2021 was an…interesting year for AMVs. For me personally, I experienced a kind of AMV burnout in 2021 that I don’t think I’ve ever really experienced before. I couldn’t say when it happened exactly, or whether there was even one specific tipping point, but I crossed a line this year where I got bored with AMVs in a way I never have before. At least for part of the year, keeping up with AMVs this year felt like less fun and more work than ever before. This is not an auspicious way to introduce my list proper, but this context is very, very important in understanding why certain videos on this list are here.
This year, originality went further than ever in appealing to my tastes and keeping me coming back. I was desperate for editors that could flip the medium on its head and make stuff that I had never seen before. I say that I don’t know when I crossed the line from engagement to boredom, but in reality I think it’s pretty clear that in discovering HazelNeverTalks’s channel last year, and TRUTH CRAB’s the year before, both gave me a taste of something that I didn’t know I had wanted at the time, but have been chasing ever since. Together, these two editors have fundamentally shifted my tastes and demonstrated that the medium can indeed be taken in entirely new directions, and that the way to do this isn’t necessarily, as I think we tend to assume, through greater and greater technical skill. Disregarding the established conventions, or simply operating outside of them altogether, is just as viable a path…but, sadly, a much less-trod one.
Or so I thought. To my surprise, I stumbled more or less by accident into a number of channels and videos that did exactly this in 2021. Many of these editors are not technically proficient in the way that might immediately come to mind when you think of that phrase, but they are looking at the hobby through a different lens than the rest of us, and are making stuff that sates my cravings in some very satisfying ways. Now, to be clear, the majority of videos on this list could probably be considered well within the expected boundaries of AMV editing — plenty of good stuff is being made in that vein, and we’ll be seeing a lot of it in the coming days. But I was especially taken with the weird, the unique, the stuff that made me think, “I’ve never seen that before”. And I think this list leans in that direction more than any of my past lists ever have.
So with that somewhat heavy introduction…welcome to my list of my Top 50 AMVs of 2021!
The Process
If this is your first experience with one of my yearly AMV lists, well, you’re in for a treat, in my not-so-humble opinion. Every year I watch through a number of AMVs, both from editors that I know, follow, or am subscribed to on YouTube; in addition, I try to hunt down other editors that I’ve never heard of before, by trawling through AMVNews, keeping an eye on AnimeMusicVideos.org and the forums there, as well as checking out any interesting-looking videos (and some that are not-so-interesting-looking) posted in the various AMV Discord servers I’m in. I have friends who occasionally send me videos that they come across as well. I enter these videos as I watch them into AMV Tracker, and assign them a rating out of 10 to denote how much I liked them. Then, about halfway through December, I stop watching any new videos (whether newly-released, or videos from earlier in the year that I simply missed), go into the list that I made over the course of the year, and identify any I rated 7.5 or higher (along with some I may have rated lower than that, but made a specific note to rewatch at a later time), watch through all of them one-by-one until I’m able to get down to a Top 50 + a number of “honorable mentions” — the definition of which I’ll get into shortly. I then rewatch through this “final” list and write about the AMVs in what is (hopefully) a way that communicates why I think they deserve to be mentioned in a list like this.
For the number people out there, in 2021 I entered 301 videos into my database, 123 of which (41%) made it onto the list for consideration. In the grand scheme of things, I recognize that 301 videos is a pitifully small number compared to how many AMVs were released throughout the year — to which I would respond that I’m only human, and trust me, this is a big enough task as it is.
I say this every year, but if you read nothing else in this lengthy intro text, please read and make sure you understand this: This list is mine and mine alone. All opinions expressed throughout this list are only mine — I do not consult with anyone before creating the list or writing my thoughts. There is no panel of judges, only me. These are my favorite AMVs from 2021, so please do not take it personally if your video is not featured here. In the same vein, if you are on here, I hope you enjoy what I wrote! But please also realize that my opinion on your video is only one 30-something, nerdy guy’s thoughts, nothing more. Ultimately, let’s all just have fun with it!
The List
Today we start the list by looking at 20(!) “honorable mention” videos. The number of videos I feature in this portion of my list keeps going up, but that’s just a testament to how much good stuff I ended up finding this year that I didn’t want to exclude. It’s important to note a couple things: (1) The below videos are not necessarily videos #51-70, were I to extend my rankings — rather, they are the videos which missed making my Top 50 about which I have the most to say, and that I really wanted to share, and (2) The below videos are not in any rank order, but instead are presented in alphabetical order by editor name.
After today, I’ll be counting down my 50 favorite AMVs of 2021, 10 at a time, over the next five days. At the end of the list, I will also talk a little bit about my Editor of the Year — this is generally the editor I found the most interesting throughout the year, and not necessarily the one who made the highest volume of videos that I liked. So, a lot to look forward to!
An Appeal
It occurred to me over the last few days that, while it might seem self-evident as to why I make this list each year, it’s probably worth explaining in a little more detail. While, yes, I do have a propensity to need to rate/categorize/rank every little piece of media I consume, a far bigger motivator for me in creating these Top AMV lists is to show off awesome videos and editors to a wider audience than they might get otherwise. This is a driving philosophy behind a lot of this blog, not just these lists, but I feel like maybe I haven’t done a great job in making that clear.
Also, though, something that I’ve never communicated (shame on me) is that in writing these Top AMV lists, I always kind of secretly hope that the editors featured on here see whatever it is I write about their videos. Often, editors will put their heart and soul into making a fantastic piece of work that gets a couple hundred views and that’s it — and often little to no meaningful feedback. I do these write-ups in the hopes that they will stumble across them someday to know that their work actually had a lasting impact on someone somewhere, but I’ve come to the realization that that’s unlikely — my audience isn’t that wide. So my request to you is this: if you see an editor on here that you know, or have the ability to reach out to, could you please direct them here? This is not to boost my traffic or to stroke my ego, I genuinely want these editors to know that their work has been seen and appreciated.
The Future
If you read my introductory post a couple days ago, there was one crucial detail in there that will very likely have an effect on this blog — the fact that I will be a father in just a few months! This is a wonderful thing, but I have to be realistic here about how my time will be spent moving forward, so it’s with some conflicted emotions that I say this: I don’t expect to be doing a Top AMVs list next year, and possibly for the next several years. I don’t say this lightly, but please realize — this is a massive time investment at the end of each year. I reserve vacation days at my job each December to watch through all these AMVs and do these write-ups. I have to fight with WordPress for hours to get each post formatted correctly. In all, each year I probably put anywhere between 30-50 hours into actually constructing these lists, and this doesn’t count all the time I spend watching the AMVs and entering them into AMV Tracker throughout the year in the first place. It’s a truly mammoth task, it’s mentally exhausting, and I simply don’t anticipate that I’m going to have the energy to do it on top of being a new father of an 8-month old.
While I don’t want to say for certain that I won’t do anything as far as listing my favorite AMVs goes, in all likelihood if I do, it will not look like the AMV lists you’ve come to expect. I hope you understand, and I hope that it’s not the complete end of these lists forever. Of all the things I’ve contributed to the AMV world over the last 15 years, these lists are probably the ones that I’m most proud of. This blog isn’t going anywhere, in any case, so please tune in every once in a while!
Want more?
If you enjoy lists like these and want different perspectives, please be sure to check out katranat’s blog, where she will be doing something similar to this (although I’m not entirely sure what form it will take — but be sure to bookmark it!), and, of course, seasons‘ blog — although I’ve been given to understand that his will be delayed this year, please keep checking in on it. He’s a close friend, his blog is what inspired this one, and I have such immense respect for his opinions on the medium and his writing — trust me, you don’t want to miss it.
Wow, that’s more than enough rambling for one post. A huge thank you for reading through all that, you’re a trooper! Let’s get to it with the 20 honorable mentions!
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Anime: Touhou Project
Song: “C.Y.D.T.T. (Can You Dance To This?!)” by 20syl
I admit — I’m probably biased towards this AMV because of the anime. Although I’ve never actually seen it, I’m a huge fan of bullet hell shmups, and the Touhou games are some of my favorites. So seeing an AMV like this, showing all sorts of references to characters and events I’m familiar with from the games tickled something in me that probably allowed me to overlook a lot of this video’s many and obvious flaws. I won’t harp on them, but I will say that Animetrash AMVs still manages to engineer some pretty fantastic moments of internal sync that really make me think this is an editor worth keeping my eye on. Rough around the edges, sure — but every time I watch this I have a whole heckuva lotta fun, and that’s worth a lot to me.
Anime: Cowboy Bebop // Cowboy Bebop The Movie: Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door
Song: “Snake Charmer” by Dwellings
CW: Flashes/strobing
Snake Charmer isn’t a video that will win any awards for subtlety — it’s maximalist to its core, shooting off kinetc scene after kinetic scene like fireworks. Where there isn’t motion within the anime itself, Calc creates his own — the video zooms and veers and flashes, and other than in its opening seconds, is pretty much never still. It can be difficult to parse, but that’s probably at least part of the point, and is definitely part of its appeal. Calc’s work can often be a bit too “trendy” for me stylistically — referring to “Instagram edits” is probably getting to be a pretty tired and hackneyed phrase around these parts (although I can guarantee this won’t be the last time I’ll reference them over the next few days), but it’s where Calc often goes with his videos, and that’s typically where he loses me. And while Snake Charmer flirts with that style as well, there’s more substance here in the scene selection and the raw emotion that pours out of this video than I’m used to. As chaotic and overloaded as it can feel, it never fails to convey the tragedy that always beats just below the surface of its source material, and as a result it didn’t take long for this one to worm its way in to my regular rotation this year.
Anime: I Want to Eat Your Pancreas
Song: “Grief” by EASTGHOST
I forgot to mention this in the introductory text above, but a lot of the videos on this year’s list are going to be…depressing, to say the least. We’re diving right in to that mopey ocean early with Taken//Given, a video about dealing with the loss of a loved one. Normally videos that go the sadboy path with this source (which is, at least count, all but one of them) just feel really rote and boring to me, and conceptually there’s nothing here that’s all that unique — no, this is just a really cool video from a technical perspective. Cegan manipulates the footage in visually interesting ways, injects a really awesome piece of internal sync when that sawtooth synth cuts across the ambience at 0:35, and gives the video an artistic flair that makes this video easily rewatchable, even if you’re sick of tragic IWtEYP AMVs. I love the visual creativity and texture that went into this video, and it’s definitely worth keeping around for that alone; and if you dig the dour mood, well, shoot, that’s just a bonus.
Anime: Arakawa Under The Bridge // Arakawa Under The Bridge X Bridge
Song: “Light Up My Room” by Barenaked Ladies
I’ve seen a few Arakawa Under The Bridge AMVs, and as I’ve never seen the anime for myself I’ve had to build up an idea in my head about the tone of the show — the AMVs tend to be goofy and upbeat, so when I first saw this relaxed, sentimental take on the series it was a bit of a shock to the system. Now, if you’ve been along for the ride on pretty much any of my previous Top AMVs lists, you’ll know that Copycat Revolver is a frequent flyer — there’s a reason his videos always show up here, year after year. His reliability is second to none, and Filament is no exception, demonstrating as usual his vicelike grip on the basic fundamentals of editing. For a song as sparse as this, Copycat wrings out some of his most delicate internal sync, keeping the relatively static scene selection from becoming too sleepy. He supplements this with his typical wink-and-nod lyric sync, telling a delightful love story and using the anime’s surreal visuals to communicate an intimacy between the two characters that goes beyond what most AMVs of this type are able to. It’s all done so well that the video’s “big” moments hit all the harder, and the result is an incredibly well-rounded AMV that took me by surprise in all the best ways.
Anime: Liz and the Blue Bird
Song: “crystallize” by dthd
Calling this an “AMV” is maybe a stretch — I’m not sure how much, if any, editing was actually done here, but for all intents and purposes it meets my definition, so here it is. It’s actually quite surprising to me how much that thick white border makes a difference in influencing my feelings on the content of this video, which is little more than a short (and possibly unedited — I haven’t seen the anime myself) scene from the movie, but man, it really does. It reminds me of a matted picture frame containing a single photo at its center, capturing some important, candid moment between two people close to one another, frozen in time forever. The simple piano track that backs the whole thing amplifies this, and while this may be the simplest video on this entire list, the emotions it carries certainly aren’t. I’m fascinated by this short video, but getting more like it wouldn’t sate anything — its unresolved, vignette-like nature makes it into something uniquely precious, and I prefer it that way.
Anime: Various
Song: “The Bunny Song” by Ken Ashcorp
Despite this being clearly a very technical video, there’s something charmingly old-school about it — admitting, of course, that “old-school” is now becoming a constantly moving yardpost. This feels like the kind of comedy/fun video that someone would have striven to create back in 2007 or 2008, with the roto’d characters and vector outlines, but this isn’t to say that it doesn’t work in 2021. This is, frankly, an AMV that I can’t get enough of — every time I watch it I notice another joke that I didn’t see the last time around, another fun editing trick, another lyric that actually received attention that I somehow missed up to this point. This is one of those “bang-for-your-buck” AMVs that grows in value over time, that you end up wanting to keep on hand for any time you need a quick smile. It’s never gut-bustingly hilarious, but it’s fun enough and short enough and well-constructed enough from a technical perspective (actually, let’s not understate this element of the video — the consistency of things like color palettes, transition usage and the clean rotos are all top-notch), that you really ought to download it and keep it close at all times. You never know when that smile might come in handy!
Anime: End of Evangelion
Song: “Dirty Summer” by Mother Falcon
If I were to give an award for “Coolest Editor Username”, Ghosts Will Pass Through Here would win first place and it wouldn’t even be close. As for the video, well, it’s another apocalyptic End of Evangelion AMV, which, even without this blog, you’ve probably already had your fill of; Lord knows I post them enough. But there’s always room for one more, and this year the nod goes to Our Overwhelming Touch, a video with some really clever internal sync and a Happy Doomsday! mood that manages to feel both suffocating and liberating. The end of the world in this video isn’t exactly a joyful occasion, but it kind of forces you to smile through it regardless; so no, this isn’t a new take on the movie in AMV form by any stretch, but Ghosts’s editing here is so well-executed that having another one in the aether can hardly be thought of as a bad thing. I really enjoy this one, and I’m looking forward to what else this editor can bring to the table in the coming months and years.
Anime: Wonder Egg Priority // Neon Genesis Evangelion
Song: “The Sound” by Carly Rae Jepsen
CW: Flashes/strobing
I find it can be pretentious to talk about media in terms of “difficulty” — where something “difficult” to enjoy is often presented as the superior product. It smacks of elitism, and sometimes I wonder if the people who make these claims actually enjoy the stuff on its own terms, or if they rather like the concept of enjoying something initially unappealing because it sets them apart. But then I see something like […]rika and I kind of start to get it a little, because yeah, this is not a video you just flip on and immediately enjoy. In fact, I wouldn’t say I “enjoy” this video at all — it’s extraordinarily abrasive, layering blown out distortion/screaming on top of a sugary synthpop song, flashing random color-blended scenes over a looped clip of a girl rubbing scars on her wrist. Some might call this needlessly edgy, some might call it high art — I say, why can’t it be both?
It’s not a fun video. The “editing” is practically nonexistent, in that there’s no beat sync to speak of, and the only thing that seems to be intentionally synced is the sudden shift to the Evangelion footage near the end, when the audio becomes a true wall of sound and distortion that is physically uncomfortable to listen to. Sometimes, though, there’s something to be said for sitting through stuff like this — art that makes you squirm either because its subject matter is shocking or its presentation is agonizing is just as valuable as the stuff that goes down easy. As a meditation on suicidal thoughts, […]rika probably does it better than most. I walk away from this video completely, utterly spent, as if I’ve just run a half marathon. It takes no prisoners, and you may want to turn it off 10 seconds in — I wouldn’t blame you. It doesn’t get “better” as it goes on. But that’s kind of the point: to sit through it and agonize with the editor, or the character the video is portraying, or people everywhere who suffer from depression — however you want to frame it seems perfectly valid, and it will have served its purpose.
Anime: Fate/Stay Night: Heaven’s Feel
Song: “Oh No (Maraasim Remix)” by Capone
Editing with TikTok meme songs is a dangerous game — you risk the video being completely discounted regardless of its content simply because viewers can’t separate the song from its new “ironic” meaning that TikTok has bestowed upon it. If you’re Ileia, though, you can just disregard this altogether, because if you’re Ileia that means you know how to make a video feel as badass as anything with less digi-cultural baggage simply by being better than anyone else who might try. Oh No is a seamless action video, the kind that Ileia does so well and with seemingly so little effort — the internal sync here is practically without equal, giving this video a flawlessly smooth finish that makes it absolutely frictionless. Its short runtime makes it easily digestible and dangerously addicting — be careful, but realize there are worse things to get hooked on.
Anime: Mind Game
Song: “OFFSHORE” by Karmelin
Karmelin’s videos have become, to me, very polarizing — I either become fully invested in whatever weird aesthetic the editor is trying to pull off or am completely turned off by editing choices that rub against the grain as far as my particular tastes go. Karmelin has several videos that fall squarely on either side of that line, but OFFSHORE straddles it in impressive fashion — it’s a strange video, even by Karmelin’s own wonky standards, but at times feels inconsistent at best. The thing is, when Karmelin gets it right here, the video absolutely soars — the sequence from 2:00-2:10, with the camera panning around the car speeding down the highway while the driver raises his hands in the air — is such endorphin-riddled audio/visual bliss that I almost can’t believe it. The video has other moments that are almost as good, and although they’re punctuated by editing and effects work that doesn’t tap into the mood of the song in ways quite as satisfying, on the whole the video’s surrealist take on the floaty, dreamy future bass track (which is Karmelin’s own creation, just like everything else on their channel) is an experience worth having at least once.
Anime: Various
Song: “Graduation (Friends Forever)” Vitamin C
It’s been checks notes over 15 years now that I’ve been an active part of the AMV hobby, I’ve watched countless thousands of AMVs over the years, and this is possibly the first one I’ve ever seen that has high school graduation as its theme — really, this kind of blows my mind given the sheer number and eternal popularity of high school-based anime. What gives? I have no idea, but keiichiface tackles the concept successfully here, dousing it in the romanticized sentimentality of a John Hughes film. Although lightly edited and mostly pretty static, the video still shades the entire production in the kind of emotional tones that only nostalgia-tinted glasses can create. Did anyone really like high school this much? Was it actually the best time of anyone’s life? I doubt it, but this AMV makes me want to relive it anyway, if only for the two-and-a-half minutes it’s playing.
Anime: Chobits
Song: “Hello World” by Louie Zong
Rebooted is the type of video I can’t really see anyone disliking, but there may be some psychopaths reading this for all I know — even then, though, I have to believe it would win them over. It’s as unassuming a video as you could imagine, with the absolute bare minimum of editing — a handful of moments of internal sync and some well-placed cuts are about all that’s here, with the rest of the scenes following the relaxed song at an equally relaxing pace. But this isn’t the kind of AMV you watch to enjoy the editing, you watch it just because it’s nice. There’s a tranquility and a refreshing lack of tension here, a pleasantness that seeps into the crevasses your brain and melts over you like a warm blanket. I love its innocence and the way it shuts down any negativity that the external world might be shoving in my face while it’s on — the internet could always use more videos like this.
Anime: Hakubo
Song: “Something Beautiful” by BEL
Pick any Megamom video at random and you’ll probably get to experience at least one totally unique element that you simply cannot find anywhere else in the hobby. And while parhelion wasn’t even Megamom’s best video this year (stay tuned!), it demonstrates this in striking fashion, with Megamom splicing in live-action shots of his video filmed upside-down through a glass ball, with the AMV itself. The result is something that feels completely unlike anything else on this list, or in the wider AMV world for that matter. The distortions caused by the refraction, and the light effect work that Megamom does within the AMV combine to make something uniquely experimental. If I’ve any complaints, it’s that the content of the video — a simple adolescent romance story — doesn’t seem quite up to the task of holding the weight of this creative approach. On the other hand, I find myself wanting to justify the opposite argument — that Megamom’s live action shots elevate this story to a new level and give it new dimensions I simply haven’t fully explored yet. Is it something I’m losing sleep over? Not at all. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable video no matter what, and a great introduction to this editor’s completely singular vantage point on the hobby.
Anime: Astra Lost In Space
Song: “It’s OK” by Nightbirdie
If you’re reading this list hoping to come across a bunch of really heavy, sentimental, narrative-driven videos…well, here you go. There are a couple others that do lean into this style that I’ll be sharing in the coming days, but for the most part, We’re All A Little Lost is among the year’s best of this style, that I found anyway. And I realize as I say this that it might come across like I’m taking on a disappointed tone, but please don’t read it that way — this is more a reflection of how my tastes have shifted away from this type of video and on to more…well, you’ll see.
This video is really great, though, and it’s classic Moonpie — she’s another editor that frequently finds her way onto my lists because she’s such an expert at this. The anime she uses here looks like the kind of thing I would absolutely hate, but Moonpie somehow takes all these characters and creates tension, drama, and an actual compassion for them in the span of only a few minutes. Most editors that attempt this lose something along the way, sacrificing any actual connection the viewer can make by attempting to manufacture it — throwing melodramatic scene after melodramatic scene on the timeline in the hopes that whoever watches the video will finally give in and just feel something because how else are you supposed to react to the sad faces and the clenched fists? But Moonpie knows better, giving plenty of screentime to scenes that on their own might feel innocuous, but which over the course of the video build into backstory and context, and which make its climax hit in a way that is genuine. Whenever I watch this AMV I get completely sucked into its universe, and lose all sense of myself until the video is over — and it’s an utter delight, each and every time.
Anime: Various
Song: “Summer Montage / Madeleine” by Justin Hurwitz
Please bookmark this AMV, because the next few days are going to feel weighty and oppressive a lot of the time — but this video is exactly the opposite: a bright, cheerful, infectiously sunny video that can blow away the clouds without a second thought. I love hearing jazz in AMVs, simply because it’s so rare that I do, so that alone makes this video noteworthy, but Pablo Shoe takes the song and matches it to some of the warmest and most colorful scenes he can find. A little rotoscoping here and there for the purpose of transitions is about as technical as this video gets, and the rest is just stright-up good scene selection. Clear days, warm bars on winter nights, and all manner of comfy, soul-soaring scenery make up this video — there’s not a frame here that doesn’t burrow its way into those parts of your brain that shoot off the feel-good chemicals. A warm blanket and cozy fire on a January night, a cool breeze on an August day at the beach — whatever thing it is that will banish whatever discomfort you’re feeling at any given moment, this AMV conjures it up out of thin air and asks nothing of you in return but to just hit Play. So do it!
Anime: Various (Evangelion)
Song: “Space Ghost Coast to Coast” by Glass Animals
Look guys and girls — I’m just going to say it: I’m getting kinda sick of Evangelion videos! I’ve seen a lot of them over the years, and, well, they’re starting to lose their luster. Now, I say this with the caveat that there are a few more coming on my actual Top 50 this year, because some of them can still surprise or delight me in ways I don’t expect. Désirs Fatals, however, isn’t really one of them — or, at least, not from a conceptual standpoint. This is another edgy-ish Shinji character profile, so it’s nothing you probably haven’t seen before. BUT — and this is why it’s on here — man the editing on this is super slick. The jump cuts, the glitch effects, the color manipulation, the countless mini-segments that are just edited so tightly…it’s a breathless video, and an enduringly fun one to watch, purely from an editing perspective. There’s a sequence starting at around 2:17 that goes full-on psychedelia mode and it just melts my brain every time I watch it — the kind of thing where I almost want to view it frame-by-frame just to understand what’s actually going on from the technical side.
Désirs Fatals will never win any originality awards, but that’s clearly not why this video exists — it’s a painstakingly crafted piece of editing gold, a video that flows from one scene to the next in such perfect harmony with the song that it hits pleasure buttons in my brain I didn’t even know exist. Turn off everything but your critical faculties and just enjoy the shapes and colors, man.
Anime: Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!
Song: “Money (That’s What I Want)” by Charli XCX
If this song was ever going to be made into an AMV, it was only ever going to be made into this AMV — can you imagine a more perfect fit? Not just the song, but this particular cover of the song — the attitude, the raspy delivery, the narcissistic energy that drips off it all fits Sayaka’s character like a glove, and Shizaya takes it all and makes it into some of the most fun 70 seconds that an Eizouken video has graced us with yet. The editing in here is diamond-solid — editors love to use the intro dance scenes when working with this source but I frankly can’t get enough of it, and Shizaya’s use of them here to sync to the snappy snare hits help to give The Producer an addictive quality that makes it so easy to watch and rewatch over and over again. The minimal effects work is a little rough around the edges (literally), but even that inbues this video with a certain scrappy charm that I kind of love. Overall a short-but-sweet treat of a video that is really, really hard to deny.
Anime: Various
Song: “Apple Tree” by Aurora
Released right between the time I stopped watching new releases for last year’s list and the beginning of 2021, Esoterra is technically a 2020 video, but it’s one I still wanted to write about, so I’m taking a page out of seasons‘ book and including it here. Psychedelia has become something of a norm in the AMV world over the past few years — I wrote about this in my 2018 list, the year I first started to notice such a style taking off. Esoterra follows in these footsteps, and is layered with all sorts of effects and colors and overlaid scenes — it shifts and morphs and bends back in on itself, never sitting still, always changing. At times it can feel abundantly overloaded with visual information, but never in a way that is destructive — the video feels like a cohesive whole, helped in large part by match cuts and seamless transitions that carry the viewer from one weird vista to the next. It borders on melting into abstract surrealism more than once, but you’re always pulled back by some scene or character or something solid that you can grasp onto in time. When you get lost in this video, you can really get lost in it, but that’s ok — you might not want to find your way out anyway.
Anime: Cowboy Bebop
Song: “My Sweet Lord” by George Harrison
If you’re looking for heavy, nostalgia-laced drama in your Cowboy Bebop AMVs, might I suggest that you need look no further than My Sweet Lord? On offer here is probably a lot of what you’d expect from the non-action side of this source — takara successfully channels the longing present in this song in a very real way, opting not for any strict narrative as a structure for the video, but for feeling and pathos instead. This isn’t a criticism — the video is very cohesive and well-rounded, despite takara’s refusal to follow any one of the many character arcs in the anime too far for too long. The video blurs the characters’ stories together into one big montage of aching regret, and even the happier scenes that takara sprinkles here and there throughout the video feel fleeting and impermanent. It’s not as brutally sad as plenty of other videos we’ll be getting to, but it emits a dull pang that thrums beneath the skin and effectively captures what makes Cowboy Bebop such a tragic story at its heart.
Anime: Various
Song: “Here Comes the Pain Train” by Jay Harper
Get Wrecked is a patently stupid video — I don’t think even TheLazyDaze would necessarily disagree with that. But stupid comedy has its place, and no matter how, ahem, one-track this joke is, the video’s short, sub-90 second runtime isn’t enough to wear it thin. It helps that Daze’s editing here is as sharp as ever, so even if you somehow get fed up with the content, the video’s pacing and sublime sync are more than enough to carry the load. Memey videos like this aren’t typically my thing, I admit, but Get Wrecked is just self-aware enough in its poking fun at an overused anime trope, and just well-edited enough while doing so, to justify the 86 seconds it asks of you, and then some.
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