Kill your idols

[Castor Troy]

It's not famous as the videos posted above, but it had a good response at Akross and I think it can be defined "popular".

MDL - Not just a dream
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0DqsjJw_hQ

The major defect of this video is the music: it doesn't fit with the anime (the lyrics does, but not the rhythm) and consequently the editor had to edit a fast-paced song with a static anime. Most of the scenes are static ones with zooms from every directions; sometimes it works, most of times it doesn't. To compensate to all these gaps, the editor thought it was a good idea adding overlays of every kind, blurs, effects, masks with black edges: everything he was able to do, but the result was just a mess. Moreover, there's Ryuk coming from nowhere.
It seems that he realized that he couldn't make a romance video with the song and he tried to go with the action, but unfortunately this song doesn't fit both properly.

Yeesh. That video was not good, for exactly the reasons you mentioned. Such an awkward and contrived combination.

I guess I should contribute my own opinion to this thread since I'm the one who started it...

Video: Naruto's world
Category: Action, Drama, Character Profile, etc. (+3)
Anime: Naruto
Song: My World
Artist: SR-71
Creator: Einhänder (Fusion - amv)

Much like seasons above, I was going through the Top 10% recently, downloading some of the videos that I never got around to, and this was one of them. Actually, watching this video is what got me thinking about this topic in the first place...

Now, full disclosure: I don't know if I've ever seen a Naruto video that I actually like (with the exception of Whisper of the Beast -- sorry seasons), and I've watched a lot of them. So I went into watching this video with a feeling of trepidation already, but I was not prepared. This video is BAD. It uses multiple scenes with the DivX logo in the corner. It has those bad boxy effects. It uses B&W/color switching as a primary sync style (maybe it's just me that doesn't like that). It has stock flame transitions, stock lightning and cloud textures, stock film effects. Plenty of lip flap. My biggest problem with it though is that it's just so generic; nothing about it is memorable or creative in any way. I don't get it. I DON'T GET IT.

I'm forced to conclude that the popularity of this video was a product of the era in which it was released, given the popularity of Naruto around that time and the fact that the .org was booming back in 2004. The effects work screams "MID-2000s!" -- this is a video where I really think that if a new editor were to watch it today, they'd laugh at how horribly outdated it looks. And then they'd stop laughing and look at you in confusion when you tell them this is the 17th highest rated video on the .org. It's perplexing, really. Most videos in the Top 10% stand up today; some are outdated but not in a bad way, you can just tell that they're from a different era. This video is an anomaly; it's a video that is so singularly a reflection of it's time that it just doesn't work in any other time period.

I have more, but I'll save it for later in the thread, if other people keep contributing.

I was going to post this, but good thing you beat me to it since I would have been far less forgiving of this video....

I don't get why this thing was ever popular to begin with since there were TONS of BETTER Naruto videos in 2004....

[CrackTheSky]

The only conclusion I can draw is that some people have heavily botted the site for some strange reason. It's bizarre.

Yeah, I guess that's possible in some cases, but with "Naruto's World" it has almost 300 ops, which I imagine would be pretty hard to bot. I could be wrong though.

[AceD]

Narutos World was uploaded on youtube in 2005, and I assume most of it's popularity on youtube came in the first few years. Naruto amvs where popular and youtube was new and a lot of the people would of being new to amvs in general...so it stands to reason people came to download it here....hence it's popularity.

[seasons]

Video: Shounen Bushidou
Category: Action, Other, Serious
Anime: Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz, Whistle!, Shaman King, etc. (+66)
Song: Spirit Never Dies
Artist: Masterplan
Creator: istiv (Istiv Studio)


This seems like a "you had to be there" sort of AMV.

And what a time it must have been, my friends.

[seasons]

That's kind of flame-y and against the tone of the thread so instead I'll just say that this is pretty impressive, technically-speaking, or at least was at one point in time, and looks like it took a long time to make, but it just feels like "Shonen Libido" (which I presume was an homage to this, maybe) but without any of the humor. Help me out if I'm missing anything here.

[CrackTheSky]

Video: Shounen Bushidou (Preview)
Category: Action, Other, Serious
Anime: Ninja Scroll (TV), One Piece, Fullmetal Alchemist (TV), etc. (+66)
Song: Spirit Never Dies
Artist: Masterplan
Creator: istiv (Istiv Studio)


This seems like a "you had to be there" sort of AMV.

And what a time it must have been, my friends.
...
That's kind of flame-y and against the tone of the thread so instead I'll just say that this is pretty impressive, technically-speaking, or at least was at one point in time, and looks like it took a long time to make, but it just feels like "Shonen Libido" (which I presume was an homage to this, maybe) but without any of the humor. Help me out if I'm missing anything here.

Shonen Bushidou actually makes sense, though. If you look at it, it's pretty impressive for a video for 2004...there are definitely a lot of...er, era-specific effects that don't exactly carry over to today, but (at least in my opinion) it chooses a simple, shallow concept and goes absolutely balls-to-the-wall with it. It has lots and lots and lots of lip sync. It has effects that were, for their time, impressive and time-consuming. It's sickeningly otaku-pandering. It's intentionally epic.

To be clear, I don't like this video, at all. I just watched it for the first time today in...probably six or seven years. It hasn't held up well, and looks incredibly tacky and cheesy. There's not a lot about this video that I actually enjoy, but man, I respect istiv for making it. This is, I think, a major landmark in the history of AMVs, specifically modern AMVs. So many things that we see on an everyday basis in today's videos (character masking and masked transitions, mainly) were present in this video. I don't know that there were many videos before this one that did those things, and certainly none as popular. Whether this video was the true start of a lot of those trends is up for debate, but it was certainly one of a few from this era that had a huge impact on many editors who came after.

Also yeah, Shonen Libido! was an homage to/parody of Shonen Bushidou.

EDIT: I realize I've been playing Devil's Advocate to you this entire thread seasons, whoops. Nevermind, no I haven't -_- Was thinking that you were also MouseBollocks.

[Castor Troy]

Video: Shounen Bushidou (Preview)
Category: Action, Other, Serious
Anime: Ninja Scroll (TV), One Piece, Fullmetal Alchemist (TV), etc. (+66)
Song: Spirit Never Dies
Artist: Masterplan
Creator: istiv (Istiv Studio)


This seems like a "you had to be there" sort of AMV.

And what a time it must have been, my friends.
...
That's kind of flame-y and against the tone of the thread so instead I'll just say that this is pretty impressive, technically-speaking, or at least was at one point in time, and looks like it took a long time to make, but it just feels like "Shonen Libido" (which I presume was an homage to this, maybe) but without any of the humor. Help me out if I'm missing anything here.

Shonen Bushidou actually makes sense, though. If you look at it, it's pretty impressive for a video for 2004...there are definitely a lot of...er, era-specific effects that don't exactly carry over to today, but (at least in my opinion) it chooses a simple, shallow concept and goes absolutely balls-to-the-wall with it. It has lots and lots and lots of lip sync. It has effects that were, for their time, impressive and time-consuming. It's sickeningly otaku-pandering. It's intentionally epic.

To be clear, I don't like this video, at all. I just watched it for the first time today in...probably six or seven years. It hasn't held up well, and looks incredibly tacky and cheesy. There's not a lot about this video that I actually enjoy, but man, I respect istiv for making it. This is, I think, a major landmark in the history of AMVs, specifically modern AMVs. So many things that we see on an everyday basis in today's videos (character masking and masked transitions, mainly) were present in this video. I don't know that there were many videos before this one that did those things, and certainly none as popular. Whether this video was the true start of a lot of those trends is up for debate, but it was certainly one of a few from this era that had a huge impact on many editors who came after.

Also yeah, Shonen Libido! was an homage to/parody of Shonen Bushidou.

EDIT: I realize I've been playing Devil's Advocate to you this entire thread seasons, whoops. Nevermind, no I haven't -_- Was thinking that you were also MouseBollocks.

I confess I find myself singing the song from time to time.

NEVER GIVE UP! NEVER GIVE IN!

[purplepolecat]

I have never been able to sit through the whole of Dead To The World, even though I like Marilyn Manson and dystopian dramas.

[Shui]

Video: Engel
Category: Action, Character Profile
Anime: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Neon Genesis Evangelion (End of Evangelion)
Song: Engel
Artist: Ramstein
Creator: Kevin Caldwell (proxy)


I don't see it. He's done better Videos before and after Engel. I think this is just popular because he's done a funny songcombo with a popular anime
Also don't give me the shit about it being technically good, there's others from that time just as good/better.

[CrackTheSky]

I can only think of one recent example:

Video: Fracture
Category: Character Profile, Serious, Romance, etc. (+1)
Anime: Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko (TV), Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai. (TV), Arata Naru Sekai: World's/Start/Load/End (OVA), etc. (+27)
Song: Midnight City
Artist: M83
Creator: Gorz (Soul's Team)

I hadn't seen this video at the time you posted this, but I watched it for the first time (relatively) recently and...yeah, I don't get this one either. The concept is weak and the video seems to go on forever, despite being under three minutes long. I dunno...it's pretty, but it's also really hollow. There's a foundation for a solid video there but as it stands this one feels really undercooked on concept and overblown on effects. That, plus it really seemed to take itself too seriously.

Still, Gorz made Gatsby in the Quickening this year, so I can forgive him