2022 in retrospect: top 30 amvs (20 – 11)

20. Edit Station – Untitled Rush

Anime: Various
Song: “Untitled” by ev.exi

No, this AMV is not the kind of thing I can indulge in too often — like getting blasted at a party you crashed, making a habit of watching these AMVs that make heavy or exclusive use of anime opening/ending footage is probably unhealthy on some level, and it certainly bears insistence for the editors reading this that relying on this kind of hyper-stylized footage to pretty up your AMVs will instill bad habits that can be hard to break later. That said, there’s something absolutely thrilling about this kind of stuff when you take it in moderation. Edit Station handles this all like a complete pro, wrangling fist-pumping moments of internal sync every few seconds, whipping us from one energy ball of motion and color to the next, completely disregarding any attempt at trying to find too much that ties these scenes together.

It doesn’t matter. There’s so much going on in any single frame here that your brain creates connections out of thin air and convinces you after the fact that, yeah, that cut right there made complete sense, don’t question it. It’s pure, undistilled rush — a color-blasted, deafening rager where every part of you except your brain is invited. Let it stay home and ask the important, existential questions about meaning and purpose; it’d just get in the way here, trust me.

19. pack – One more year… One more month… One more week… One more day… One. More. Hour.

Anime: Hibike! Euphonium
Song: “One More Hour” by Tame Impala

Waiting. Waiting. W a i t i n g. . .this AMV embodies the idea. Pack’s use of frame interpolation here stretches many of these clips past their breaking point, freezing moments in time for a seeming eternity. The song itself leans into this as well, consisting mainly of a repeated piano loop that never progresses or adds any momentum to the video whatsoever — the only moments where time seems to re-enter the equation are brief explosions of drums, bass, and guitar that exit the frame almost as quickly as they appear, and during which pack speeds clips up and introduces more rapid cuts. This stuttering, start/stop tempo gives the video an instability that never feels comfortable, exactly. In its slower moments, it can feel calm and borderline relaxing, but you can never get too used to the pacing for too long before you’re hurtled to the next suspended fragment. Time doesn’t seem to exist in any logical manner throughout this video, as if it’s being experienced by someone whose own sense of reality is being warped or distorted by forces outside their control. The last scene seems to suggest that there’s some tragedy here that we’re not fully privy to, even as we experience the results in real time — or at least some corrupted version of it.

18. SadSack – manic laughter

Anime: Various
Song: “Say the Word” by Christy Carlson Romano

AMVs built around using magical girl transformation sequences as the meat of the video will — say it with me now — never get old. Yes, I did in fact just reuse the lede I wrote for my #36 video last year, but only because it truly never does get old, as manic laughter demonstrates in exceptional style. This AMV is an incredibly fluid slice of upbeat action that flips and spirals around its early-2000s, cheesy dance-pop track like a demonic fairy. Internal sync is rife at every turn, accelerating the whole production past the sound barrier, knocking you flat with its shockwaves. It’s this crazy mix of old-school and modern — while I can’t quite see this being created 15+ years ago, the older sources that make up the video’s first half give it a nostalgic charm that worms its way under my skin and works its magic. At the same time, that shift from fullscreen to widescreen has an astounding effect that I’ve never experienced in quite the same way with other videos that do something similar — it feels like blinders are removed, and this is where the AMV actually begins, as if all that 4:3 stuff was just a primer for the real reason manic laughter exists at all. SadSack certainly keeps you on your toes through this video’s brief two-minute run, but it all comes together into something really special and euphoric, and scratched an itch that no other AMV from 2022 did.

17. Apus – Guesthouse

Anime: Various (Violet Evergarden)
Song: “Arrival” by Hiatus

It didn’t take me too long to get sick of Violet Evergarden AMVs — as emotionally loaded as they tend to be, they are just as often very heavy-handed with their themes, and pretty monotonous when all is said and done. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all, or something like that. And so this AMV caught me by surprise — while it is yet another character profile of Violet, this one is significantly more expansive and nuanced than others I’m familiar with. While the story’s tragedy beats beneath the surface and is suggested in the video’s opening act, this isn’t the laser-focused melodrama that so many videos using this source tend to be — it’s a much softer take on who Violet is as a person and how she interacts with those around her. The video’s entire final third is stripped of the sadness introduced in its beginning, replaced by subdued clips of Violet sitting and talking with people, learning from them, comforting them. There’s a profound sense of healing and acceptance that arcs its way through this video, paired with a gentle melancholy that never quite goes away. No, you won’t cry watching this AMV, but only because that would be too easy.

16. Pic4arts – Neo Tokyo Shaker

Anime: Akira
Song: “Roller Mobster” by Carpenter Brut

Sometimes, it’s not hard to imagine that a lot of the synthwave artists that have popped up over the last half decade or so have based their entire musical career on Akira and other cyberpunk anime from the ’80s. Combining these two things just kind of makes sense, you know? In a different timeline, this song may actually have been featured in Akira itself — it has this boiling tension that perfectly illustrates the frothing violence found everywhere in the anime’s setting, Neo Tokyo, and Pic4arts doesn’t hesitate to throw every grisly scene he can find at the sawtooth synths that cut across your speakers for over three minutes. And he does it in style, although with few effects, instead relying on furious motion and internal sync to power this video’s fury. There’s nothing about this AMV that is positive or morally redeeming, but its grim, dystopian vision is the kind of thing that is immensely fun to dip into every so often for a brief bout of brutal escapism.

15. TRUTH CRAB – Roze (Euston Station)

Anime: Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou
Song: “Roze (Euston Station)” by Fred Again..

Like most of TRUTH CRAB’s work, Roze (Euston Station) is a lightly edited affair — focusing more on the bigger movements within the chosen track, TRUTH CRAB keeps his touch deft and deliberate. This is nothing new, of course — if you know anything about this editor, you know that this style is his M.O. — but like most of my favorite videos of his, this one’s beauty lies in the way it delicately drapes itself in subtle and nuanced emotion. The song’s lyrics — a repetition of the singer lamenting a lost love — appear to have no connection to the chosen anime at all. But there’s this indelible sense that I get as the video goes on that we’re getting a glimpse into the main character’s own thoughts and feelings, as she goes about her day and silently ruminates. The video is enveloped in this gossamer-fine melancholy that, by the end, slowly resolves into something like hopeful acceptance, or at least some nebulous kind of optimism. I can’t in words convey how warm this video makes me feel, the way it wraps itself around me like a comforting blanket. There’s an intimacy available here if you’re willing to tap it — but letting it just wash over you is a perfectly acceptable way to experience it, too.

14. vivafringe – Red Lights

Anime: Various
Song: “Red Light” by Gregori Klosman

Red Lights exists in that nebulous, genreless class of video that is best described as “other” — cold and emotionless, except when it summons up feelings of unexpected warmth and adrenaline; calm and breezy, except when it dips into violence and speed; free of narrative, except for the fact that all of these scenes from probably dozens of anime could reasonably be taking place in the same geography, on the same night. The gimmick of this video (a phrase I use begrudgingly, begging the reader to please not read any disdain into it) is simple — collect all the extant scenes of night driving in anime, and edit them to a groovy, soulful house track with a funk that sheds an urban cool unlike anything else you’ll find on this list, or maybe any of my others, either. Vivafringe’s unhurried pacing belies how much is often happening in this video, or at least feels like it is — even the more static scenes seem to suggest action and commotion out of frame. As much as I often want to just sit and vibe with this one, it’s hard to get comfortable enough with it to do so — even moreso when viva lets some of the more action-oriented scenes take over.

And while this could have been a different type of video altogether — something more akin to an actual full-length AMV version of this — viva’s approach here in providing occasional conflict and tension makes this something truly unique. Maybe I just kind of like the fact that this isn’t what I expect, or what would be so easy and obvious (and might also garner more views). Seeing all these dissimilar, oftentimes tonally bipolar scenes set close together gives a sense that we’re getting glimpses into a bunch of completely different, barely- or non-intersecting characters and storylines that all happen to be taking place in proximity to one another — a bird’s-eye-view of one crazy night in a lawless city. Or it could just be a kickin’ AMV. Either way, “other” probably doesn’t do it justice.

13. TheLazyDaze – Inner Child

Anime: Barakamon
Song: “Brand New” by Ben Rector

If there’s any video here that I am going to want to keep on hand over the next 10 years, it’s certainly this one. As a brand new father, I haven’t yet had to really tap into my inner child just yet — my son is still a bit too young for him to know the difference. But over the next few years, I know that I am going to have to learn how to do this, and Inner Child is the perfect thing to encourage this sort of mindset. It’s incredibly upbeat, edited in Daze’s seamless style, flowing from internal to external to lyric sync without ever settling into one specific rhythm, this video visually captures each part of this song in the most immediately engaging way possible. It never rests, it’s always on its toes, but all this only serves to absorb you further into its shameless, infectious optimism.

There have been times throughout this year where I probably could have used a reminder like this to not get so serious with myself and the real world, to never lose that spark of childlike naïveté with the world that our culture is so good at stamping out. It’s so easy to be cynical and nihilistic these days, and I often feel like each week that passes leaves me a little more humorless, a little less sensitive to the wonders and humanity to be found all around me. Inner Child is nothing more than a simple AMV, but sometimes it’s the simple things that can make me stop, and think, and rethink. This one’s precious, make no mistake.

12. PieandBeer – Ennui the AMV

Anime: FLCL Alternative // FLCL Progressive
Song: “5 Flucloxacillin” by Los Campesinos!

Am I a bad FLCL fan — if I had to choose just one anime to call my favorite, it would probably be FLCL — if I still have yet to watch these two sequels? Or does not doing so make me the truest FLCL fan of them all? Honestly, I don’t care — and if anything, PieandBeer’s exploration of them via this AMV is probably all the fix I need. Equal parts fun and sentimental, Ennui the AMV puts Pie’s immaculate editing — which, let’s be honest, kind of transcends the word and could more accurately be deemed a fluid, gut-level intuition that just happens to manifest on an editing timeline — on glorious display. This video flows, and sometimes there’s simply no substitute for expressing all the conflicting, soaring emotions that are at the heart of FLCL than letting them burst out of the screen in this wonderful combination of animation and music that everyone reading these words (presumably, anyway) holds so dear. It goes down easy, but you’ll feel it all in technicolor.

11. Synaesthesia Productions – KNIGHT SABER CITY

Anime: Bubblegum Crisis
Song: “This City Made Us” by The Protomen

I am asking you to please trust the process on this one — at least, I had to. It wasn’t until the two-minute mark that I became completely sold out to this video and Syn’s vision for it, and while asking anyone to hold out until over a third of the way through a five-and-a-half minute video does seem like a lot, believe me when I say that it is so, so worth it. After that point this video is just pure rocket fuel, glorying in all the excess and cheese of the best that the 1980s had to offer (and no, the song is not from that era — it is actually quite modern. I would have lost money on that bet!). It pays explosive tribute to not only the beautiful animation and techy cyberpunk setting that Bubblegum Crisis flaunts, but also its relatively kitschy elements — when, near the end of the video, the focus shifts from action and explosions to a live rock show featuring the characters you just spent minutes watching riding motorcycles and fighting robots in big mecha suits, all while taking every opportunity to do lip and instrument sync, it feels like the circle is completing itself, rejecting the self-serious attitude the video could have ended on and instead giving the viewer the visual space to just absolutely rock out, something the song has intrinsically been demanding you do this whole time. This could absolutely be the official music video for this song — if it wasn’t made by an involved member of the AMV community, you could have fooled me. KNIGHT SABER CITY has everything, and it scorches my face every time. Rock. On.