Anime – Revolutionary Girl Utena
Song – Tsubokura Yuiko – Choose Me
Completed October 2008
Premiered October 7, 2008
AnimeMusicVideos.org link
This was a birthday present for Kionon. My segment was Utena (his third favorite series) to a song from Kimagure Orange Road (his favorite).
Happy birthday, Kio.
Anime – ef ~a tale of memories~
Song – Johannes Brahms – Waltz in A Flat, Op. 39/15
Completed August 2008
Premiered October 18, 2008
AnimeMusicVideos.org link
Since ef had such an interesting and unusual artistic look to it, I wanted to do something a little different with this video. Classical music really doesn’t get much use in AMVs, so that’s where I started looking, and found this very nice piano piece by Brahms.
In the end, it’s a simple Renji/Chihiro romance video that I’m pretty happy with.
Convention History:
Another Anime Con 2008 – Finalist
Bakuretsucon 2008 – Finalist
Youmacon 2008 – Finalist
Anime – Various
Song – Def Leppard – Rock of Ages
Completed June 2008
Premiered August 22, 2008
AnimeMusicVideos.org link
As far back as my first full-length video, Big in Japan, I’ve wanted to do something like this, with as much concert footage as possible jammed into a single video. The idea went through at least ten different songs paired with it, and I actually started working on something using Eric Johnson’s “Cliffs of Dover” to all guitar footage before realizing how boringly repetitive and low-energy what I was creating was (plus the need to sync so much guitar movement was a serious pain for the tiny benefit it gained). I scrapped the idea, but for some reason kept all of the ripped DVDs on my hard drive for a couple months.
Meanwhile, I picked up Def Leppard’s “Vault” album after hearing a couple of their songs on the radio and liking them. The song “Rock of Ages” just jumped out at me, and I started gathering even more footage to work with, since so much of what I had already pulled together was guitar-focused. During this time, I was helped immensely by Val and Kim, who lent me several DVDs that I ended up using, as well as recommendations for series to look in from Meteor Dragon (thanks especially for the BECK recommendation), GloryQuestor, ngsilver, Kionon, and Kitsuner.
I also have to extend immense thanks to ZephyrStar for allowing me to use (and providing lossless copies of) the scenes of Yotsuba playing the guitar from his incredible Daydream video.
There were also quite a few series I had that didn’t end up in the final video, for whatever reasons, especially Idol Defense Force Hummingbird and Perfect Blue.
Technical:
Probably the most problematic footage of what I actually ended up using was from the Zillion: Burning Night OVA, which came from a VHS tape, as no DVD of the show exists, even in Japan. I ended up playing the tape in an SVHS deck, recording it onto a MiniDV deck, then importing from the MiniDV tape to the computer, and finally running it through a metric ton of AviSynth filters to clean it up (the final script ran at about 0.7 fps).
The rest of the footage was pretty easy to work with by comparison, though several of the DVDs I was working with exhibited ugly frame blending, which I was sucessfully able to fix in some cases, not so well in others, but the result still looks fairly good.
Other than a little bit of lip and instrument sync, the most complex effect in the video is an additive dissolve, so the goal of a simpler-looking old-school video was achieved.
Contest Participation:
AnimeEvolution 2008 – Entered
Anime Weekend Atlanta 2008: Pro Competition – Finalist for “Best Various”
Another Anime Con 2008 – Finalist
Bakuretsucon 2008 – Finalist
Youmacon 2008 – Winner, Staff Pick
Anime – Various
Song – Danny Wilson – Mary’s Prayer
Completed May 2008
Premiered May 17, 2008
AnimeMusicVideos.org link
This was my entry at Acen’s AMV Wars Hentai competition. I’m not particularly proud of it, and it didn’t do very well, mainly because it isn’t hentai, like it was supposed to be. I don’t own any, and the H scenes in the provided secret ingredient (Dark Chapel Ep. 1) disturbed me enough I didn’t want to use them (call me a prude, but non-con and scat I find very off-putting). So it’s a non-hentai vid that uses a hentai source.
For the actual video, the song I used had been stuck in my head after I picked up a CD collection of eighties love songs, so given the theme of the secret ingredient and Mary being the theme of the song, I decided on nuns and priests as the theme of the video.
It’s a silly video, and a rush job, but it’s not terrible, either.
Since it contains no actual hentai footage, this video is also safe to be hosted on Local.
Anime – Area 88 OVA
Song – Kenny Loggins – I’m Free (Heaven Helps the Man)
Completed April 2008
Premiered May 16, 2008
AnimeMusicVideos.org link
This idea’s been kicking around in my head for a while, though originally it was using the Area 88 TV series, not the OVA, before I decided to go entirely 80’s cheese with it (source from 1985, song from 1984).
I mainly wanted to do a drama about the separation between Shin and Ryoko, and give it a bit of a different twist, with Shin wanting to stay in Area 88, because the fight is something he believes in to the point of leaving Ryoko behind (which is the exact opposite of the actual series).
Convention History:
Anime Central 2008 – Entrant
AnimeEvolution 2008 – Entrant
Anime – Various
Song – Maurice Chevalier – Thank Heaven For Little Girls
Completed February 2008
Premiered March 22, 2008
AnimeMusicVideos.org link
Inspiration for this one I blame on a combination of the movie Wag the Dog and NPR’s radio game show Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me. Adam was soliciting adult AMVs for Anime Boston’s new contest/showing the same week as the song “Sixteen Going On Seventeen” from The Sound Of Music came up in reference to Jamie Lynn Spears on WWDTM, which reminded me of the scene in Wag the Dog that “Thank Heaven For Little Girls” was used in a political attack ad. And my brain ran with it.
My goal was to take as much out of context as possible to make the series used look downright dirty, but I wasn’t having much luck until I borrowed the notorious Kodomo no Jikan and Moetan from a friend who will remain nameless to protect them (a sufficient bribe, though… 
).
The song I actually have on CD, as I liked the original movie (Gigi, which won 9 Oscars, including Best Picture in 1958), and stumbled on the soundtrack in a secondhand CD shop a few years ago.
Technically simple, the goal was “tell the joke, get the laugh, get out before it gets old,” and I think it succeeds at doing that.
I’m releasing this under a different studio name from my normal one, as I do use Honou Productions for more than just AMVs occasionally, and though it’s not outright hentai, it’s sufficiently out of the PG-13 range into R that it’s not hosted on AnimeMusicVideos.org, but on a very generous ngsilver’s server.
Convention History:
Anime Boston 2008 – Finalist (H competititon)
Tekkoshocon VI (2008) – Finalist (R competition)
Anime – Shakugan no Shana
Song – Triumph – Somebody’s Out There
Completed February 2008
Premiered March 21, 2008
AnimeMusicVideos.org link
This was a nice simple Shana/Yuuji romance video that sprung into my head after hearing the song on the radio.
The footage only goes up through the first few episodes of the second season, since that’s as far as the DVDs were when I was making this video.
Overall, I like the video, but for such a fast-paced series, this slow video sometimes feels a little off.
Convention History:
Anime Boston 2008 – Finalist
Tekkoshocon 2008 – Finalist
Anime Central 2008 – Entrant
Anime – Macross: Do You Remember Love
Song – Guilty Gear Isuka Soundtrack – The Cat Attached to the Rust
Completed October 2007
Premiered October 23, 2007
From a 4-way Iron Chef battle in the #superic channel on IRC, including Ghet, me, Meteor Dragon, and Rave_Epic. I got one of the four votes cast by the judges, so came in tied for second.
Anime – Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS
Song – Coldpay – Don’t Panic
Completed October 2007
Premiered October 10, 2007
AnimeMusicVideos.org link
My video from the Online Iron Chef Tournament 3.0 Round 1, which lost to Douggie.
Not really a fan of the song, but the video didn’t come out too badly.
I gave it a title when it got sent to Youmacon in response to ngsilver’s begging for entries. The title means nothing, it’s just a pair of words that sound relevant and form the initials “IC.”
Convention History:
Youmacon 2007 – Winner, “Most Orignal”
Bakuretsucon 2007 – Finalist
Anime – Lucky Star
Song – Masters of Gregorian Chant – Stairway to Heaven
Completed October 2007
Premiered October 3, 2007
My first Iron Chef video, done as a practice video against Kitsuner of Corn Dog Vid Vids, in preparation for the Online Iron Chef Tournament 3.0.
By a 3-2 vote, I won this round.