This week in anime, Lucas and Chris dive into the long history of AMVs (anime music videos) and their evolution from the early days of the internet through to today.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.
Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.
Chris, I’m happy to share with you and our readers that we’re writing this column on the evening of my 30th birthday! After spending the prior weekend catching up with family and friends in Las Vegas, I can’t think of a better way to spend my actual birthday than by getting a bit nostalgic and taking a stroll with you through a niche of an artform that’s hyper-specific to the anime community: AMVs.
With a popularity that’s waxed and waned just as much as anime has over the decades, animated music videos are proof of the anime community’s latent creativity and multifaceted interest in culture and broader media. I didn’t even know the AMV scene was a distinct subculture within the anime community until I got to college, and have had so much fun in going down the rabbit hole of current, retired, and long lasting AMV creators in preperation for this column!
It’s the right time for it, too, as we find ourselves smack in the middle of convention season! Catching showcases of AMVs in con video rooms, and even having contests for the creations, is a key component of that social nerd experience. It makes sense, sitting at the intersection of anime itself and fan creations that the community is host to. As you said, it’s a distinctive art form that’s undoubtedly cultivated skillsets and launched longer, dedicated editing careers for many creators, and arguably deserves its celebration in this fan space.
Anyway, after all that, this is the part where I confess that I’ve never really been one to “get” AMVs, myself. But we here at TWIA have never been ones to let differences in perspective dissuade us from enlightening discussion. Let’s see if the delights you found digging into that rabbit hole can turn me around on these funny little movies, Lucas!
Off the cuff, Studio Hawk’s Mr. Morioh Nice Guy has long been my answer to the nerdy ice-breaker question, “What’s your favorite YouTube video under 100k views! This AMV feels like it was tailor-made to delight me specifically, considering it’s both a lavish tribute to one of the strongest parts of JoJo and a reminder of actor Will Smith‘s on-and-off-again rap career!
© LUCKY LAND COMMUNICATIONS/SHUEISHA,JOJO’s Animation DU Project
Your initial example does a good baseline job of detailing the technical elements of AMVs that can impress me (the editing including lip-synching is all very impressive) while still leaving me with a bit of a shrug, it reminds me that Diamond Is Unbreakable is cool, but no more in a way I wouldn’t get from just watching the anime itself, or a slickly edited trailer.
That vibe of “Neat trailers for series the target audience already watched” has always been what hung around AMVs for me. It’s enhanced by official channels getting in on the action themselves, as Toonami did with their own music videos back in the day.
I remember thinking these custom Toonami promos were cool as a kid, but as a working adult, I realize how crazy impressive they are now! You can’t make an AMV like this one without being extremely familiar with both the themes and clips of those Toonami anime. This shows how much that team cared about anime. Especially with anime being more of an interchangeable product in today’s media landscape, I appreciate how much Toonami did in establishing the tone and aesthetics of this community.
Longtime Aniskitter presence and friend of ANN, Nate Ming, for instance, dropped this one for Hajime no Ippo, a personal favorite of his. I’ve not seen the series beyond the first couple of episodes and couldn’t hope to name the various boxing boys within. I love Orange Range as much as the next guy and can feel the scrappy tones of rising and pushing oneself present in this punch-fest. Also, shout-out to the little text credit intro and the DivX logo in the corner. Even if I never cared for or about AMVs, that’s still the kinda nostalgia that can take me back to this era.
I saw your post and a response to it from ladybloof; and wanted to thank her for once again putting cool shit in front of me! I’ve never watched Princess Tutu nor listened to “Håll Om Mig” by Nanne Grönvall before watching this AMV, but Marisa Panaccio of Tidirium Studios’ mashup of the two made me want to check out more of both!
I understand and respect your point earlier about AMVs more or less being fan-made advertisements, and while I
agree with you on a technical level, there’s a level of enthusiasm in a lot of these that I can’t help but find endearing.
© HAL • GANSIS/TUTU
If what I “got” out of the experience was more of a push to check out this always highly recommended anime, fair enough. But I do wonder what this does for established fans of the source material, apart from give them a way to enjoy and engage with it when they want to, but only have 3-4 minutes, like some hypertime upgrade of a series compilation movie.
When I watch these, I feel like I’m experiencing a condensed version of everything that makes the modern One Piece anime so appealing. Stylish visuals, characters with distinct looks and attitudes, and unreasonably good fight choreography all compacted into something I can watch while waiting for a pot of coffee to boil! I’d even make the argument that the more over-produced visual direction of One Piece works better as an AMV, as the quicker cuts obfuscate the excessive number of after effects on screen at any given time.
(Also, I discovered the hip hop duo Joey Valance and Brae thanks to the One Punk Tactics video. As their music single-handedly got me through the last Anime Expo I attended, that AMV will always hold a special place in my heart.)
© Eiichiro Oda/Shueisha, Toei Animation
Scott’s vids there also work as a good example of the interplay between AMV creation and video editing overall. This is a guy who worked as part of TeamFourStar to cut together the famous “DBZ Abridged” parody videos, after all, so there’s going to a lot of skill crossover.
This loops back to the appreciation I can have for the technical aspects of AMV creation and the more ambitious splice-togethers some people have come up with over the years. Even if the “humor” inherent to some of these mash-ups rings a bit “eh” to me at this point. Shout-out to fellow Chris ‘Invalidname’ Adamson for recommending this complex example to me, among many others.
First off, it delights me to no end that another human is on the planet besides myself who’s aware of all three of those media properties! Second, it’s 2025, and short-form video is king across major social media platforms. I can appreciate AMVs evolving and branching off to succeed in this newish format.
© 2020 PMP
© 2020 PMP
You also nailed the point about “funny” AMVs I was going for. A lot of these burn through their One Joke pretty quickly, and all the solid editing in the world can’t alleviate the feeling of dragging by the time the second chorus kicks in.
At least that “NERVana” reference is a pretty good gag. That’s why I did appreciate the “AMV Hell” format catching on back in the day, borrowing the rapid-fire channel-changing stylings that had us still thinking Robot Chicken was funny at the time, and using that quick-hit approach to get looser with what constituted an “AMV“, especially for comedic purposes.
@reinhart.amv We Both Reached for the Gun – Trigun Edit – I waited and waited for someone to do this obvious edit, but got tired of waiting and decided to do it myself. The moment I heard this song I thought of how much it fits this scene at the end between Vash and Knives. Enjoy #anime #animetiktok #animeedit #amv #animefyp #animefypシ #trigun #vashthestampede #trigunstampede #thegun #animeviral ♬ original sound – Reinhart AMV
Take Reinhart.amv’s We Both Reached for the Gun – Trigun Edit video. It was one of the last things I watched on that platform that I remember enjoying before deleting the TikTok app, and it feels like something that could only exist on that platform due to its brief runtime and hyper-specific subject matter.
I cannot overstate how much mileage AMV editors got out of Azumanga Daioh back in the day.
Azumanga Daioh is such a cultural totem in the anime community that I forget that there was ever a time before it came out.
To hear it told, the show is STILL being used in new AMVs to this day! Let it rest, guys!
The AMV and Abridged Series crossovers continue apace, I see.
Haha, I think we’d be hard pressed today to find something similar to this AMV by Martin “LittleKuriboh” Billany; who functionally invented the abridged series format with Yu-Gi-Oh! Abridged. This is an AMV that’s based on his version of the YGO characters singing Styx’s Come Sail Away, where he sings every line; and it’s so weird and specific that I can’t help but love it.
To say nothing of how some aspects have aged interestingly in ways apart from how cultural senses of humor grow, as in this classic, my sister graciously reminded me of.
It’s just very amusing to see Asuka opining about wishing she were a lesbian, now given her apparent situation with Mari in the Rebuild movies.
© カラー／Project Eva. ©カラー／EVA製作委員会 ©カラー
I guess the only compliment I have left to give newer AMVs is that, on a technical level, I think they’re quite a bit stronger than the older AMVs they’re iterating upon. Take, for instance, NinjaristicNinja’s CHU CHU LOVELY | CHAINSAW MAN 137 x MAXIMUM THE HORMONE.
The amount of work that had to have gone into turning a sequence from the Chainsaw Man manga into an AMV is incredible, and I’m shocked at how great it looks all things considered!
The compounding difference in effort is kinda astounding.
Even if I’m not the biggest Kowloon guy, I can recognize that this music video is a bummer. A lot of AMVs are graded on a curve, since they’re often young fans doing editing and other aspects of production in a hobbyist capacity. This is lazy even by AMV standards, and that’s sad to see from something that’s supposed to be an official, professional-caliber release.
© AIC
It worked well in this case, given BGC’s music is some of the best in the biz. It helped to squeeze out some more sales in an always-uneven OVA release schedule. As we’ve detailed here, times have changed, and something like Kowloon doesn’t get that sort of benefit of the doubt. Best to leave this sort of practice entirely to the fans these days.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love for people who make AMVs to go on to work on media that they’re passionate about, similar to how there’s a bit of a pipeline for scanlators to become official translators. However, I’m mostly watching AMVs because they’re fun and stupid on a human and personal level, and I don’t think I’ll ever get that itch scratched by a company.
For instance, a company would never put the work into securing the rights and allocating the resources to create an AMV of Zoro from One Piece set to Papa Roach’s Last Resort, and yet there are DOZENS of videos with that premise available online right now. That’s both incredibly stupid and just plain incredible.
I still don’t know if I get it, but I get it, you get it?
You must recreate that experience of wandering into a con viewing room at 1 a.m. and being roundhouse kicked by something somehow.
You heard the man, readers! Get in those comments and drop some AMV recommendations! With AX and the start of the summer season less than a week away, it’s the busiest time of year here at ANN, and we could all use fun distractions!
