Anime – Revolutionary Girl Utena
Song – Savatage – Not What You See
Completed May 2004
Premiered July 30, 2004
AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

I found the song for this video because of VicBond007’s wonderful This Isn’t What We Meant. Because of that video, I picked up a copy of the album Dead Winter Dead, and found “Not What You See” because I did.

The choice of Utena as the source was kind of a fluke, because I was planning another video entirely when this pairing leaped into my head. The basic premise was that the entirety of Ohtori Academy is not what you see on the surface, and how Utena and Anthy needed each other to break out of the cycle that the school is, even though neither understood that at first.

I made the conscious decision to avoid as much dueling footage as possible, since it has all been used many, many times before in other videos, plus it wouldn’t have fit in most places in the video.

The most difficult section to decide how to do was the round starting at about 1:58. I knew I wanted to have something for each line going, but not how to do it. I ended up alternating Utena-Anthy, and repeating as the line was repeated a third and fourth time, so yes, the repeated footage is deliberate. Also, the “I don’t understand” lines with the various Duelists was chosen because none of them (except possibly Touga, though that’s debatable) fully understood what the Duels and the End of the World were.

On the downside, this video highlights one of my biggest hurdles to overcome as an editor: an utter reliance on lyric sync and over-literalness. There are several points where I wish I could have picked better scenes, but I can’t think of anything that might have worked better off the top of my head (the literal wheels during the round for “As the wheels go around” is probably the biggest example of this here). Hopefully I can get over that soon; I think that it’ll make me a much better editor once I can.

Otakon 2004 – Entrant, non-Finalist
AnimeEvolution 2004 – Entrant, non-Finalist

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