Anime: Various
Song: “Overthinker” by INZO
This is the kind of video that certain people might see as too obviously pretentious — the song choice doesn’t really help here, using a spoken-word soliloquy about, you guessed it, overthinking. But Zelda somehow portrays the words — and the general feeling of impending chaos — really well, utilizing many different characters from disparate anime to illustrate the frustration and anxiety that being alone with one’s thoughts can trigger. The second half of the AMV, where the music breaks and the editing gets serious, is a real treat — smooth as silk but still topsy-turvy and unpredictable. It’s a psychological, psychedelic deconstruction of a stressed-out mind, images flashing past without providing nearly enough time for the viewer to process or understand what exactly is going on. It’s easily rewatchable, short as it is, but having seen it several times now, I still feel like there are depths here to be plumbed. It’s rare that we see videos that do so well at depicting complex psychological concepts like this, but Disquiet comes across as successfully as the best of them.
Anime: Various
Song: “The Edge (feat. Nevve)” by Grant
(Original video here.)
High-minded crossover videos like this aren’t always my cup of tea, but I only have a couple words that come to mind when I watch this: Holy crap. The concept here — a mirrored world appearing above the normal one — is the kind of thing that sounds good on paper, but would realistically take an absolute ton of work to make convincing. I have to say, though, that MusicFish and company absolutely did it. The effects work in here is astounding — everything is so well-integrated that it becomes very difficult to say with any certainty where the anime ends and the effects begin. What’s more, the different sources and styles blend together seamlessly as well — or maybe I should say that the differences didn’t bother me. Either way, something that would normally be distracting wasn’t, and the video’s concept even supports such differences.
In the end, this is just a really fabulous, ambitious video that I’m glad I took a chance on. Everything about it works in an unbroken harmony, from the technical feats to the music choice to the scene selection that has just enough filler artistic flourishes to keep things balanced and endlessly intriguing. This is an AMV to get completely lost in, and then find yourself muttering “Whoa” over and over as the visuals and the story being told just keep getting cooler and cooler. Look out Inception, MusicFish is on your tail.
Anime: After The Rain
Song: “Blaglaens” by Lowly
2019 has come to an end and Elcalavero remains as oblique as ever. Otaenearb brings us no closer to understanding anything about this editor, other than serving as further confirmation that he wants to remain totally inscrutable. Frankly, this suits him and me just fine — I like seeing each new thing he releases because it’s always guaranteed to be unlike anything else. If there’s a message or point to Otaenearb, it’s lost on me, but like much of what Elcalavero releases, it seems that this was intentional. This is much more about airy atmosphere than anything concrete, and the simple editing and loose sync, combined with the gorgeous visuals, give this entire video a mysterious, metamorphic quality. Unlike much of Elcalavero’s work, Otaenearb isn’t dark or eerie, but it’s just as thought-provoking and expansive as his best work…which typically is. In that sense, it’s yet another angle to this editor for light to refract through, and I can’t wait to see where the next decade takes this guy.
Anime: Penguin Highway
Song: “Helena Beat” by Foster the People
Few videos this year were as cute and straight-up fun as Bimyou’s It’s OK. From the sketchy line art overlays, to the imaginative subject matter and upbeat editing, everything about this video emits the goodest of vibes. It recalls for me the same feelings I got when I first watched neko kitkat’s The Creationist from a few years back — an innocent romp through the creative mind of a child, surreal and weird in its own way but bursting with an overflowing sense of pure joy that leaks from every pore. Watching It’s OK guarantees that your next three minutes will be totally worry-free and full of the most positive of energy — a forceful reminder that whatever’s going on in your life…it’s ok!
Anime: Various
Song: “Annihilation” by Apashe
Action videos like this — flashy, high-octane slugfests that use hardcore electronic music found on the trendiest electronic music circuits — are typically not my thing, at all. So when one of these videos catches my eye, that means it’s doing everything right, and LyonAMV’s Annihilation is a prime example of everything these kinds of action videos should be. It’s the kind of video where if there’s a story, it makes me wonder who cares because I just want to revel in the visual smorgasbord that explodes from every corner of the thing. Frankly, few videos this year felt this fricking cool, with some of the slickest action editing this side of RadioAkshun, and some of the best internal sync you’ll see from anything this last year. Annihilation’s breathtaking approach is the kind of thing I would be lucky to stumble across even once a year, but believe it or not, action videos in 2019 got even better than this.
Anime: Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone // Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance
Song: “Do You Feel It?” by Chaos Chaos
I hold an unpopular opinion in the anime world: Shinji has always been my favorite character in the Evangelion franchise, for reasons that I won’t go into here. But suffice it to say, I think he gets really unfair treatment in the anime fandom, and while there have been plenty of Shinji character profiles attempted in AMV form over the years, not many have really captured the heart of his character in a convincing way. Do You Feel It? is one of the best I’ve seen, maybe surpassed only by year zero’s Colouring of Pigeons from last year; although, the two videos are different enough that they don’t warrant much comparison beyond their subject matter.
Salt’s video, though, manages to bring Shinji’s character to life in a way that few editors are really willing or able to do. It’s riddled with all sorts of pathos — sparks of happiness punctuated by the tragedy and emotional trauma that permeates Evangelion’s world. Salt even manages to explore Shinji’s relationships with Asuka and Rei in ways that give this four-minute video a multidimensionality that rarely pops in such relief in similar videos. I walk away from this one feeling the deep sympathy and sadness I felt for Shinji when I first watched Evangelion, 15 years ago. So yes, to answer the looming question — I definitely feel it. Do you?
Anime: Video Girl Ai
Song: “Gaussian” by Com Truise
Have you ever been in a relationship with someone, and you messed up — big, small, whatever — and hurt the other person to the point where it doesn’t matter how genuinely repentant you are, nothing you say or do can make it better in the moment? Everyone who’s been in a serious relationship can attest that it’s one of the worst feelings ever — a feeling of utter helplessness, knowing you caused someone you love pain and there’s nothing you can do. Maybe your lover will forgive you, or maybe not — and you have to hang in the balance while they process.
Gaussian captures the knotty, uncomfortable emotions of such a situation brilliantly. It’s slow and the music it’s set to is a beatless ambient piece — TRUTH CRAB crossfades between the scorned lover and the one who caused the pain, showing them laying back to back on a bed, neither of them able to sleep, going back over the raw emotion in their heads. There’s not a lot of exposition here, but there doesn’t need to be — Gaussian assumes you’ve been there and can relate. For eliciting feelings of pure, brutal empathy, perhaps no AMV here does it better.
Anime: FLCL
Song: “MIDNIGHT DOWN” by The Pillows
Mixing FLCL with The Pillows’ music is certainly not the most original combination, but XIII liked the idea so much that he did it three times this year, making three videos that all manage to feel very different from one another by showing off the very different sides that the anime portrays through its six episodes. MIDNIGHT DOWN aims at evoking the energetic sentiment of FLCL — the emotional extremes that Naota and the series’ other characters find themselves experiencing at every turn, while harnessing some of the more intense and unusual moments that tend to make the series so difficult to categorize in order to keep things from getting too serious. Yeah, you have the scenes of Naota and Haruka hitting the falling baseball-satellite back into orbit with their bass guitars; the scenes of monsters coming out of Naota’s head; the crazy fights that happen in pretty much every episode.
And yet, MIDNIGHT DOWN doesn’t feel any less grounded than something like Strat’s Hanabi Sunset, which I already wrote about on this list. It captures all the punch that the series has to offer, absolutely, but when you get right down to it, this still feels like the sentimental, coming-of-age story that FLCL is at its core. XIII accomplishes this in a number of ways, not least being his excellent editing, which combines both internal and external sync to great effect, along with some notable sequences of similarly-composed scenes planted right next to each other to provide some sort of structure to the frenzy. All the heavy-hitting emotional parts are given rapt attention as well, and in the end MIDNIGHT DOWN comes together to be a wonderful collage of everything that makes this series so monolithic in both the anime fandom and my own personal journey through it.
Anime: Wolf Children
Song: “Arc” by Yoste
There’s only so much that can be done with Wolf Children in AMVs, and over the years, I think it’s safe to say that most of that has been discovered and, uh, done. Moving Forward doesn’t add anything particularly new or exciting to the mix, but it’s still a hugely welcome addition to the fold — muted and downtempo, VideoBeats and Apus work together to hone in on the very distinctly bittersweet feel that permeates the source material. It can be tricky to try and hit equally on both parts of that adjective, but these guys manage to toe the line absolutely flawlessly, and the result is a video that is drenched in two extremes of emotion — the bottomless pain of losing someone you love and the indescribable joy that ultimately comes with being a parent. By the end you won’t know if those tears leaking out of your face are from sorrow or happiness, but you probably won’t care, either.
Anime: Fireworks, Should We See It From The Side Or The Bottom? // Flying Witch // She And Her Cat – Everything Flows
Song: “Wistful Skylark Whales (feat. Abel Tana & Izu)” by Jann-Aron
While Fireworks videos tend to focus on easygoing, relaxing romance as I mentioned of a video that appeared earlier on this list, Wistful Skylark Whales is much more abstract and surreal. It focuses on the beautiful visuals of the movie, and while there are hints of romance here and there, this isn’t a video that really focuses on lighting up your emotions so much as it does pleasing your sense of aesthetics. It’s eye candy, plain and simple, with slick editing and a restrained use of effects to tie it all together into a complete work. It feels like a cool breeze on a hot day, exceedingly pleasant and liable to make you sit and drink as much of it in as you can while it lasts. This video came out of nowhere, pretty close to my cutoff for putting new videos on my list, but I’m glad I gave it a shot because I can always use something that exists simply for the sake of being pretty and nice. There’s no other word that sums it up better, and it’s worth sharing with as many people as are willing to watch it.
subculture diaries 
Disquiet was a top tier, goddamn
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Thanks for your comments! I appreciate them so much!
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Early in the year I saw a really good AMV Evangelion AMV set to this “Overthinker” song. The editor deleted it from YouTube, replaced it with a version that only used footage from the latest films… and I wish they hadn’t done that! Anyway, there were more than a few videos made to this song… The best of these definitely includes “Disquiet,” though I agree that it doesn’t really hit its stride until the second half. It’s really well edited, actually. I want to know how people got into this song, it reminds me of how a lot of people suddenly made videos to that Seekae/Flume song (leo lide, Daily Chill, I still don’t know who did it first).
I really don’t care for “Mirror World” at all. I definitely admire it on a technical level and there’s a couple shots that are seriously impressive. I could quit my job and just study AE for a whole year and I doubt that I could make anything better than this. But I’m just not feeling it here.
I really enjoyed “It’s OK,” although I marginally preferred “Fantasy” by Oscar when it comes to this source. Still, really fun stuff!
I don’t know if it was because I watched so much Fate stuff over the last year or what, but I found myself enjoying Fate AMVs a lot more than I ever have. “Annihilation” is super impressive from a technical standpoint and definitely showcases the best animation from the series and the films. But this is almost too much for me to take in, even at a lean 2+ minutes in length… maybe I’m just getting too old for this kind of video. A little more emphasis on atmosphere along with what’s here might have made it go down easier for me, but now I’m imagining it as a completely different AMV and that’s not how this works.
“Do You Feel It?” was my second favorite video from Salt this year. Just a really solid character profile/action video, consistently smooth from beginning to end and, even though I’m starting to feel little burned out on Evangelion film edits, there was never a dull moment in it that didn’t serve a purpose.
“Gaussian” is fantastic, really capturing the same feelings of loneliness and isolation that “At Dawn” did (at least for me, they’re very different videos in plenty of other respects). I love the simplicity of this, the long shots, the atmosphere… I still have not found an option or trick to remove the end cards that pop up at the end of certain YouTube videos, which really sucks because the pop up that shows up on this one really kills the ending. Downloading it solves the problem for me, but it’s too bad for everyone else!
I really like everything I’ve seen from XIII and MIDNIGHT DOWN really shows why!
“Moving Forward” was really good. I’m really annoyed that there’s no “Best Collab” category in the VMAs this year because I just wanted to nominate so many, including this one. Feels like in the past they almost died out but there were more than a few good ones this year and I wanted to make a list of them.
I don’t really know what to say about “Wistful Skylark Whales.” It’s very pretty and I love the whole vibe of it. I have really liked a couple of Fireworks AMVs but I don’t think I’ve loved any yet. I must have something against this film that I haven’t even seen yet?
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It’s OK and Fantasy are both very similar videos, so for me it came down to the song, and I really just didn’t care much for the one Oscar used, so Bimyou’s video won that fight!
I almost never watch AMVs first on YouTube, I always download them (and then keep them on my HDD if they’re good), just out of habit. But I guess by doing so I’ve avoided the very issue you mention in your comments on Gaussian. I had to skip to the end of the video to even see what you’re talking about and yeah, that’s super dumb, screw that aspect of YouTube.
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