Hello everybody, and welcome to my yearly look back at my favorite AMVs of the past 12 months! Normally I would take this opportunity to talk a little bit about things I’ve noticed in the AMV hobby over the past year — trends, themes, that kind of thing — but I’m going to forgo that this time and just kick this off by addressing the elephant in the room: last year, I had said that it was extremely likely that there would be no AMV list this year, what with my being a new father and having an eight-month-old kid to think about right now…and yet, here we are.
It’s true, I did not think I would be doing this at all until very, very recently — it wasn’t until about a month ago that I decided otherwise. Besides having less free time than I normally do, to be very frank, I hadn’t really watched many AMVs this year — at all. I will dive into this a bit more in a write-up that will be appearing in the following days, but until December of this last year I had watched embarrassingly few AMVs from 2022. As the end of November rolled around, it started to feel really weird to think that I wouldn’t be doing a retrospective this year. That kind of dug under my skin, and I decided that, in fact, I would try to make something happen here by hook or by crook.
Initially, I had thought I would just take the small pool of videos I had watched from 2022 and do write-ups on my favorites of those, in a single, small post, with no rankings whatsoever. That didn’t feel right either, though, and as I started to cram by doing my best to catch up on the past 12 months of AMVs in the matter of a few days whenever I could find the time, it began to feel like I would actually be able to do something bigger, and eventually this evolved into what we have here.
On the surface, this won’t look too much different from a normal year’s list, just a bit smaller — we’ll have 15 unranked Honorable Mentions in today’s post (more on that in a moment) and then my ranked Top 30, posted ten at a time over the next three days. I have also decided this year not to do an Editor of the Year award/write-up, and I will explain why below.
While to you, all of this probably looks pretty similar to what you’re used to on a yearly basis — albeit with just less stuff all-around — there are some pretty big differences from my end. The most significant is that, because I really just wasn’t watching 2022 AMVs throughout the year (and I assure you, this is not an exaggeration), the vast, vast majority of the AMVs on this list are ones I did not actually see until a handful of weeks ago. Because they have not been simmering over weeks and months, these rankings, to me, feel a lot looser and somewhat more casual than normal. The other element to all this that needs to be called out is that I watched way fewer videos in general — I did not watch every video my favorite editors released, and decided not to spend time checking out AMVs that didn’t appeal to me immediately, so if you’re wondering why certain AMVs that usually jive with my tastes are not here, it’s entirely likely that I just didn’t see them. This is also why I am not doing an Editor of the Year — it would feel disingenuous to me to name any single editor my “editor of the year” when I can’t say I really got a wide enough view of what 2022 had to offer. All this can be summarized by saying that, while you should always take these rankings with a grain of salt, this year it’s less a grain and more a boulder.
Finally (for this part), minor spoiler but no, Contemporary Dog will not be found anywhere on this list. I will not be elaborating further.
My process for determining the videos that you’ll see featured on this list in the coming days has not changed one bit from previous years, so instead of rehashing that for the ninth time, I will just direct you to last year’s corresponding post if you want the rundown — scroll down to the “The Process” section to read about how I do this. I will take this time to just mention some numbers so you have an idea of the scope of this year’s project: I entered 163 AMVs into AMV Tracker from 2022 this year, 70 of which made it into my final list for consideration — and then from there I narrowed down and derived the videos you will be watching and reading about in this and the following posts.
Today, as usual, we’ll be kicking off the list with my Honorable Mentions — 15 videos that I like enough to want to share with the world but which I don’t quite feel are good enough to be on the ranked part of my list. Like every year, I need to point out that these Honorable Mention AMVs are not necessarily videos that would fall into rankings 31 – 45 if I were to extend my list that far. Rather, these are just videos that are interesting to me in some way, or which demonstrate some intriguing potential in the editor, or which I just want to write about and think are worth sharing with you for whatever reason. These videos will be unranked — they are presented in alphabetical order by editor username.
Like last year, I would also like to ask that if you have the means to direct any editors you see on here (who you happen to know) to the write-ups about their videos, it would be awesome if you could — this is less to generate traffic to this blog and more, simply, because I want these editors to know that their work has been seen and appreciated.
Finally (really this time), I will post my typical disclaimer here: This list is mine, and mine alone. I did not consult with anyone in the making of this list. If your videos are not on here, please don’t take it personally, and if they are, I hope you enjoy what I wrote! — but please don’t take any of these rankings and write-ups as anything more than one guy’s (probably way too verbose) opinion.
If you just can’t get enough AMVs from 2022 and need even more of a fix, please head on over to katranat’s blog, where she is counting down her favorites of 2022 as well as I speak. She has stayed much more up-to-date on the hobby than I have this past year, and so you’ll probably get to see a lot of stuff that I didn’t even get a chance to take into consideration. You don’t want to miss it!
Okay, I’m done. These intros just keep getting wordier and wordier — I’m sorry, but also it probably won’t stop anytime soon. I know myself too well. I hope you enjoy this year’s list — now let’s get to the Honorable Mentions!
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Anime: SSSS.Dynazenon
Song: “Telefono” by Phoenix
Ankh in an AMV that, conceptually, I have no idea what to make of. Discerning any kind of story or even any solid themes appears to require familiarity with the anime being used — there’s a lot of dissonant scene selection where adjacent clips seem to rub against one another like sand paper. If it’s a personal exploration of any kind of emotional depth for the editor, they’ve all but obfuscated it from the casual viewer — and yet, there are pangs of delicacy and shadows of vibrant emotion that flit through this AMV when you pay careful attention. It’s a video that begs to be saved and re-watched to entice you to try and sharpen its edges into something definite. Maybe all of this is more the result of an oblique anime choice rather than the editor’s intention, or maybe I’m just not paying close enough attention; all I know is that it exerts a subtle pull on me that I can’t really resist.
Anime: Penguin Highway
Song: “easy mode” by angry apple
It’s difficult to categorize how this AMV makes me feel. There’s a lot of surreal, imaginative action here — stuff that would normally warrant something much peppier than this lo-fi instrumental hip hop track provides. And yet, whenever I watch this AMV I’m pacified into a calm, sunny daze that makes all this fantastical imagery feel utterly commonplace. Rather than sucking the proverbial wind out of the sails, though, this re-contextualization provides a unique space to just sit and enjoy while a soft warm breeze practically manifests in your room. Angry apple’s editing here is loose with enough little points of emphasis to keep the visuals from getting disconnected from the audio completely, and it all hangs together in a lighter-than-air, effervescent spritz of quick, simple pleasure.
Anime: Various (Studio Ghibli)
Song: “High Up” by half-alive
I am waiting patiently for the day when this editor doesn’t set the default clip speed in their AMVs to 300%, because if I’m being honest this approach does tend to hold their work back. It’s certainly the case here — many of the chosen scenes just look kind of goofy rushing by at that unnatural velocity, but you can also tell that Animetrash has a solid grasp of a lot of the other fundamentals, and it makes this video worth a look, maybe even a few. There’s excellent lyric sync throughout, and some, quite frankly, lovely internal sync every few bars that erases whatever building doubts I might have about whether I really like this video as much as I think I do. Perhaps most importantly, it’s overflowing with a buoyant sentiment that reveals a genuine love of these sources and an understanding of the humanity at their core that makes them tick. Yes, I do like this quite a bit in spite of its obvious deficiencies, and hopefully you will too.
Anime: Samurai Champloo
Song: “Walkin” by Denzel Curry
Some videos speak for themselves, and despite my best efforts to add to them with my words, they really don’t need my help. I suspect that Walkin’ might be one such video, a buttery-smooth action AMV made up of flashing swords and editing so slick it should have…its own…postal code? I dunno man — I don’t do these write-ups in the order you’re reading them and Walkin’ is near the bottom of the pile, so my metaphors are breaking down. Blader, I’m sorry if you found your way here and were hoping for some insightful comments about this silky example of badass action, but your work has its own voice and I think it makes its case perfectly well without my input.
Anime: Wings of Honneamise
Song: “Want To Be Free” by Sea Power
It would be easy (and lazy) to call something like this a “slow burn” — maybe it’s an accurate way to describe Venture, but there’s baggage in doing so which implies that this AMV takes time to pay its dividends. For me, the payoff is practically immediate — beautiful animation, limitless vistas and a striking loneliness soak this AMV from its opening seconds, and if you know me, well, nothing more needs to be said. The video unfolds at a relaxed pace and introduces us to…nobody, really — characters are either physically distant or their presence is simply implied rather than explicit. This isn’t an AMV about people, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t achingly human — reserved and patiently edited, Venture is an expansive, melancholy look at the allegorical horizons that give us hope, as well as the limitations that prevent us from realizing them. Okay, yes, it burns slow — but all the better to shed light on its vast, isolated landscape.
Anime: My Dress-Up Darling
Song: “Faceshopping” by SOPHIE
Last year, I praised the weird, the obscure, the experimental — I was especially interested in videos and editors that were playing at the edges of the hobby both conceptually and visually. Dubstepkin’s FACESHOPPING is probably the premiere example of the latter from 2022 — a delightfully chaotic demo-reel of effects work that makes practically every frame an acid-inspired distortion. Serving equally as a kind of commentary on modern superficiality and as a brain-twisting proof-of-concept of what contemporary video editing can become if we let it (a separate discussion for another day), FACESHOPPING is whatever you make of it — and the satisfaction is there no matter your interpretation. Yes, it is inspired by the official music video for this song, but I always love it when I come into an AMV and walk away feeling like I just experienced something in the medium that has never crossed my neural pathways before.
Anime: Cyberpunk: Edgerunners
Song: “The Kids Aren’t Alright” by The Offspring
I say this every year in my introductory write-up (as I did this year too), but it especially bears repeating here: the videos on this part of the list are NOT necessarily just an extension of the rankings that will follow in the next posts. Rather, these are the videos that I like enough to want to share and have enough to say about to make for an interesting blurb. I like to use this space to showcase lesser-known editors that I see as having potential, even if the given video has its issues.
The Kids Aren’t Alright is maybe one of the more obvious exemplifications of this — this video tends to feel more like a rough draft than a finished product, especially in its second half when it devolves from a more narrative style into excessive violence and mindless action, all but abandoning the lyric sync that had been carrying the video thus far. All that said, there’s still something here that feels intentional and right — maybe it’s just that the hopeless tone of the song fits the dystopian horror of the anime’s setting in a way that can feel almost premeditated, or maybe it’s the fact that Eighty Eight Edit strings all sorts of subtle internal sync throughout this video, in spite of it spinning off its axis otherwise. It has that something that I’m always delighted to stumble across; here’s to hoping whatever that is persists to the next one. In the meantime, The Kids Aren’t Alright still manages to be a blast to watch.
Anime: Flowers of Evil
Song: “Massacre of the Troupe” by Riz Ortolani
There’s a moment in this AMV of pure, unadulterated brilliance — it happens right when the synths reach their first high note, just over a minute in, and the video’s antagonist is shown to us for the first time. As she stares directly into the camera, with a straight face, the combination of her expression and the music form an unambiguous siren that goes off in the viewer’s head: This girl is evil personified. Elcalavero magnificently portrays such melodramatic exaggerations in a way that slowly burns away their excess until the viewer is left with the horrifying truth that, no, such an overstatement isn’t really that at all — when you’re being bullied, the person doing the bullying might as well be Satan himself. Holakrjar is a disturbing slice of psychological horror, but even more it’s a bleak reminder that there are kids out there — adults, too — who live in this worldly hell each and every day. It’s sobering, discordant, and completely absorbing in that all-too-real way you’ll wish it wasn’t.
Anime: Azumanga Daioh
Song: “Yatta” by Happatai
No, this video doesn’t showcase the most astute editing prowess — every time I watch it I feel like a lot more could have been done every which way, but don’t let that stop you from indulging. It’s among the most charming AMVs I watched all year — as a tribute to one of the best-loved comedy anime of the early 2000s, it does a fantastic job at making me want to actually get around to watching Azumanga Daioh one of these days. Beyond that, though, it’s just pure, goofy fun — the song’s lyrics are provided with subtitles, and the lyric sync here is exactly what I would expect out of an Azumanga Daioh video — literal to the point of absurdity. There’s nothing gut-bustingly hilarious here, but it plasters a stupid smile on my face at every turn and I can’t help but be won over by its good-natured approach and the genuine love of the source material being used which is on full display. It’s a wonderful little slice of anime appreciation that deserves to be seen by every Azumanga fan, at least.
Anime: Various
Song: “Tokyo Lounge (feat. Babouk)” by Karmawin
To be honest, this AMV’s main visual gimmick — the constantly changing colors and textures used as a sync device — is probably my least favorite part of it. But it’s hard to deny the video’s conceptual approach — tracing all sorts of people from different anime through their meanderings, across cities, suburbs, and nature. There’s no single character for us to follow or focus on, and in fact when we finish with one person we don’t see them again as they continue their aimless wandering. Yet there’s an impression I get that all these people are following a similar path without knowing it, or that they are going to accidentally intersect with one another in the future (if they haven’t already). It’s a video that is at once interconnected and isolated, lonely but not sad. It’s thoughtful and meditative, suggesting that vast feeling of sonder without fully committing to it. Maybe your path doesn’t lead anywhere — but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t walk it.
Anime: BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad
Song: “Dog Song” by Yot Club
The line between real and constructed nostalgia gets blurrier every day. It’s as if media en masse has decided that the present AND future are so bleak that comfort and security can only be found in the sights and sounds of eras bygone — and it’s gotten to the point where, whenever that feeling of nostalgia begins bubbling up in me I am finding myself less and less able to accurately describe if it’s aimed at fondness for something I’ve personally experienced, or if years of absorbing this kind of ubiquitously-available yearning for yesteryear has implanted a completely false history for me to retroactively experience and pine for, Inception-style.
Dog Song is an AMV that falls squarely in the fuzzy no-man’s land of uncertainty — I can’t tell if the little touches that Satirical_Mike adds — the light film filter, the aged-yellow subtitles — are imparting an authenticity to this work that makes it feel like some lo-fi, official music video from an indie rock band that everyone has forgotten about (but in reality is a very contemporary bedroom pop artist); or if the overlays that appear near the end of the video, as well as the slightly (and I do mean slightly) off lip sync are reminding me of some of the scrappier AMVs that got me into the hobby in the first place; or maybe it’s just the fact that I haven’t seen a new BECK AMV in years. Maybe none of it matters — whether the nostalgia is based on some real part of my history or is just another piece of the meticulously fabricated facade that has been imposing itself into my media consumption for way too long now. This video rocks.
Anime: Kyousougiga
Song: “Daddy Lessons” by Beyoncé
Kyousougiga videos have earned a reputation in my head as being fun and boisterous, but also painfully abstract at the best of times. This is in large part because of the nature of the anime itself, which I found to be incredibly beautiful, visually stylish, and certainly unique, but also very obtuse in its storytelling. You can usually guarantee a great time with these AMVs, but typically at the expense of any kind of narrative cohesion, no matter how hard you might try. As You Taught Me, in contrast, is very unambiguous, thanks to Seasaltmemories’ wonderful adhesion to the song’s lyrics — this is as crystal clear a pass at storytelling as you will find on this entire list, without really sacrificing the fun, or straying very far from the spirit of the anime itself. The editing is also incredibly slick — always kinetic, with cut after cut building to a fantastic, satisfying conclusion. Boiling complex relationships like this down to their base elements is never an easy task, but As You Taught Me really is the whole package here, and a very gratifying one at that.
Anime: Various
Song: “Boom Headshot” by Your Favorite Martian
Edited as part of a “deaf edit” challenge, where the entrants could not hear the song but were given a metronome waveform representing the song instead (along with a short, simplistic description of the song), I would not have believed any of this if I didn’t know it ahead of time. It is hard to overemphasize just how well this video flows with that in mind — sure, the motion-heavy scenes cover over a multitude of sins here by tricking your brain to fill in sync where it might not actually (or at least intentionally) exist, but there are musical and lyrical passages in here that just go off with the chosen visuals like a stick of TNT. In fact, I’m going to say that editing this deaf may have actually been to Silk’s advantage — the temptation to repeat the same types of scenes over and over to the song’s repetitive chorus would have gotten old fast. Instead, Silk’s scene selection stays true to the spirit of the “BOOM HEADSHOT!” reprise without itself becoming stale and gimmicky.
Even so, I wonder how much farther this could have been taken, especially in certain passages that are less brilliant than others, if it weren’t a deaf edit. And I’m questioning how much credit I can actually even give Silk here, given how much of this appears to have come together more or less by chance rather than by conscious decision. Nevertheless, the final product is really impressive no matter how you slice it, and watching it is definitely a fun use of your time. Don’t ignore this one, folks.
Anime: Various
Song: “Run Run Run” by Receptor
Trying to keep up with this video is exhausting. It flashes by at light speed, daring you to interpret any single element into something coherent. Despite Sunshine’s best efforts though, a violent Apocalypse begins to take form, even if its details are single-digit frame images that barely leave an impression, much less provide nuance. No, this video isn’t about the particulars, but the broader picture it paints — death, despair, desolation — is crystal clear. As the IRL world teeters further and further from something sane and recognizable, works like Last Hour Of Life seem to be more and more prescient, or at the very least could be seen as extrapolations to the most logical conclusion. I don’t find this to be particularly encouraging, but at least videos like this give us some idea of how it all will end.
Anime: Serial Experiments Lain
Song: “never” by hop3less
It was probably inevitable — sooner or later, something in this style was going to break through my prejudices and stuffy opinions and sink its hooks into my unwilling brain folds. This is, for all intents and purposes, stylistically identical to all those Instagram edits I have been complaining about on this blog for years…but tay took what other editors have been failing at since the style became popular and created this anxiety-ridden visual assault of a video. Nothing in this AMV stays still — it is always twisting, warping, deconstructing into glitched-out static, providing the visual component this song needs to have any redeeming qualities at all. The rewind at the video’s end is surprisingly effective, too, at giving this video some tantalizing conceptual ambiguity that just makes me like it more. It’s a seething video, trying to break out of its frame so it can choke you to death before it self-destructs. It’s not for everyone — it’s certainly not for me, but it found and strangled me anyway.
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Thank you for taking the time to watch Ankh! The amv emerged from a subtle sadness/melancholy that gridman and dynazenon use so well. The plan was to show this side of dynazenon, that it’s not just a monster of the week show, it’s about the characters and their struggles, How they overcome them and move on with their lives. I made it at a time in my life that seems like forever ago, where I too was trying to move on. Creative burnout, work, other projects, trying to keep it all together… And now, it has turned out to be a video that is hard for me to watch due to how personal it has become with its meaning (as confusing as it may be haha). I tear up watching it every time! I can’t even pinpoint as to why! AMV’s work in mysterious ways…
I’m so glad it’s managed to catch your attention too. Even though it’s personal to me, I’m happy to hear that my art reaches others at an emotional level too.
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If, looking back, I had to choose one video to move from my Honorable Mentions to my actual top 30, it’d be Ankh, without a doubt. It keeps pulling me back for reasons I don’t really understand. There are a lot of subtle emotions being hinted at that I keep wanting to uncover. It’s a very intriguing video!
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