Placeholder - Anime Vids

[thuviaptarth]

I was so delighted some of you actually signed up to read this (including, to be honest, people I thought just had dead journals) that I was planning to put real content here this morning. So I put on my current vid obsession, and started taking notes, and an hour later it was time to go to work and I had a 1500 words of notes and 0 words of coherency or timestamps. At some point, I will remember that it's helpful to note down timestamps and not just lyric phrases before I want to refer back to the previous section of the vid. Or I will give up, because this vid review thing is hard. Now I remember why I never do it and am just a bandwidth-hogging air-wasting parasite on good vidders everywhere.

As a placeholder, I'll copy a bunch of vid recs out of an email I sent someone last week.

Finding Anime Vids
So. Anyway. The current obsession is anime vids. The world of anime vidding is large and scary. I want a friendly native guide to take me by the hand and gently guide me to the good stuff. "No, no," she would say, "turn your head away, that's the Thicket of Two Thousand Lousy Vids About Seishiro's Betrayal of Subaru, One Thousand of Which Have a Sarah McLachlan or Staind Soundtrack. Here! This is the epic instumental X vid you've been dreaming of--the one that covers every major character, all significant storylines, and opens and closes with the contrasting glass globe/basketball/Earth/kekkai imagery you wanted. And over here we have some nice character studies that will intrigue you even if you haven't seen the shows ..."

Most anime vids seem to be hosted by Anime Music Vids. The search function is clunky, and the interface design was done by someone who values showiness over utility, and none of this prevents it from being a great fannish resource, especially for people who can't afford to host their own bandwidth. That doesn't, alas, prevent me from thinking it's a Cease-and-Desist Order waiting to happen. They are currently running a funding drive and will interrupt every search result screen with a request for you to pledge money. There's also a two-week waiting period before you can download vids after signup, which you can skip if you're willing to pledge funds.

This is a quick list of vids I plan to cover in more detail later, available from sites other than AMV, with notes on whether they're accessible to people who haven't watched the show:



Starherd, "Possession" (Yami no Matsuei)

This is the vid that made me go out and spend $100 on the complete series set, so I would say, Yes, pretty accessible to the new watcher. *cough* Um. Trying to boil down the 15K of notes: (1) This has made it to my short list of Sarah McLachlan Vids That Don't Suck. (2) It's gorgeous, romantic, and tragic, and has several sets of gorgeous boys in love. (3) What really struck me on rewatching was the extraordinary and expressionistic use of color (notably red, white, and green) and the careful repetition and alternation of symbolic images to convey mood or a change in focus (cherry blossoms, autumn gingko leaves, the moon). This all turned out to be taken from the series itself with minimal image manipulation (as far as I can tell), but the selection and condensation is remarkable.



Bonibaru, Shape of My Heart and Momentum (Yami no Matsuei)

I think these may both be too reliant on series context to work for nonfans, although later I want to post on the first one especially, which has some *nifty* things going on with literal vs. metaphorical association of lyrics with imagery.

"Shape of My Heart" is a remarkable character study of the series' main villain, especially notable for associating the chorus with literal images on the first iteration and then with metaphoric elaborations on subsequent ones. It fascinated me even though I am not particularly interested in the character in canon.

The second strikes me as less successful, although it's grown on me on rewatch; it's a shippy vid about the protagonist and second lead. The music is gorgeous.


Witch Hunter Robin credit sequence

The credit sequences for anime series often use animation created especially for the credits -- images or scenes that condense the themes or the relationships of the shows down to emblematic shots that never actually appear in the show. A lot of production companies have taken to offering "textless credits" as extras on the DVDs, and I've never been so happy to see this as with Witch Hunter Robin. It's just gorgeous. A red-headed girl in a room lighting candles with her glance. A dark-haired guy seen only through windows, video cameras, TV screens. He's hunting her, or running from her, or trying to find her. The girl pulling back blinds and holding up her hands to block out the sun whiting out her face. Less than a minute and a half for a pure shot of paranoia, tension, desire, longing, and fear.

It's a credit sequence. It's *supposed* to be accessible if you know nothing about the show.




WickedAmp

I first noticed WickedAmp for her S4 Angel vids; she remains one of the most exciting kinetic vidders I've seen, great at creating continuity of action and movement across clips. She also does creative things with split-screen and cut-outs; sometimes this works and sometimes it's just distracting. Her vids often feel exciting to me even if I have no damn clue what's going on. (Her Read Or Die vid on last year's Vividcon DVDs was both the first anime vid I saw and my first introduction to Read Or Die, The Best Anime Ever Except Maybe for Spirited Away And Even Then It's Close.)


Real Enough (Revolutionary Girl Utena) could have been a challenge vid for Vividcon last year. It's ... about reality and dreams, and swordfights and roses and two girls in love, one of whom may turn into a car at one point. Or she may not. It's hard to tell. It was one of the vids that made me rent the Utena movie, so -- accessible to nonfans.

Butterfly (multifandom) - Accessible to nonfans, sort of. As usual, I'm not sure what's going on here -- I think it's about f/f romances that start in betrayal and end in redemption, with the women mirroring each other; the lyrics go, "I need a samurai ... I am your little butterfly" and as far as I can tell, the vid is about the fluidity of those identities in anime f/f relationships, with women easily starting off as a samurai and ending up a butterfly (protected maiden) and vice versa -- but this is a multi-fandom vid where I only recognize two of the fandoms, so I could well be getting it completely wrong.

The action editing is as kick-ass as usual, and the music is so upbeat that I've put it on my mp3 player as my "I'm tired and I need an energy-kick" music. Maybe I need to listen to more techno.


Sephiroth, "Gravity of Love" (Revolutionary Girl Utena)

Accessible to nonfans.

Gravity of Love is the other vid that made me rent the Utena movie. This turned out to be a mistake, because the Utena movie is visually gorgeous and makes almost no sense. This vid actually has a stronger or at least more sensible narrative, I think because the vidder cut out storylines that were too truncated from the TV series to make sense without further explanation, and also, she skipped most of the thing with the car.

So, as far as I can tell from this vid, there's this pink-haired girl with a sword, who fights to win this blue-haired brown-skinned girl from various guys in a rose garden. There is gorgeous architecture. There are more swordfights. Rose petals fall everywhere. Girls kiss, and their love is fucking epic.

Seriously, movie trailers should do this good a job of making me care about the end of the world being nigh.

Myka, "Justify My Love" and "Betrayal"

Myka's vids are the weakest of this set of recs; she could benefit from a tough beta and from trying to structure a vid around something more complex than "OMG THE LOVE!" or "OMG THE PAIN!" But I think she's ... promising. There's *something* there, or I'm hopelessly OTPing. At least for the first one.

"Justify My Love" is a Gravitation vid which has too much close-up on faces and too littleaction -- it's a problem from the source, which is very ... shojo
romance, not a lot of action. But it's -- cute. I can't help it! Shuichi and Yuki are so cute! And I do think it does a good job of capturing the source's energy and sense of fun and the idea that love is this overwhelming force that just makes people completely bugfuck nuts. I can't tell whether this would be accessible to nonfans.

"Betrayal" is one of the ubiquitous SubaruXSeishiro (Tokyo Babylon/X) vids, which ... I need to cover in more detail because it's flawed, starting with the song choice. But there are some good transitions, and there are some good bits where she manages to edit footage into the construction of scenes we know happened from the manga -- but which were never actually shown in the anime. Hmm. The virtues of this are probably invisible to nonfans.

Comments

[minnow1212.livejournal.com]

>one of whom may turn into a car at one point. Or she may not. It's hard to tell.<

Hee.

I just checked Amazon's tracking info, and Read or Die has reached my state, yay!

[thuviaptarth.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking of doing a post on whacked-out manga descriptions. Like, this is from the Web site for CMX, DC's forthcoming manga imprint:

By day, Kusakabe Maron is an ordinary high school girl with more than her share of problems. But by night, she is Phantom Thief Jeanne. As the reincarnation of Joan of Arc, her mission is to steal demon-possessed paintings and neutralize their evil.

I mean, you'd think the whole high-school-student-by-day/phantom-thief-by-night thing would be enough. But no!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

*grins* I'm so amused that it's the Possession vid that got you to buy YnM, because it's that same vid that got me into the series. I saw it rec'd on my flist, went to watch and fell so very, very hard in love. Mmmm, pretty boys. Have you seen their other YnM vid, 'Sleep Now'? It's also very well done.

This turned out to be a mistake, because the Utena movie is visually gorgeous and makes almost no sense.

Yes. The movie is on crack. I saw it after having been spoiled for nearly every storyline and character, and I still didn't understand it. I really enjoyed the manga- which is only 5 books long, so it's not too much of an investment, if you want to try it- but again, confusing and much of my understanding of it still relied on spoilers. The anime is apparantly the best of them all, but as yet I've only seen the first three episodes, so I can't say for sure.

[thuviaptarth.livejournal.com]

I finally completed my AMV waiting period and "Sleep Now" was the first thing I downloaded. It is amazing, and completely different. I also looked at their other Yami vid--"Descent"?--but it's not as good. Too similar to "Possession," maybe.

I fell *so hard*. Could not wait for Netflix, could not wait for Amazon or Half.com or Deepdiscountdvd -- thought, "It's a holiday weekend. I can go see Spiderman 2 or go see if the Times Square Virgin Megastore has the Descendants of Darkness box set." Pretty cartoon boys beat out Toby Maguire.

Is the Utena manga really only 5 books? I thought it was longer. I read the first two, and liked it better than the movie, but yes -- both oyceter and rachelmanija told me the TV show was the best of the lot, so I've put it in my Netflix queue.

[oyceter]

Yup, only five books, so it doesn't get to cover nearly the same amount of arcs or go into the conflicts of non-Utena characters. And the last book is mostly taken up by two short stories taking place in the universe, which are incorporated more into the anime series.

I do like the ending of the manga and how it contrasts with the ending of the anime though, so it's neat to see them side by side.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

I love Witch Hunter Robin...must make feklar show me more episodes, since I haven't bought it yet.

[thuviaptarth.livejournal.com]

I caught it on the Cartoon Network a month or two ago, and was immediately struck by the style. I'm renting it from Netflix now.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

It's gorgeous, isn't it? So Gothy.

[renenet.livejournal.com]

Okay, so, by VVC I'm going to want to pick your brain for Anime Stuff I Should Watch. Tailored directly for my tastes, mind you. (Manga is right out at this point because my brain still hurts from trying to read graphic novels. I don't have the right muscles in there for the medium and it's haaaaard.) Anime for the Uninitiated. Anything that requires complex understanding of genre conventions is going to escape me utterly. Pretty much my background is that I have no background. I saw Spirited Away and the Cowboy Bebop movie, and I'll be watching Read or Die very soon. Oh, and I'm downloading some of these vid recs as I type this.

In general, the pretty boys suffering beautifully of which you speak doesn't especially excite me. I'd probably enjoy the shows, anyway, but I doubt I'd be All About The Pretty Boys. Female/female relationships on the other hand...just, yeah. And you and oracne talking about Witch Hunter Robin here — *that* piques my interest, all the more so because I could have been watching it on the Cartoon Network if only I'd known.

So, help a sister out, will ya? Would you be so kind as to give me a heads up if there's something I should nab on the DVR from the Cartoon Network if you become aware of it? (I watch some of their programming, but, honestly, half of their line-up scares the crap out of me because it is so incomprehensible. I get anxious just watching some of their commercials, so I can't comb through their shows very well for myself. I get bogged down in the dross and then a muscle-bound torso with a face starts talking and I run away.)

La la...don't worry. You don't have to respond in writing to my demands. I can wait until we're at VVC and you can just spout things from your very large brain when I poke you and I'll make notes.

[teleute12.livejournal.com]

If you don't like the choices of waiting two weeks or paying money for AMV.com, there's always BugMeNot (http://www.bugmenot.com), which will give you a dummy account to use.

[thuviaptarth.livejournal.com]

*blink* The thought of using that for fannish purposes disturbed me ... but not enough to check and see that they don't have anything listed.

[oyceter]

I like Justin Emerson's vids too here, don't know if you've seen them. Although he plays around with special effects a lot...

The ones I've seen are for Neon Genesis Evagelion and Cowboy Bebop, and some are really really spoilery though.

[thuviaptarth.livejournal.com]

I'll hold off until I've seen the series, then.

*bats lashes* So, do you have any more anime/manga recs for me?

[oyceter]

Besides Cowboy Bebop? Hrm. Cowboy Bebop is really, really awesome. Really. Er. Really. Yes ;). And I think you'll either love Evangelion or loathe it -- it seems to inspire that sort of reaction (Rachel hates it).

Wah, I feel so inadequate... I haven't watched anything in four years! I don't know if anyone's mentioned Vampire Princess Miyu? The OVA is really great, and I've only seen a few eps of the TV series, which is interesting but a little Monster of the Week-ish in the beginning. And Rurouni Kenshin is one of those all around favorites. And Ranma. And Inu-Yasha. All of which, sadly, I have not watched (but I love the Kenshin manga). Ok, I bet you've heard all this before, since they're all pretty old ;).

Oh, and you should definitely watch Karekano/His and Her Circumstances/Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou. The anime is pretty funny to watch if you've seen Evangelion too, because it's by the same director and he spoofs Evangelion. The manga is pretty good too, but I love the weird things Anno does with the animation.

I'm still pissed off only one Yazawa Ai thing has been translated because she's my favorite mangaka and I want to make everyone read her so I can finally talk about them. Grrrr.

[boniblithe.livejournal.com]

and opens and closes with the contrasting glass globe/basketball/Earth/kekkai imagery you wanted.

You mean like the one that's partially festering on my hard drive using fansub crappy source while I bemoan my lack of ability to rip DVDs?

I'm taking a set of X DVDs to VVC with us. We will have the whole weekend to plot who we shall foist it upon.

I don't think anyone has ever used the word iteration in talking about one of my vids before, this pleases me :) You are right that Momentum is a purely shipper vid. I blame PMS entirely, that and the Possession vid which to the day I die I will always wish I'd been the person to make that one. I have dreams about it. I think there may be hidden secret messages tucked inside. Someday I will do a frame by frame to reveal the horrible truth about the manipulation of our minds by the clever folks at WTFP.

[boniblithe.livejournal.com]

Also, have you seen the Muraki vid to "Cruel"? I can send it to you if you haven't. It's very good.

[thuviaptarth.livejournal.com]

You mean like the one that's partially festering on my hard drive using fansub crappy source while I bemoan my lack of ability to rip DVDs?

See, I knew that if I wished hard enough, someone else would do it. It's like when I had all these daydreams about a strong Buffy vid, and then sisabet did "Peacekeeper," which was even cooler than I could have hoped for.

"Shape of My Heart" is so cool! I was so excited when I realized that you were associating particular lines with particular characters -- Hisoka's always spades and Tsuzuki's always clubs and Muraki's victims are always diamonds. And, really, could anyone be more perfect for the concealed king than Saki or the queen of spades than Oriya?

[oyceter]

Oh yeah, and the opening sequence of Cowboy Bebop is awesome.

[thuviaptarth.livejournal.com]

*Cowboy Bebop* is in the Netflix queue, though right now I'm going through Witch Hunter Robin and then next I want to do Utena.

Did you see Boni's post about Netflix having the X TV series now?

[amaltheagray.livejournal.com]

*blink*

damn. why did i have to drift over here right before bed?

there is *fic* here. i think i've only read one piece of fic by you. funny, that. well, some of it is in fandoms i know nothing about, but i'll probably read it anyway.

though i can't decide what journal to use when friending this one. huh. it all gets complicated.

[thuviaptarth.livejournal.com]

:) If it's any help, I don't think any of them but the Sandman one are comprehensible if you don't know the fandom. And they're often incomprehensible without knowledge of particular episodes, to boot.

[sdwolfpup.livejournal.com]

Wow. That 'Gravity of Love' vid is unbelievably good. Thanks for the recs.

[thuviaptarth.livejournal.com]

:) Thanks for letting me know you liked it -- which feels like a weird thing to say when I didn't create it, but I'm so pleased to be able to pass on the good stuff.

[kylandra.livejournal.com]

Hi, you don't know me, but I wandered over here from Boni's journal. I'm pretty heavily involved in anime fandoms (even though I don't have a lot of creative output to show for it myself), and love AMVs.

Speaking of good Evanescence vids and vidders having coronaries, there's a pretty surprisingly good Utena vid set to 'Going Under' by Evanescence. It's by Himemiya of Shapeshifter Studios, and the title of the vid is 'Deluge.' You may also want to check out Kusoyaro's vids, he did an Utena one to 'Bachelorette' by Bjork.

I have plenty of other vidders and vids I can rec if people need it. (I suppose I should get around to doing vid recs in my own journal one day, instead of invading people's comments. Heh.)

[thuviaptarth.livejournal.com]

How did I miss this comment? I would LOVE recs.

I also meant to email you -- you responded to a request for manga recs I had a while ago, I think because Bonibaru linked to it, and mentioned you had scans of the Gravitation remixes. Do you still have them? Can you share?