and ImoodyI’s “sun set” all use the beautiful visuals to great effect in crafting thoughtful mood pieces that reflect YKK’s quiet tone and unhurried sense of wonder. Even this week, a new YKK AMV appeared in my feed that I’m sure I’ll get around to discussing at some point in the near future. Allaire’s “Robots in Motion” is different from all of these works, however, in that it doesn’t lean into the mysterious and post-apocalyptic themes of the series, not only eschewing the ambient, chilled out tone of those videos–an approach which I generally seek out and enjoy on the whole to a very biased degree, and am very surprised to find myself actually enjoying a pivot away from–but viewing the series in more grounded, human terms, structuring the AMV around a traditional song and exploring more universal interpersonal themes. It’s an approach that somehow feels conventional or even “safe” but yields an intimately emotional return on the material that I’ve never experienced before.
Like its source material, “Robots in Motion” is intensely unhurried and curiously inviting, its scenes depicting a world stripped of modernity and its stressful social trappings. I suppose I’m at a point where I’m inclined to describe most AMV editing as “simple” so long as it doesn’t involved a great deal of effects or unconventional, highly-stylized cuts, and Allaire’s approach to threading together a handful of vignettes between the two main characters of this AMV certainly fits this “simple” descriptor. “Robots in Motion” is composed of mostly straight cuts, occasional soft crossfades and zooms and pans so slow and subtle that it’s really impossible for me to tell if they were even a product of the editing process at all without going back and watching the original OVAs scene by scene. AMVs like this hammer home the fact that I’m overthinking and probably oversyncing most of what I’m trying to edit myself these days. It is perfectly fine and sometimes essential to just slow down and let the scenes breathe in a space where emotions have room to echo. Or something like that. Appreciating the humanity of this video might seems like an odd takeaway, but I think fans of these OVAs will understand exactly what that means.
Sora
editor: moezychan
anime: Kemono no Souja Erin
music: Kaida Yuki – “Roku Tousei”
The feeling of getting caught up in an AMV and realizing you have absolutely no idea what anime you’re watching is one of those delights that I used to enjoy all the time when I was first getting into this hobby. Naturally, watching more and more anime over the years (and more and more AMVs) has rendered this experience less and less common. But with more anime being released than ever, surely I’d be revisiting this experience on a regular basis for a long time to come. Right? For a number of possible reasons, that doesn’t seem to be the case. So coming across an AMV like this, beautifully featuring a title I’ve never seen much less even heard of, is one of those too rare instances that both cautiously grabs my attention and tempers my expectations (all too often, there’s immediately apparent reason why said anime has gone underutilized by editors). moezychan’s “Sora,” an AMV made from the 2009 anime Kemono no Souja Erin–based on a series of Japanese novels that somehow only just crossed the pond last year and got an English language publication–beautifully preserves a traditional (non-isekai!) fantasy anime that never hit it big in the west and doesn’t seem to be available to watch in any form outside of video piracy routes (which might as well be a graveyard of dead links at this point, for all I know). Sentimental and adventurous, there’s a genuine sense of wonder and passion in this video. Soundtracked by an opening theme to another anime that I’ve never seen (sung in Japanese, unsurprisingly), there’s not a single element of this AMV that presents me any recognizable thread for a viewer like me to grab hold of or any intertextual meaning to it that I can understand. It feels completely out of place in 2019, not only because of how it looks and feels but because I get the sense that the editor made it completely for themselves with little expectation that it would provide a return on her investment with views, likes or social validation. I love it as an upbeat and beautiful video that somehow feels huge and intimate at the same time.
A New Heart
editor: Sean.PNG
anime: Princess Tutu
music: One Republic – “Feel Again”
link: https://akross.ru/index.cgi?act=video;id=5075
Perhaps no anime has been defined by a single AMV in the way Princess Tutu was and still is. This doesn’t bode well for anyone looking to create their own AMV with the series, but thankfully this didn’t stop Sean.PNG from trying. I caught a few glimpses of “A New Heart” when it was still a work in progress, as Sean.PNG would occasionally livestream some of his editing sessions. Even though I enjoyed it in its unfinished state, for some reason I never rushed to watch it when it was finally released in full and it kind of just fell off my radar until a couple of months ago. This was a shame, as it’s really one of the most moving drama videos I’ve seen in… a long time.
I don’t mean to imply that this AMV moved me to tears–perhaps still never having seen Princess Tutu had a lot to do with this, a problem I’m working on solving–but that the editor absolutely nails all the critical points in the song, squeezing every ounce of emotion out of these scenes when it matters most. The result feels tragic, hopeful, romantic in the capital and lower case sense of the word, somehow never sappy and certainly never boring. “A New Heart” is another fantastic work from an editor I really need to stop taking for granted.
Arsonist’s Lullabye
editor: Cneq
anime: Boku no Hero Academia
music: Hozier – “Arsonist’s Lullabye”
link: https://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_videoinfo.php?v=203863
Why this video, out of all the My Hero Academia AMVs that were released last year, somehow got through to me when so many others didn’t, I really have no idea. My expectations for this weren’t exactly optimistic, as this song (and most others I’ve heard from this artist in other editors’ AMVs) would seem to set the table for yet another dour, overly-serious take on one of my favorite series. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that approach, and given how I actually enjoy My Hero Academia at its most serious, it’s strange that I would be turned away by edits that explore that very same mood. Maybe I’m just burned out on this approach, but somehow Cneq’s work squarely within that emotional space, with little compositional variance from most comparable works in the same vein, just seems to stick and make the world-weary, tragic tone of the material feel strangely earned and unexpectedly palpable.
Can You Feel It?
editor: Silent Hero Studios
anime: Little Witch Academia
music: Sheppard – “Geronimo”
Long before I ever watched this AMV, I despised this song. I was irritated by its unconvincing positivity, which probably says more about me than the song itself, although I’m willing to admit that my response was spawned by having to hear the chorus for this song in some awful television commercial (for iced tea or vacations or something, idk) that was constantly airing three or four years ago. I could literally feel these feelings melt away as I watched this AMV, which by no means has me running out to buy a Sheppard CD or anything but feels fittingly appropriate given the way Akko wins over both her friends and enemies throughout Little Witch Academia with her positive attitude and refusal to give up. “Can You Feel It?” isn’t an unusual take on the series by any means, but it’s effectively upbeat to a degree that most other AMVs focused on the series never quite manage to achieve. The editor does a great job of keeping pace with the song, but also knows how and when to break away from simply cutting on predictable points. I was already on board with everything he was doing through the first verse and chorus, but the faster cuts that are suddenly introduced at the 1:08 and 2:03 mark just took this video to the next level for me. The version of this I watched at a convention had no onscreen lyrics or text (not that it even bothers me all that much in the YouTube version), a fact I want to point out lest anyone think that I didn’t notice or that the editor doesn’t care.
This entire blog entry was inspired by watching Kazu’s “Can’t Hold Us,” a video I was extremely impressed by but eventually felt so ambivalent about that I spent several paragraphs praising it only to tear it down and eventually find myself feeling completely uncertain about how I felt about it at all. Deleting every sentence of that to acknowledge the raw joy “Can You Feel It?” instead was a no-brainer and I hope it’s obvious why.
The history of jazz in AMVs is as scarce as you’d expect, the vast majority of which is made up of videos featuring music from Yoko Kanno’s Cowboy Bebop-soundtracking jazz project The Seatbelts. Sure, there’s a “Take Five” AMV out there if you look for it, but most instrumental jazz AMVs I’ve been able to find feature big band/swing classics, not really the era of jazz that I’m into or curious about. There’s no good reason for me not to include AMVs using songs from Louis Armstrong or Billie Holiday, other than doing so would quickly blur the lines between jazz, blues and a whole world of pre-rock music I’m not quite ready to parse. Nor would I include lo-fi hip-hop AMVs, no matter how prominently their music samples the kind of classic jazz that I’m looking for. So what I’m “looking for,” anyway? AMVs like LowEffort’s “Giant Steps,” for sure, a seemingly abandoned work in progress that I’m more than happy just to get a minute’s taste of. And there’s not one but three Sun Ra AMVs edited by emerpus , all released back in the mid-aughts. Oh, and there’s this AMV, one I only stumbled across during a YouTube deep dive in search of… I don’t even remember anymore.
No matter how much I actually want to, I’d be hard pressed to recommend Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou to anyone who hasn’t seen it before, although this AMV does as good a job as any I’ve ever seen of accurately depicting its source material (more on this in a minute). This two-episode OVA from 1998 is unlike anything I’ve ever watched, evoking a pastoral, peaceful tone to a degree I never thought possible. It’s a quiet, slow, reflective anime, perhaps more so than I should assume most viewers will have a desire to sit through, regardless of how much of a pleasure it was for me to do so or how good for the soul I truly believe it is. And even while I sincerely believe YKK (and its 2002/2003 sequel, Quiet Country Cafe) to be a worthy investment of any anime fan’s time, I think it’s best experienced as a personal discovery to go into with as few expectations as possible. Unfortunately, “just watch it” is never a compelling imperative, but I feel that preserving the simple surprises of this beautiful little show is key to a rewarding experience with it. No one needs to be told how a work of art is going to make them feel, and I feel that an authentic response, be it rejection or boredom or confusion, is more valid and worthwhile than a positive one that’s been coached.
The music in this AMV is jazz as I enjoy it most, composed in a classic tradition that evokes a specific feeling that I can’t describe without bringing up a bunch of clichés. Because this is a feeling I rarely get from any jazz recorded in the past 40 years, I was surprised to find this was a relatively new composition. It took time for me to sort out my confusion towards its unexpected source: a Nintendo DS game I’ve never played, one originally released in Japan for the Game Boy Advance back in 2004. I’m well aware this is a very famous series of games, the very definition of popular media, not at all the strange cultural oddity that I’m approaching it as. That one would feature a character theme popular enough to be covered by a “real” jazz group and even performed by a full orchestra, racking up millions of views by enthusiastic fans who’ve come to appreciate the piece as, uh, “rainymood” music… probably shouldn’t surprise me at this point. I’ve been to the video game symphony. The future of classical, jazz and all music that hasn’t been destroyed or absorbed by pop will probably be found here, as video games continue to consume every last crumb of our entertainment and culture, but that’s one of those safe bets that almost goes without saying.
This AMV is, without a doubt, one of the smoothest and most relaxing I’ve ever watched. It may also be the simplest AMV that I’ve ever enjoyed, its slow pacing allowing shots to run their course much longer than most editors would ever dare. Just following YKK‘s main character through the course of an uneventful day in which she never leaves the house, brewing coffee for guests who never arrive and watching the day pass through the windows of her idyllic, seaside breakfast nook, the video achieves the long-awaited realization of the “ambient AMV.” By including the original audio of every scene that appears in the video, the editor achieves an intimate effect that, at least for myself, made the scenes feel more real. Due to the quiet nature of the original clips used here, none of which originally contained any background music or more than a few short lines of dialogue, the decision actually works, giving the viewer a real fly on the wall-sense of watching someone going about their day with no drama or interruptions.
This AMV was a beautiful introduction to this both YKK and its sequel, two hours of truly unique animated science fiction that I’d never have seen otherwise. Even after watching the series, I can still come back to Mei Linwau‘s work and appreciate it was an quiet ode to simplicity and solitude. But the degree to which this video is her “work,” well, how do I finally get around to this…
“Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou + The Fragrance of Dark Coffee” is nearly six minutes of unedited video taken from episode 2 of the original YKK OVA. The visuals and the sound play out exactly as they do in the episode, only with the first 5 minutes and the final 12 minutes of the episode cut out, and with Godot’s theme from the Ace Attorney games playing on a separate audio track. This is every bit the “lazy” editing I so love to complain about, and certainly moreso than any other AMV that I’ve ever criticized for it. This time around, for whatever reason, I don’t really care. The fact that anyone even thought to try something like this is unlikely enough, but for it to actually work for nearly six minutes is either the product of very clever juxtaposition between the source material or just great luck. It’s not Dark Side of the Rainbow, but… well, maybe it actually works better than that pairing.
Cutfilm Tovent 