animemusicvideos.org – Viewers Choice Awards 2010

I find that Anime Music Videos (AMVs) are a great way to find new anime, and earn a different perspective from anime that you may have already seen. Some are incredibly elaborate, while others are beautifully simple.  Either way, AMVs are a form of art. Sure, one can easily pick out their favourite  scenes from an Anime, mash it all together with their favourite song, upload to YouTube, and get thousands of views and be like, “Yeah, All my AMVs are popular and therefore I make good AMVs”. Which, is true to some extent. You do see the odd “carefully stitched together” AMV out there, but often you have to dig a bit, as often, they don’t have many views, and are that way because the artist doesn’t intend it to be “super popular”.

When you visit these “communities”, it’s amazing at what you can find out there. Some are WAY better than the crap you can find on YouTube (not saying there aren’t any good ones). The animemusicvideos.org Viewers Choice Awards are voted by fellow AMV makers, and recognise the best of the art that is Anime Music Videos for 2009. Here are just some of the winners:

To download or view any of the AMVs listed below, you’ll need an account for Animemusicvideos.org, or if you’re reading this from my Facebook page, there are embedded Youtube vidoes of the AMVs on my blog post for this.

Video of the Year – “Ian Fleming’s Property of a Lady” – qwaqa

Music – “Feeling Good” by Muse
Anime – Ah! My Goddess (Movie), CANAAN (TV), Cowboy Bebop, Kemeko Deluxe! (TV), Neon Genesis Evangelion and Noir
Anyone like James Bond? =P Not only winning Video of the Year, qwaqa also won ‘Most Original Video’, ‘Best Use of Special Effects’ and “Best Use of Multiple Anime’ with this video. Often ‘Video of the Year’ will have more than one award, and not surprisingly, it used multiple anime. More ‘fun’ than serious, qwaqa went with a ‘different’ style of AMV, one that you really don’t see that often. It was quite an interesting way of putting together scenes from Anime into a music video, and blends seamlessly with Muse’s arrangement of “Feeling Good”. The video very much sort of re-does an opening scene to a James Bond Movie. Great use of effects, and the video flows very smoothly. In my books, worthy of title “Video of the Year”.

Most Artistic Video – “Butterflies of God” – Tana-Sama

Music – “Byou no Sakana” by Masudo Toshia
Anime – 5 Centimeters per Second, The Animatrix, Kara no Kyoukai – the Garden of sinners (movie) and Rahxephon: Pluralitas Concentio (movie)
Very much, also worthy of Video of the Year, also winning ‘Best Use of Instrumental Music’, ‘Best Sentimental Video’ and ‘Best Romantic Video’, Tana-sama creates quite a meaningful AMV that certainly also could have won ‘Most Artistic’ as well. It is beautiful, somewhat-cute and heart-warming as well as somewhat saddening. I always have an interest in instrumental pieces, as most of the time, they tend to be more meaningful over entertaining. As always with all well composed AMVs, it is smooth, professional and original.

Best Comedy Video – “D-ON!” – seriy and GamOver

Music – “Beelzeboss (The Final Showdown)” by Tenacious D
Anime – K-ON! (TV) and Detroit Metal City (OVA)
Probably one of the more ‘crazy’ AMVs out there, but it seems as though K-ON! is a popular choice for creating parodies, comedic AMVs or as fillers in parts where an AMV-ist needs to fill in something during some drumming so they throw in some Ritsu… (Velho’s “Black Music Club” AMV is another great example) But among the many K-ON! AMVs out there, this certianly earns some credit as ‘different’. If you’ve heard some of Tenacious D, you’ll know how… ‘pointless’ some of their stuff is… Just like this one…

Best Trailer or Commercial – “Kawaii Girls: Ultimate Dating Simulator” – Fizziks

Music – “Bouken Desho, Desho? (karaoke version)” by Aya Hirano, “Being (karaoke version)” and “Hayate no Gotoku (karaoke version)” by Kotoko, “Onna no Ko Otoko no Ko (karaoke version)” by Yuko Ogura.
Anime – Bleach, Chaos;HEAd (TV), Clannad (TV), Code Geass – Lelouch of the Rebellion (TV), Darker Than BLACK (TV), Death Note (TV), Full Metal Panic: Fumoffu, Futakoi Alternative, Ghost in the Shell: GIG2, Gundam Seed Destiny, Hayate the Combat Butler (TV), K-ON! (TV), Love Hina (TV), Macross Frontier (TV), The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (TV), Mobile Suit Gundam 00 (TV), Naruto Shippūden (TV), RahXephon (TV), School Rumble and Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann (TV),

Classed as an AMV for some reason, trailers, commercials and other short parodies are given a catagory in the Viewers Choice Awards. It appears “Chaos;Head” has been a popular choice in AMVs during 2009, quite a few contained at least some footage (so I’ve found…). This commercial was scripted and voiced by the author (apart from Mikuru) and is quite the funny! Certainly some good reference/in-jokes a bit here and there, but after watching this, I’m sure all of us will be buying this once it hits store shelves!