My top AMV's of 2022: 40 - 31
Jan. 5th, 2023 10:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
katranat40
Video title: Burn The House
Editor: Animetrash AMVs
Anime: Various
Song & Artist: Anthem - Don Diablo
Comments: In late 2021 AMV a Day shared an Animetrash AMV - I was instantly hooked and Animetrash became a very important editor to me very quickly. Since this is the first Animetrash video on my list (yes, there will be more), I want to take the time to talk a bit about their videos generally.
The first thing you might notice when watching an Animetrash video, is the speed of the clips - they are all sped up, and this is the case for every single Animetrash video I have seen so far. It wasn’t until I watched “Burn The House” that I realised at least some of what is going on here - it is my firm belief that unlike other editors who may change the speed of the anime to try and match the pace of the music, Animetrash is trying to match the music by using already sped up anime. Essentially Animetrash is editing completely normally, just with super fast clips where they mostly prioritise internal sync - this is the part I feel makes their videos completely unique. Animetrash is looking at these clips and finding internal sync moments that best match the music. The thing I find fascinating here though is, because the speed is augmented, these internal sync moments are completely different to what any other editor would come across or even consider when looking at how to sync the exact same scenes. Yes, speed ramping is a thing, and often editors will look at a scene and tweak the speed during particular moments to make the scene sync better with the music. Animetrash though, they are syncing purely to the naturally occurring movements in the animation that happen when an anime plays at 3x normal speed. This gives Animetrash’s work a completely different rhythm to anything anyone else is editing and I love it so, so much.
Anyway, I hope you all enjoy watching “Burn The House” which is a great example of Animetrash’s unique editing style as it is their version of a classic dance AMV.
VPR: Flashes to white, flashes to black, red emphasis scenes
39
Video title: Timering
Editor: JCD
Anime: Madoka Magica
Song & Artist: Frog Machine - Infected Mushroom
Comments: Yes, this is the 2nd Madoka Magica and Infected Mushroom AMV on my list - 2022 was an amazing year for Infected Mushroom AMVs, which has made me a very happy bunny.
This time we have JCD’s “Timering”. JCD is an editor who has been around a long time, and their specialty has always been EDM music, to give some context of their legacy - they were one of the original coordinators for The AniMix Project.
“Timering” was one of the very first AMV’s I watched in 2022. Since then I watched and enjoyed 291 other AMV’s throughout the year so I am ashamed to say “Timering” fell off my radar for the majority of this time. I could recall that it was an AMV I loved and I had a good time with it, but I barely remembered the specifics until I rewatched it again during the process of making this list - and I was blown away by how awesome it is. Even if psytrance isn’t your cup of tea, I would encourage you to give this one a go, “Timering” is such an effective video on many different levels it’s worth watching simply for the experience.
VPR: Major All
38
Video title: Murder in my mind
Editor: Segter AMV's
Anime: Various
Song & Artist: MURDER IN MY MIND - KORDHELL
Comments: “Murder in my mind” is an aesthetic action AMV which, according to my understanding, has been made purely to show off a bunch of retro anime. Despite there being no narrative I find the way Segter has structured this AMV fascinating - each anime is given its own segment of the song, having time to shine before moving onto the next anime, and then next anime, etc. Because Segter uses 80’s and 90’s anime, they all flow very nicely into one another and feel cohesive, and I also enjoy the way Segter uses black bars/wipes to transition between some of the anime.
“Murder in my mind” is a video I’ve been completely addicted to over the past couple of months. There’s several types of super satisfying sync happening all the time throughout the video, and with a runtime of only 2:25 it’s incredibly easy to watch over and over again.
VPR: All
37
Video title: 21st Century Metropolis
Editor: Bauzi
Anime: Various
Song & Artist: Cirrus - Bonobo
Comments: “21st Century Metropolis” kind of snuck up on me with how much I enjoy it. Highly edited AMV’s where the visuals are given the main significance rarely catch my attention. I added “21st Century Metropolis” to my YouTube “liked” list mostly on a whim, I thought it was kinda cool and I would probably enjoy watching it a handful of times. Whenever I would go through sessions of watching AMV’s on my “liked” list and I would see this one, I would always think to myself “oh yeah, this was neat to watch”, and watch it again - repeat a few times and I finally realised “yeah ok, I actually really love this”. Bauzi has put so much care and attention into creating the world in “21st Century Metropolis”, I can’t help but be sucked into the fantastical cityscape and go along for the ride.
VPR: Motion, flashes to white
36
Video title: Starlighted Stage
Editor: Synæsthesia Productions
Anime: Revue Starlight
Song & Artist: THE ONE - BABYMETAL
Comments: “Starlighted Stage” is yet another AMV I fell in love with during the RICE AMV contest near the beginning of 2022, and well, what’s not to love about Babymetal combined with Revue Starlight? Synæsthesia has an instinctive understanding of what visuals work with different types of music (living up to his editor name!), and “Starlighted Stage” is especially gratifying. It’s one of those cases where the Anime and the Music feel they were destined to be, and Synæsthesia was the only one who could make it happen.
VPR: Flashes to white, flashes to black, motion, red emphasis scenes
35
Video title: Flash Heat Fang
Editor: PantsAMV
Anime: Jujutsu Kaisen
Song & Artist: Burn the House Down - AJR
Comments: I will admit the very first thought that went through my head when I first watched this AMV was “Oh no, not this song again”. At this point in time, this song has been used to death in AMV’s, and because of that, I was fully expecting to not like this AMV one bit. PantsAMV however pleasantly surprised me, and has made what I feel to now be the definitive AMV for this song. The sync in “Flash Heat Fang” constantly wavers between being totally awesome, to completely fun and endearing. It’s an unusually upbeat and uplifting action AMV, and I have a great time whenever I watch it.
VPR: All
34
Video title: Glitch Game
Editor: Trenzilla
Anime: Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions
Song & Artist: Tonight - Yuksek
Comments: This is another one which has broken through my biases and I enjoy it immensely. I often have issues watching AMV’s that use a lot of busy visual effects but “Glitch Game” is top notch editing, and it’s also just a ton of fun. “Glitch Game” is also the type of AMV I feel I cannot give any kind of adequate commentary on, as Trenzilla is considerably above my own technical skill in editing. It’s all so incredibly well thought out though and the results speak for themselves.
VPR: All
33
Video title: The Rebel L
Editor: Rider4Z - Otaku Lounge Productions
Anime: Death Note, Given
Song & Artist: Rebel L - Sesame Street
Comments: Comedy AMV’s are great but they don’t worm their way into my heart as much as other genres tend to - Rider4Z really got to me with the “The Rebel L” though. There’s something about seeing L’s face when he’s singing “LA LA LA” which is simultaneously one of the most stupid and brilliant things I’ve ever seen. I first saw “The Rebel L” as part of the RICE AMV contest near the beginning of 2022, and since then I have watched it many, many times and it never fails to get a laugh out of me still. I think I’m going to be giggling over this one for several years to come.
VPR: Flashes to white, motion, light leaks
32
Video title: MAMMAMIA
Editor: TRUCK-KUN
Anime: Yuri on Ice
Song & Artist: MAMMAMIA - Måneskin
Comments: TRUCK-KUN is an editor who I’ve been aware of for some time now, however it’s not until "MAMMAMIA" that they’ve made an AMV I personally enjoy. TRUCK-KUN is someone who I think of as a trend editor, a lot of their videos follow current popular editing styles and anime - there’s nothing wrong with this, it’s just simply the type of content that doesn’t appeal to me. I feel TRUCK-KUN bucks their own trend quite a bit with “MAMMAMIA”, Yuri on Ice hasn’t been an actively popular anime for a number of years, and the editing style here is only slightly adjacent to what’s currently popular in AMV’s. Simply put, I feel TRUCK-KUN has made this video for their own enjoyment above all and it shows.
“MAMMAMIA” uses nothing but ice skating scenes from Yuri on Ice and TRUCK-KUN absolutely piles on the match cuts. Adding to that all of the colour correction, flashes, and colour inversion, and it becomes one of the most visually satisfying AMV’s I’ve seen all 2022.
VPR: Major All
31
Video title: Gasoline
Editor: Brand Of Sacrifice AMVs
Anime: Cybercity Oeda 808
Song & Artist: Gasoline - The Weeknd
Comments: “Gasoline” was also going to feature on my reddit list, but I’ve recently found that Brand Of Sacrifice has all their videos listed on animemusicvideos.org (yay!), which made it ineligible for my reddit list, so this means I get to talk about it even more here!
Combining music by The Weeknd with 80’s/90’s anime is an aesthetically obvious choice (I should know), where I feel Brand Of Sacrifice goes off script here is how much of the anime they pack into this AMV. Seriously, it’s as if their goal was to showcase as much Cybercity Oeda 808 as they possibly could in 3:37. Brand Of Sacrifice uses a combination of speeding up some clips as well as constantly cutting to keep the pace up so no matter what is happening in the music, the visuals are almost always going past at breakneck speed. Despite this, there is always some type of sync happening, either internal, external or lyrical. The lyric sync is perhaps my favourite of all. Brand Of Sacrifice will often place a clip that matches the lyric at the beginning of the sung words - because the scenes change so quickly the clip that matches the lyrics is then long gone from the screen by the time The Weeknd has finished singing that phrase, and all sorts of other visuals have now also filled your eyes during that particular lyric. I find this creates a kind of afterimage effect in my mind where even though that particular sync is no longer there, the impression of it still is. Overall I find this video intensely hypnotic to watch.
VPR: Major All
CW: Violence
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Date: 2023-02-03 08:53 pm (UTC)Murder In My Mind: Really fun action video with some pretty decent editing, but man I wish that watermark wasn't there.
Starlighted Stage: I can't pretend the editing here isn't really well-done (lots of fantastic internal sync throughout), but the song -- I hate symphonic metal -- really grinds against me. Syn's videos rarely miss for me because of any objective/editing-based elements, but his music tastes often clash with my own and this is one of the prime examples. Not a bad video by any stretch of the imagination, though!
Flash Heat Fang: I have zero interest in shounen-y, fight-heavy anime like this (either in general or in AMVs specifically), and as I already mentioned earlier I don't like this artist, but man the editing here is so buttery smooth that I got roped into this one effortlessly. What an absolute blast this video is!
Glitch Game: Fun video that didn't really interest me all that much. Effects work is solid, editing is good, but nothing grabbed me past a superficial appreciation of the technical execution. I hope anyone reading this doesn't think that this means you shouldn't give it a shot!
The Rebel L: Hard to deny this one. Super fun, great concept, and really solid execution. It didn't make me laugh (might be too early in the morning for that, don't worry I have coffee), but that's okay, I can definitely appreciate the joke and I enjoyed it for its other merits. Good stuff!
MAMMAMIA: For the most part the editing here is pretty satisfying, the use of match cuts and motion makes this flow quite well. I wasn't really a fan of the incessant flashing though, it felt really unnecessary and gave the video a harsh edge that contrasted with the rest of the video's rhythm. Not bad, though.
Gasoline: Super mixed emotions on this. I love the aesthetic of combining '80s anime with modern synthwave, and there are some truly wonderful moments in this AMV. But man, the pacing just feels so off to me -- I want the cuts to slow down and for there to be something substantial for my eyes to be able to latch onto for more than half a second. Everything here goes by so fast I feel like I can't fully immerse myself in the otherwise wonderful mood being generated.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-05 03:22 pm (UTC)Thank you for checking these out!
no subject
Date: 2023-02-19 05:23 pm (UTC)"Timering" is also a video that's build around sped-up footage, but I think that the footage used in it is better suited to this approach, OR that the song just lends itself more to an AMV that's ridiculously fast-paced, OR that it's just a product of an editor who was able to spread their 2022 efforts across 2 AMVs (which I assume is part of the reason why every little passage of "Timering" feels just right to me) vs Animetrash who was working at a pace that allowed them to release 27 AMVs over the course of the year. But comparing the two AMVs is not what we're here for. They're both good!
"Murder in my Mind" is terrific. Yeah, it's kind of one-note but I like how focused it is with the sources it's using and how and consistent the editing is. It's like if you melted that that hour-long AMV mix by that user K!LL SCREEN down into a really solid two minutes. This is a great find. If Segter AMV's is reading this, please release the watermark-free version! If you see that anyone out there stole it for their own purposes, I promise it wasn't me.
"21st Century Metropolis" is great. One of those videos I appreciate just a little bit more every time I watch it.
I can't get into Jujutsu Kaisen AMVs. I admit this is a problem and I will eventually get through it. Hard to deny how nice this one is, maybe because it's not fully leaning into the edgy-ness of the visuals like most editors tend to.
I love reading lists like this because there are always good videos that I somehow forgot I saw or big editors I'm somehow still not subscribed to for some reason. "Glitch Game" and Trenzilla fit both of those unfortunate categories, but fortunately not anymore. There's a lot about this AMV that doesn't appeal to me ON PAPER but it's so well made that it's hard not to give into the editor's vision and enjoy it for what it is.
"The Rebel L" is well-edited but I have this habit of approaching this kind of AMV based on how well I like the concept or how original I find it to be--I'm probably not articulating this tendency as clearly as I could and I'm certain it will be misunderstood somewhat or possibly a lot--and since I'm sure that I've seen someone make a video with these sources before, many years ago, I couldn't ever quite give this one a fair shake. Just trying to be honest here instead of claiming that I don't think it's a good video or anything like that.
I've seen a couple of Yuri on Ice videos that try to use match cuts like this TRUCK-KUN video, some more successfully, others less so, yet I don't feel like I've ever quite seen one like this before. I have mixed feelings about this but it definitely held my attention.
Sort of torn on this last AMV as it just ripples with energy but it's all kind of at the expense of atmosphere, which I feel like there's a lot of just left on the table here. The first minute of this was great but it kind of loses me partway through. I do see why you loved it as much as you do. It nearly gets there for me, too.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-05 03:23 pm (UTC)Thank you for checking these out!