flying low #9: above humanity

You thought I was done raving about Kaiba but you’re wrong, because as great as the anime is, this is as much a blog about AMVs as it is about anime, so I feel like not mentioning a good Kaiba AMV might be doing the anime something of a disservice from someone like me. To date, Above Humanity by Narshial is the only Kaiba AMV I’ve watched, and frankly I think that’s okay, because Narshial basically made the penultimate AMV using this source. Although I’ll probably end up making my own one of these days, it’ll probably feel redundant after this one. I don’t know. We’ll see.

To be fair to the integrity of this series of blog posts, Above Humanity did win Coordinator’s Choice at Anime Evolution in 2010, but other than that this video got no exposure that I’m aware of (and Anime Evo isn’t exactly a large con anyway). And I guess I can kind of see why; Kaiba is not a well-known source, and its animation is definitely polarizing. That said, Narshial takes Kaiba and twists and pushes the source material to its limit. This is a video of rapid, layered cuts, haphazard effects work, and lots of internal motion; in other words, a visual assault that is as breathless as all the best moments in Kaiba itself. For the uninitiated, doubtless this video appears a mess of dreary colors and confusing shapes. For those who have seen Kaiba though, it’s a straight-to-the-point pile-driver of lyric sync and compressed storytelling that manages to trace out every point in the large, wide-ranging emotional constellation that is Kaiba.

I wouldn’t necessarily expect someone who hasn’t seen Kaiba to see this as anything more than a random, action/horror video at most. But to me it’s as near-perfect a Kaiba video as I can picture in my mind, and a natural extension of what is contained within the anime. This video complements Kaiba in the same way that a fine wine complements an expensive dinner at a fancy restaurant, or maybe more immediately, the way a a good proletariat revolution complements human suffering at the hands of the upper class. Beyond that, honestly, the video pretty much speaks for itself and while there may be other good Kaiba videos out there, I say, why risk ruining it by wading through the bad ones to get to them?