Month: June 2022

In August 2020, I lost my very elderly cat Crystal. A few months later, I was still badly missing her, and the AWA Pro deadline was approaching, so my brain started going to video ideas about cats. The idea that stuck out was Chi’s Sweet Home and how the kitten becomes a full member of the Yamada family. Pets truly are members of families, and losing one hurts just as much as losing a human member.

This is a simple and heartfelt video that has a lot of personal meaning to me, and I’m glad people seemed to pick up on that in the judging for AWA Pro 2020.

Anime - Chi's Sweet Home, Chi's New Address
Audio - Magome Togoshi - Kaisouroku (from Air)
Completed October 2020

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

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

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

The theme for Round 2 of POE 2020 was "The Thrill of the Chase."

Dragon’s Lair is a source that I’ve wanted to use for a while, but didn’t have a good idea for, but Dirk’s chase through the dungeon in search of the Princess felt like a good fit for this round’s theme.

This one was kind of rushed because of the one-week time limit, but still was a fun one to put together.

Video Source - Dragon's Lair
Audio - Naora Shibata PROJECT - Vampire Killer
Completed October 2020

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

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

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