Anime: Soul Eater
Song: “Dive Into the Madness (Little Nightmares Rap)” by Dan Bull
If katranat’s video Reset the System, featured earlier in this list, is a lesson on internal sync, then Into the Madness is a Harvard PhD-level course on lyric sync. Every line in this song — and there are a lot of them, many of them obscenely specific — is matched in insanely clever ways with scenes from the anime, to the point where if I didn’t know any better, I might think that this song was written with Soul Eater in mind to begin with. It’s such absurd fun, following the lyrical path through this video, and continuously dazzling to see what Kireblue will pull out of his pocket next to make the song work. It never falters once — study this video guys and girls, there will be a quiz tomorrow.
But there’s more to this video than just really (really) fun lyric sync, because Kireblue knows how to edit — don’t doubt that for a second. In the eight years I’ve been making these lists, he’s never had a video be featured, but that’s not because his videos aren’t fantastically constructed — in every previous case it’s just been my personal musical tastes not lining up at all with his song choices. The talent has always been there, but this is a new level — I have to believe that even if I didn’t like this song, Into the Madness would’ve snuck onto this list somehow, because this is a slick video, with effects work that is mostly hidden in the background, doing all the behind-the-scenes labor to accentuate the cuts and lyric sync so that that’s what you focus on and remember. There are practically no moments in this video that are without motion, and Kireblue stitches them all together seamlessly. This is nearly three minutes of pure, twisted fun, and you’d be mad to skip it.
Anime: Various (Tales Of)
Song: “Héroïne” by NATIONAL ナショナル
Ever since I put this video on my Honorable Mentions list last year, I’ve been waiting with baited breath for Edit Station to release a video like this — his work up until this point was good, but always rough enough around the edges that it kept me at arm’s length. The Tales of Legends, though, is exactly the kind of AMV I was always hoping he’d make eventually — he demonstrates an impressive talent for finding scenes that flow easily into one another, using match cuts and internal motion to make everything wondrously, harmoniously intertwined. And while this video is almost nothing but fight scene after fight scene, the calm, sunny song gives the entire video a really unique feeling that I kind of never want to end. Re-reading this, it feels like I’m really understating how much I like this, so just trust me — Edit Station tapped into something totally magical here, don’t miss it.
Anime: Various
Song: “G.I.N.A.S.F.S.” by Fall Out Boy
Something we don’t talk enough about in the AMV community is just how common it is for editors to make AMVs for other people — whether it’s a birthday MEP, a Secret Santa exchange, or just because, it’s something I’ve seen a lot of, and it’s been that way for a while. Make no mistake, this is really cool. Editing an AMV is no small thing — even if you’ve been around in the hobby for years and already have the footage ready to go on your hard drive, it can still take hours of your time to actually edit something together, and ultimately since it’s for someone else, you have to take their tastes into consideration and make your artistic decisions accordingly, which sometimes requires letting go of what you want to see in the final product. In my opinion the fact that this practice is so widespread gives credence to my belief that the AMV community is one of the best nerd communities you can be a part of.
Seratonin Callin is a video that was made by three friends, for another one of their friends, to cheer her up because she was going through a rough time. I refer you back to the second sentence in this write-up: this is really cool. But what makes it even better is that, well, it’s a superb video even without that context. The editing is super dynamic and the video flows incredibly smoothly between the different parts — if not for the change in anime I might not guess that this was edited by more than one person. It’s fun and sentimental and as upbeat as you could ever want a video edited to this song to be, and I can’t recommend it enough. Oh, and the last few seconds, with the text — chef’s kiss.
Anime: Little Witch Academia
Song: “POP/STARS” by K/DA
If you’ve been paying attention and read through my Ineligible Videos list that was posted a few days ago, you’ll remember a Little Witch Academia video that I talked about by an editor named aerialesque. I have had that video in my possession since 2016, even though it wasn’t actually publicly released until just a couple weeks ago, and I love it unconditionally. The one problem with this has been that it completely, utterly ruined every other Little Witch Academia video I’ve seen since then — none of them have even come close to measuring up to that one for me, to the point where even seeing that a video uses LWA has subconsciously prejudiced me against it before I even hit play.
…Until, that is, SilkAMV came along and released one of the most excitingly-edited videos in all of 2021, and broke the spell. Witches Go Hard doesn’t let up for its entire runtime, swirling through kinetic clip after kinetic clip with all the friction of perfect vacuum. He makes heavy use of masked transitions to achieve such butter-smooth rhythm, but they are immaculately crafted, to the point where your brain practically edits them out as such. This feels like a continuous ride from the first scene to the final fade. And the internal sync on display here — geeze. I thought I’d seen it all but this video is so chock-full of these wow moments that the energy coursing through it is amped up to the gigawatt range — this thing could light up the entirety of New York City for a month straight.
It’s magical when an AMV is able to totally buck your expectations, or change your perspective in some fundamental way, or, maybe to be a little less hyperbolic, to simply rock your socks off. Witches Go Hard did the first two for me to varying degrees, but I think everyone will experience the rocking of the socks. Be warned, though, that the video doesn’t lie — it goes hard.
Anime: 5 Centimeters Per Second
Song: “Me (Heavy)” by Fred again..
5 Centimeters Per Second burned up its goodwill with me years ago. In most cases, anime that were overused 10+ years ago, forgotten about, then rediscovered to be used in AMVs nowadays don’t bother me, no matter how many AMVs I may have seen with them in my early days of being an editor, but to this day I have an allergic reaction to 5CPS, and the only reason I gave this video a look is because it’s a TRUTH CRAB video, and TRUTH CRAB can practically do no wrong in my book. And as if to prove it, he made this one work.
To be honest, it’s hard for me to pinpoint what exactly it is that works so well here, but I think it is, as usual, the more reserved editing style and pacing that’s such a hallmark of this editor’s work. When there’s beat sync, it’s understated, and when TRUTH CRAB lets the video breathe, it inhales and exhales slooowly. This tempered approach works well with the story that TRUTH CRAB explores, which is basically a simplified — but somehow simultaneously amplified — version of the primary narrative of the movie. It explores the main character’s relationship with the two girls, without blunting any of the accompanying tangled emotions in the process. The result is a surprisingly complex and nuanced video that offers glimpses of regret and sadness and optimism all at once, along with the suggestion that maybe I’ve been a little harsh on this source and it’s time to give it another chance.
Anime: End of Evangelion
Song: “Body” by Onumi
CW: Flashes/strobing — seriously, if you have any photosensitivities at all, stay far, far away from this video
I saw a lot of weird videos this year, but I don’t think I saw anything more manic and insane than Sterben Sie. It assaults your senses from its opening seconds, dousing every scene in crazy color swaps and blended overlays. SakuraBipolar twitch-syncs to every beat, making it pulse and writhe to the relentless rhythm of the song. It flashes overlaid psychedelia at you faster than your brain can process, daring you to turn away or close your eyes. The song itself seems to want you dead — aggro-brostep that can shatter glass and level cities. And the content of the video itself is just as dark and violent as all these things would lead you to assume. There’s nothing here that is happy or optimistic or particularly positive at all, but my goodness does it put a stupid smile on my face. I stumbled across SakuraBipolar’s channel in the closing weeks of the year, and was immediately taken with his psychotic take on a medium from which I had thought I’d seen everything. Sterben Sie is one of the most extreme examples of the boundaries being pushed here, and I love it for that — everything is turned up to 11 and the effects work in particular is just so utterly fascinating and visually satisfying that I can’t turn away, no matter how much it clearly wants me to.
Anime: Cowboy Bebop // Cowboy Bebop The Movie: Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door
Song: “Wild Love” by BANNERS
I’ve seen a lot of Cowboy Bebop videos in my day. They tend to fall into one of two buckets: either hyped-up, stylish action, or low-key, depressing melodrama. If you’ve been reading everything on this list in order, you’ll already have seen both of these types represented on the Honorable Mentions part of my list this year. Occasionally, you may also stumble across more upbeat and fun Cowboy Bebop AMVs, but that’s rare, and even rarer is something like Wild Love — something positive and happy and truly heartfelt, a celebration of the main cast of characters and the weird kind of family they form as a crew.
Neko kitkat very successfully navigates through all the different personalities and relationships that these characters have with one another, and pretty much never dips into the bleak depths that the anime itself can sink to. Instead, she focuses her energies on making this as joyful as possible, surrounding the whole thing with an irresistible gravity that pulls you in like a black hole. The anime’s goofiest scenes are given a lot of attention here, and when all is said and done and its relentless eagerness has worked its magic on you, there’s nothing left to do but sit and smile in stupified bliss. And while I haven’t even mentioned how great this video is from an editing standpoint, that’s because it’s neko kitkat, and we all know what we’re getting into when we fire one of her videos up. This one is no exception.
In 2021, everyone turned into a Cowboy Bebop fan. While I enjoyed the anime plenty when I watched it, it was never one of my favorites and I never had the nostalgic, “first great anime I ever watched” experience with it that so many of my anime fan peers have. Wild Love, though, makes me wish that I did, and even emulates those feelings for me in high-def while it plays — and I love it, wildly.
Anime: Revue Starlight
Song: “Mars: Bringer of War / Venus: Bringer of Peace” by Gustav Holst (as performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra)
Yes, you read that video length correctly — this is a 15-minute AMV, but I promise you that it’s the fastest 15 minutes you’ll experience all day. The Planets is epic in its scale, and ambitious in its ideas, but Megamom is able to keep it all under tight control, never allowing himself to become overzealous with his approach. Presented in two halves that are reminiscent of the acts in a play, the video leans hard into the theatrical themes in the anime, using Gustav Holst’s sweeping orchestral pieces to soundtrack some of the most grandiose drama in the AMV world in all of 2021. Literally every single piece of this video feels enormous, and the bigger it gets, the more it seems to fill the massive volume that Megamom has emptied out for it.
The video’s two halves are distinctly different, the first being strongly action-oriented while the second is more somber and clearly narrative, with much sparser editing that matches the vast, cavernous space it takes place in. Both halves are fantastic for entirely different reasons, and I don’t prefer one over the other. The first is much more gripping, and the editing is really something to behold — Megamom hurls swordfights and showmanship at you at a constant clip, letting the dramatic theatricality play out in thrilling ways, always synced brilliantly to the swells and contractions of the orchestra. Especially striking is his intuitive use of excitingly composed shots to enhance every aspect of the video in those moments — this first part of the video just feels totally all-in from every angle, and it’s an absolute, rip-roaring good time.
The second half of the video, in contrast, is much softer and slower, with sync that takes a looser tack. It’s never entirely clear to me how much of what happens in this video is literal, and how much is some imaginative, symbolic abstraction, but the second part of the video feels much more like the latter, with a surreal landscape and color palette dominating. The feeling here acts as a calming response to the video’s adrenaline-spiked first half, and as a means of resolving the story and loosening the tension, it works wonders and is equally as enthralling, although totally different.
You won’t see many AMVs like this, no matter how long the hobby remains intact. It’s not the kind of thing viewers will seek out, nor is it the kind of video editors will put the time into making, at least not en masse. But when they come along, it’s worth dropping what you’re doing and giving them your time and attention, because when the result is this good, it’s hard to think of a better way to spend it.
Anime: Tamako Love Story // Tamako Market
Song: “Supercut” by Lorde
Everybody makes mistakes, right? I’m sure you can think of 10 off the top of your head that you’ve made in the last 24 hours. I can name one even farther back: I came into 2021 thinking that I could probably go the rest of my life without seeing another Tamako Love Story/Market AMV. But, boy, I was wrong — I had no idea that TroubleClef would be releasing what is almost certainly the single, definitive video using these sources this year. It was a stupid thing to think, and I hope you all can forgive me.
Seriously, though, videos that use this source seem to be completely unable to do anything but to retell the anime’s story for the billionth time. I haven’t even seen either Love Story or Market, but I get it — boy grows up next to girl, starts to like her, confesses, gets turned down, gets depressed, decides to leave and go out in the Big Wide World as a result, girl realizes her feelings at the last moment and stops him from getting on the train, throws him their paper cup phone thing and says something that makes him cry (I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess it’s “Suki daiyo”) — boom, roll credits. I could be wrong about that, and feel free to point it out in the comments if so, but if I am then A WHOLE LOT OF YOU HAVE SOME EXPLAINING TO DO, BECAUSE WHY THE HELL IS THAT EVERY SINGLE TAMAKO VIDEO??
Ahem. Relationship_Final.MP4. Right. The reason this video is so good, as I’m sure you’ll have guessed by now, is that it takes a different approach than all those other ones — it’s not an angsty video that has a happy ending, it’s an angsty video that doesn’t resolve in the way you want it to. It’s about heartbreak, it’s about not getting what you want, it’s about having to move forward knowing that the person you love doesn’t love you back. I like this so much because, well, that’s life. The platitude that says “Life’s not fair” is lazy and boring, sure, but it’s right, and I appreciate it when this is investigated in art.
Beyond the thematic strength of this video, I also love the way it’s actually explored — via the main character looking through video recordings of himself and the girl from over the years. And TroubleClef adds a ton of subtle visual finesse to the video, from barely-there light leaks which give the video a soft, delicate look and feel, to a few really pretty patterned overlays that give certain objects or colors a textured look. Everything about this video feels intentionally, painstakingly crafted to achieve this result, and it was worth it. Relationship_Final.MP4 is a genuine, heartfelt, and — above all — relatable video that was one of the most unexpected and wonderful emotional spaces I got to spend time in in 2021; please make sure you do too.
Anime: End of Evangelion // Sailor Moon
Song: “Immaterial” by SOPHIE
This has been a video that’s fascinated me since I first watched it, many months ago. Ostensibly a tribute to Sophie Xeon, who passed away in January, IMMATERIAL is a video that defies my many attempts to categorize or even simply describe it in a satisfactory way. Sailormoonfreak uses two anime that couldn’t be more tonally different, focusing most of the scene selection on clips that communicate the idea of “immateriality” to varying degrees of literal interpretation. The Sailor Moon transformation scenes are planted right next to Rei’s ghostly figure rising from the Earth as she initiates the Apocalypse — consequently, this video never feels quite right; the mood is elusive and difficult to get my hands around. Despite the song’s obvious empowering attitude, nothing about this video feels happy, exactly — I can’t tell if this is by design or if my own take is getting in the way of what is ultimately supposed to be a positive message. Either way, I can’t help but sense a deep anxiety seething beneath the surface of this AMV, and that, I think, is what keeps drawing me back — I really want to unravel this video and understand it. Thankfully, sailormoonfreak’s editing is enthralling, translating the bouncy energy of this song into the colors and shapes that fit it best. This video will probably never get boring to me, and hopefully you’ll find as much to explore yourself.
subculture diaries 
The Tales of Legends – This is incredibly satisfying. It moves through all the different anime so smoothly, the editor has put an awful lot of effort into matching the scenes and it works so well.
Seratonin Callin PICK UP THE PHONE – Despite being familiar with all of these editors, I somehow missed this video entirely. This is so lovely and heartfelt, and honestly astounding for an AMV conjured up within a day. It’s amazing what people will do for each other.
Me (Heavy) – I must admit I have a vague memory deliberately not watching this one because it uses 5cm per second, so I’m completely guilty of being burned out by this source and judging a book by it’s cover (I should really know better though). Thank you for including this, I’ve found I actually love this a lot now that I’ve given it a chance.
Sterben Sie – I thought I had a high a tolerance for excessive Evangelion videos, but this is a whole other level. Despite being the embodiment of eye strain, this is definitely worth at least one watch, it’s heartening seeing such creative effects/editing in this day and age.
Not much to say for this selection of videos. A few of them were on my own list, and the others I don’t have anything I want to add.
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I missed this Edit Station AMV completely. This is definitely right in the wheelhouse of what I love most about their work, but it’s an eespecially tasteful, smooth and consistent example of what they’re really capable of. This isn’t an original concept by any strectch but it’s focused and reigned in in ways that make so many similar videos miss the mark for me or come across as too exhausting or in your face for me. The ending was a really nice surprise, not just providing a satisfying conclusion but an acknowledgement that yeah, this is an upbeat song but it’s a mellow one at heart.
I can only assume that I missed this TroubleClef/espresso/Daze because it came out in December and my attention was on too many other things and too many other AMVs, because I love all three of those editors and their videos and the idea of them collaborating should have been a must-watch. I’m sure I saw this but didn’t give it a fair shake. It’s really fun and all their parts really compliment each other well. I agree with everything you said about collaboration videos like this. Is my opinion swayed by knowing/sort of knowing these editors? Yeah probably. But I’m always intruged by these kind of things even when it’s editors that I’m not in a community with.
If “Sterben Sie” isn’t a slow burn of an AMV, well then I don’t know what to call it. There’s nothing subtle about it at all so I know that’s the weirdest way to describe it, but for me it’s not a video that really starts to work until I’m partway through it and the cumulative effects of the effects palette/visual motifs have some time to establish what the editor is going for. Not quite one of my favorite works from SB but the effort nearly gets it there.
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