I was a big anime fan for much of the aughts, and like every other anime fan, I had a collection of AMVs, the fan-made music videos that paired clips from anime to popular (and not-so popular) music and other audio. Roughly around 2007, I put a big recommendation list of about sixty AMVs on the bookmarking list del.icio.us, which has since gone totally kaput. My AMV collection was also lost about three computers ago, despite my taking pains to save the hard drive. So, because I've been getting nostalgic about that period of my life lately, I decided to try and recreate that list and collection with a Youtube playlist.
After a couple of days of wracking my brains, looking up information on the fan-run indexing site AMV.org (thankfully still alive and well), and following breadcrumb trails, I managed to find about 90% of the videos I remember from my old collection. The bulk of them are available on Youtube, mostly in terrible quality to get around the copyright bots. No matter how often they get taken down, someone always re-uploads them, and at some point it looks like Youtube just gave up and let them stay. Only a handful of my old favorites aren't there, the most prominent being one of the most notorious and beloved AMVs of all time - Kevin Caldwell's "Engel." It uses the Rammstein song "Engel," set to clips of "Neon Genesis Evangelion" to profile the character of Asuka Langley Sohryu. There are masses of dead links from fans who keep posting that video, only to be thwarted by Rammstein's label. However, at the time of writing there are still at least three versions of the "Engel" video on Youtube, using different remixes and alternate language versions of the original song. I find this very ironic, since the "Engel" video probably did more to popularize Rammstein's music globally in the late '90s than anything they ever did officially.
That was always the secret of AMVs. They break all kinds of copyright laws, but it's not in the best interest of anybody to enforce them, because AMVs serve as very potent free advertising. Over the years, so many fans found new musical artists or new anime because they stumbled upon a particularly impressive AMV. They used to be appended to fansubs in the VHS age, and were all over conventions and screenings in my college days. They also remain one of the best examples of the creativity of fan remix cultures. I haven't been around for the Youtube era, when some AMVs achieved meme status and racked up millions of views - see "Anime 404" - but it's nice to see that AMVs are still going strong. I've watched a couple of newer videos, and read up on the trends and technological advances that have happened (I never thought anybody would find a good use for motion-smoothing, but they did), and it warms my heart to see the anime nerds still nerding it up.
Most of the prominent video editors from the early 2000s are retired, including my favorites, Hsien Lee and Kevin Caldwell. However, I was delighted to find that there are a couple of the old guard that are still active, though they've mostly crossed over into the live action vidding community. The AMV world seems to have decentralized in the last decade, revolving less around AMV.org and the big AMV competitions, and now buzzing on Instagram and TikTok. And of course, there have always been editors like Kestrel Sempai who remain entirely self-hosted. A great thing about the AMV community is that it's always been so wildly diverse with an international reach. Scanning my own recreated video collection list, there are several that use songs in German or Japanese, two are in French, and one is in Swedish. If you're at all familiar with "Princess Tutu," you know what the Swedish one is.
So many of the older corners of the internet have been disappearing lately, it's nice to find one that's been in pretty good shape since I left it. While many of my favorite AMVs are only available in awful quality, their creators long ago MIA, others have been lovingly preserved. Veteran editor Zarxrax remastered all of Kevin Caldwell's videos last year, including "Engel." And another of the old guard, Absolute Destiny, recently published a beautifully detailed article on the origins of the AMV scene in the Journal for Transformative Works and Cultures.
As for me, after my trip down memory lane, I don't feel the need to resubscribe to AMV.og and reassemble my AMV collection. My nostalgia has its limits. However, this time I'm definitely backing up copies of my list, so I don't have to do so much work the next time I want to watch a couple of old "Revolutionary Girl Utena"/Evanescence videos. Speaking of which, does anyone know where to find a decent copy of "Deluge"?
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