AMV Hell 3
© AMV Hell
Video and the Anime Star
By: Nadia OxfordDate: Thursday, October 11, 2007
I know I said I'd use this week to keep talking about how plagiarism applies to manga and anime, but then something very important happened: AMV Hell 4 went live on the Internet. I'd be shocked to learn if God Himself didn't get off His cloud for a couple of hours to watch this feature-length slice of hilarity (it might help Him lighten up a little bit).
You're probably asking, what is an AMV and how does it apply to Hell? "AMV" stands for "Anime Music Video" and, as the name suggests, it's a music video set to footage cobbled together from one or more anime titles. The "A" can also simply stand for "animated" if the editor opts to use footage from American cartoons instead.
"AMV Hell" is a four-part series (excluding two titles on the side that are not part of the "official" series on grounds of being too different or too filthy) that parodies AMVs and anime in general. AMVs have a habit of being overblown and heavy-handed; AMV Hell normally opts for humour and character-specific sound clips. For example, one clip in the newborn AMV Hell 4 matches up footage of Light Yagami from writing in the Death Note along with "The Ballad of Timothy McSweeney" by They Might Be Giants ("Timothy McSweeney, Timothy McSweeny / He takes a pen and paper and he gets things done!").
It's these little snips of perfectly matched parody that have helped the AMV Hell series grow into a fan phenomenon over the years. Whereas the first two titles (AMV Hell and AMV Hell II: The "Son of AMV Hell") were short projects put together by a few people, AMV Hell 3 ("The Motion Picture") and AMV Hell 4 ("AMV Hell 3 II: The Motion Picture II") invited outside input from fans. As a result, parts 3 and 4 are both well over an hour in length. AMV Hell 4 reportedly received over a thousand submissions when the call went out for fan participation.
AMV Hell is also successful because it's just some damn good stuff put together by people who know how to edit. AMVs generally have a reputation for being terrible. Putting together a quality video takes time, a good sense of rhythm and access to high-quality raw footage. The majority of anime fans don't have access to any of these and instead opt for bad songs and fuzzy low-resolution footage with the Cartoon Network logo in the corner. Or, worse, they'll pull some subtitled anime episodes off a torrent and make no effort to hide the words that pop up and collide (very badly) with the lyrics of their chosen song, which is usually some Top 40 Crap of the Moment. Since anime fans often aren't any better at editing music than they are at editing video, the final product ends up being a three-minute cut of Goku and his friends standing and talking about power levels (which you can see quite clearly thanks to the subtitles) while Linkin Park blares at a volume loud enough to give nearby pets brain damage.
AMVs don't have to be long and terrible. AMV Hell exists to give us delicious bite-sized samples of what they CAN be: Funny, sad, dramatic, terrifying. The various clips that put AMV Hell together generally don't last longer than thirty seconds, so even if you're not enjoying one particular song or anime, it doesn't matter because it's over quickly and on to the next offering.
Most of the clips remind anime fans of one very important fact: It's perfectly okay to make fun of something you like. There's a lot of good anime out there. There's also a lot of terrible, silly and derivative anime clogging Blockbuster's shelves. If we can acknowledge the fact that not every anime is worthy of mankind's highest honours, we can have a lot of fun. The "talking" corn-cob at the start of AMV Hell 4, for example, embodies a lot that's wrong with the genre. I'll leave you to research why that is.
Alas, AMV Hell 4 is the last of the series--at least under the official AMV Hell label. As you might imagine, there have been a lot of imitations. In fact, the final set of closing credits is set to "Welcome to the Black Parade" by My Chemical Romance because of a specific set of lyrics: "Though you're dead and gone, your memory will carry on."
It's a bit of a solemn choice for the happy-go-lucky spirit of the series, but it's also an invitation to cut loose and have fun. Go forth, young video editors. Just watch out for those subtitles.
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