Category: AMV

A Whistlestop Tour (Project OrgEditor 2020 Round 4)

Round 4's theme was "The Magic School Bus," where we had to present something educational.

I grew up with Schoolhouse Rock, so as soon as the theme was announced, I knew I'd use one of their songs. I settled on Nouns  partly because it seemed like it could work as a direct narration (many of the others are a bit too specific lyrically) as well as being one of my absolute favorites.

For the video, I tried to think of anime that involved a train robbery, and the only one I could remember was the episode of Rurouni Kenshin with the ridiculous horse jump, so that was what I went with, adding the "Science Lesson" frame from Gunbuster for the explanation pieces in homage to the frame in the original video.

People got a good laugh out of it, so I'm glad it worked.

Anime - Rurouni Kenshin, Gunbuster
Audio - Schoolhouse Rock - A Noun is a Person, Place, or Thing
Completed October 2020

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

Tis the Season (Project OrgEditor 2020 Round 3)

The theme for Round 3 of POE 2020 was "Tis the Season" where editors were supposed to highlight a holiday or season.

I had just seen the Christmas episode of a show the day before, so I landed on using the classic Christmas carol "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year," set to as many Christmas episodes as I could find in my collection.

I generally hate Christmas music because of how overplayed so much of it is for two solid months of the year, so this was a hard video to edit. It still comes off pretty well, and it got some good comments from some of the other participants.

Anime - Various Anime
Audio - Andy Miller - The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
Completed October 2020

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

…And Fancy Free (Project OrgEditor 2020 Round 1)

The theme for Round 1 of POE 2020 was “Parts of the Body.”

I had the idea several years ago of doing a multi-source parody of the opening title sequence from the movie Footloose, which fit the theme perfectly. With the time restriction, though, I went looking for the source that had the best variety of foot and leg shots and landed on Welcome to the Ballroom.

It got a decent reaction from the judges, and I enjoyed making it, so I’ll count that as a success.

Anime - Welcome to the Ballroom
Audio - Kenny Loggins - Footloose
Completed October 2020

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

Inner Dialogue

I’ve always been a fan of musical theater, and especially enjoy obscure ones. For a short while, I had an XM radio subscription, and the On Broadway channel introduced me to quite a few shows I hadn’t known of before, including First Date.

I had just finished watching My Love Story a few weeks before sitting down to edit my video for AWA Pro, and the idea of putting the innocent-seeming Yamato into the role of Allison made me laugh, and having Sunakawa available to play the role of Gabe worked out well, too.

The ending unfortunately confused a bunch of people that didn’t have the context of the rest of the show, but the majority of the video amused several of the other viewers, so overall I consider it fairly successful. It got one finalist nomination, but didn’t win anything.

Anime - My Love Story!
Audio - Cast of "First Date" - Allison's Theme #1
Completed September 2019

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

Inflection Point

After finishing Day of Flight for Animethon, I had a day or two before the deadline for Animethon, so I decided to see if I could quickly edit together this pairing that had gotten stuck in my head after hamstar138 gave me a copy of the Finding Neverland Broadway soundtrack.

I’ve made a Patema Inverted video with a song about being upside down before, but I like this one’s pacing and structure a bit better. 

This also was entered at Animethon 2019, but didn’t make the finals.

Anime - Patema Inverted
Music - When the World Turned Upside Down (from "Finding Neverland")
Completed July 2019

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

Day of Flight

While Rakka was the main character of Haibane Renmei, it always felt to me that the series was Reki's story. It told the tale of how she became the support along the path for so many others without becoming a doormat, and how she had to make that realization about herself to embark on her Day of Flight.

I've used the soundtrack to Pippin in a video before, and I've always loved the soaring optimism Pippin displays in Morning Glow, that a better future is coming soon. The parallel with Reki's early-morning final departure was what stuck with me for this video.

I'm not sure I expressed all of that clearly in the editing, but that's what I was going for.

This was entered at Animethon 2019, but didn't make the finals.

Anime - Haibane Renmei
Music - John Rubenstein - Morning Glow (from "Pippin")
Completed July 2019

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

Reveille

I've always loved using very obscure sources in AMVs, as a way of introducing something new to viewers. I stumbled across Momotaro: Sacred Sailors because of an ad on Facebook, of all places, and decided that a 1942 propaganda film was exactly the sort of obscure I wanted to try to make a video to.

The audio was also something of a lucky find. I first heard “Oh How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning'' from my grandfather as a little kid, and only learned that it was originally an Irving Berlin showtune from his This Is the Army revue more than 25 years later. The fact that the musical was also a propaganda piece from 1942 was a nice bit of accidental symmetry.

I had hoped there were more scenes in barracks to use for mentions of sleeping, but all in all, it came together pretty well. It generated a bunch of “I don’t really know what to make of this” responses at AWA Pro 2017 and got a finalist nomination in the Best Musical category, but didn’t win.

Anime - Momotaro: Sacred Sailors
Audio - Irving Berlin - Oh, How I hate to Get Up in the Morning (from "In the Army)
Completed August 2017

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

Z-Axis Intersection

This was my personal mini-tribute to the original DDR Project MEP, in honor of its 15th anniversary.

We showed the MEP at a small one-day convention I helped at, and watching the many memorable tracks, "Upside Down" stuck in my head afterward. I had just recently watched Patema Inverted the week before, and the combination was too much fun to pass up.

I originally planned to use the full length song, but I realized while scrubbing through the movie that there wasn't enough upbeat footage to carry the whole song, so I fell back to the game-length version instead.

The title is a math joke, alluding to how the two leads fall in opposite directions.

It was cute fun, and got a decent reaction at AWA Pro 2016.

Anime - Patema Inverted
Audio - COO COO - Upside Down
Completed August 2016

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

Unrequited

This was my first video in almost two years, as after changing jobs and moving two states away, my free time was a lot more constrained than I had anticipated.

I’ve always liked Broadway musicals, and Wicked has spent a long time on my rotating playlist (I did get to see the touring show in 2009, and hope to catch it again if it’s back in my area again).

After watching Toradora!, even though I had really disliked Ami through most of the series, the parallels of Ami’s and Elpheba’s character arcs struck me. Elpheba’s reprise of “I’m Not That Girl” in particular felt like a good fit for a video.

I did end up cutting part of the song that didn’t quite feel like it fit, but the final result I thought was pretty nice.

Anime - Toradora!
Audio - Idina Menzel - I'm Not That Girl (from "Wicked")
Completed August 2015

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link