Thursday, February 28, 2013

General RPGs' AMVs 7

Time for another foray into my personal quirk (well, one of them), a fascination with AMVs.

Starting today, incidentally, I’m gonna highlight one AMV per AMV rant in bold. This bolded AMV will be the one I consider the best of the bunch for that rant. Why do this? I dunno. Probably cuz I’m bored, I guess.

As always, if you find any of these videos pleasing, be decent enough to hit the Thumbs Up button, and/or even better yet, leave a positive comment. The world has more than enough terrible, clumsy, careless AMVs, and we must cherishingly encourage and gently cradle those few, precious fans capable of creating something worthwhile.



CHRONO

Chrono Cross: Path, by Lycan Lord: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y2qCja3Cew&list=WL7252ED8AF15FA0F7
The music used is Path, by Apocalyptica. Appropriately choosing a violin-heavy song for a violin-heavy game, Lycan Lord takes this song’s inconstant but elegant fire and chaos and matches it with technical grace and intuitive emotion through the scenes of Chrono Cross. Lycan Lord makes the most out of Path and creates a far better tribute to Chrono Cross than the game actually deserves.


FINAL FANTASY

Final Fantasy 8: I Found Away, by YuniX2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VP3ABap5Xs&list=WL7252ED8AF15FA0F7
The music used is I Found Away, by Alkaline Trio. This isn’t YuniX2’s first time on this blog (you may recall the excellent FF10 AMV of hers that got its own rant last year), nor shall it be her last. She just seems to have this great, innate understanding of how to meld the lyrics and emotion and meaning to the actions and visuals and meaning of game scenes and characters, and seal them together into a whole using simple but creative and cool editing and connections of movement and shape between scenes. You watch this video, and it makes sense, it has purpose, it connects all its parts, and it flows naturally from one part to the next. This video is as good as an AMV can get without outright deserving its very own spotlight rant.

Final Fantasy 8: No Light, No Light, by EmeraldLatias: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFfPeIKHmYg
The music used is No Light, No Light, by Florence and the Machine. I hope this is as good as I think it is, but if I’m to be honest, I fear my impartiality with AMVs is not at full strength when it comes to Florence and the Machine. It’s rare that a singer/band/musical group comes along that I can actually consider a musical artist, and rarer still that I also actually enjoy their work (my tastes are a bit...picky, when it comes to music. Like, picky even considering my usual demanding nature, which, as you probably know by now, is really saying something). Regardless of my automatic favor of the song, though, I’m pretty sure this is a darned good AMV. The editing is effective, the scenes match the tone of the music well, and the lyrics and events of the video component are well-coordinated, using FF8’s footage effectively for the song’s purposes. Solid work.

Final Fantasy 10: What If, by Thececfinal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW74wAx4nB0&list=WL7252ED8AF15FA0F7
The music used is What If, by Kate Winslet. I generally try to avoid acknowledging the existence of Final Fantasy 10-2 in any significant way, and this usually means I ignore any AMV that features scenes from it, but the this one’s really good, and the FF10-2 scenes are really only used to underscore the aspects of the FF10 footage that work with the music, so I make an exception here. Anyway, very good all around on this one--the video matches the song’s tune well, the lyrics are overall a great fit for Yuna and Tidus (though it sometimes seems almost like the video is jumping from the lyrics applying to Yuna and Tidus, and then like Yuna and Tidus are applying to the lyrics, if that makes any sense (probably doesn’t)). The effects are simple but good; I quite like the black-and-white effect for the part where the singer is remembering near the beginning. This is just a well-made AMV, simple as that.


THE LEGEND OF ZELDA

The Legend of Zelda Series: New Divide, by RokuRee14: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SeD0gaLh0E&list=WL7252ED8AF15FA0F7
The music used is New Divide, by Linkin Park. Like it or hate it, there’s no denying that Linkin Park’s music is by and large perfect fuel for AMVs, and as such, I hear it dozens and dozens of times every time I do an AMV check-up, so I’m kind of biased about AMVs that use it--it’s so easy to do a halfway decent job with it that an AMV has to use it especially effectively for me to take any notice. But I gotta say, this AMV here does a bang-up job, matching lyrics to scenes, tune to atmosphere, and generally meshing the audio and visual into one unit. There are a couple of scenes that I think really work in this one, like showing Link holding the Master Sword when the song mentions Fate having found him, and showing the time shift, the crossing of divided times, in TLoZ: Ocarina of Time when the song first mentions its namesake, the “new divide.” There’s some good visual editing on this one, too, although I’d say there’s a point where it’s a little excessive later in the song. Overall, I’d say this one’s a definite winner.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: Knight of Immortal Fire, by Kh0r0n: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2Fb3PpHfM8
The music used is Knight of Immortal Fire, by Luca Turilli. Short of extravagant special effects, it doesn’t get much better for AMV editing than this video. Kh0r0n does a darn near flawless job at coordinating the action of every video clip to the actions and feel of the music, and the end result is a totally epic show of the rich and varied world, events, and game play of TLoZSS. If this doesn’t give you a rush of excitement and desire to play the game, then I don’t know what possibly could.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: Not Strong Enough, by AbsolLugia and Zelda3018: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM9MIC7GKko
The music used is Strong Enough, by Apoctalyptica. This one’s pretty heavy on the special effects, but most of the time they’re used very well. I mean, the beginning part is a little heavy-handed, but overall pretty neat, particularly when the color begins to seep in. The scene changes are timed very well and have some definite skill to them, the golden tint to the video is a really nice effect (it’s always tricky, tinting your video without having it become unnecessarily distracting), and the central window rectangle effect thing that starts at 1:14 is quite cool and matches itself to the song splendidly. On the other hand, the little wispy wind things that start at 1:41 ARE distracting and seem completely arbitrary, along with the subsequent stardusty effect and the opening color circle things. This video would be SO much better without any of that crap; all it does is distract. Still, the timing and scene selection is just great, the effects for the first half of it, at least, really compliment it, and overall it comes off as very cool.


SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3: Memories of..., by WizardofCeles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IenxyCnamEk
The music used is a cover of Fix You, by Coldplay. The cover itself is done by a fan known as Number3NeverForget. This is a simple, quiet, but emotional AMV that uses the gentle music to compliment the game footage, which gives a brief detail of SMTP3 protagonist Minato’s relationship with his friends, and the incredible impact he has upon them, leaving them forever altered for the better by his actions, leadership, and friendship. The AMV takes the idea of fixing someone, which is from the original version of the song, and applies it to Minato, showing how he’s left them better than he found them. It’s sweet and touching, and the effects that WizardofCeles employs in the video are used well.

4 comments:

  1. I was actually a huge fan of Linkin Park. Then they released Meteora.

    I'll be sure to check these out sometime tonight.

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    Replies
    1. Cool. I'll look forward to hearing any of your impressions.

      And I'm assuming that Meteora is their new stuff, yes? My sister was a big Linkin Park fan, and she found their new stuff to be okay, but too wildly different from their standard to even associate it as theirs. Can't say I'm a fan of what she's had me listen to more recently, either, but then, I can't stand 98% of music anyway, so that doesn't mean much, heh.

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    2. Meteora was their third album, after Hybrid Theory and Reanimation. Loved both albums, and the third was still good, but it had very little of the style and sound I liked LP for. Everything afterwards is like that, but moreso.

      Well, I clearly took my sweet time checking these out. I'll be commenting on the videos themselves later since Google has their eldritch tendrils on every freaking internet account, and my gmail screws everything up.

      CC
      -Path: Great music. Say what you will about CC, it looks good, especially the stuff that has any contextual value. Not to say it wasn't used well, but much of the intro footage itself has absolutely no meaning whatsoever. Hardly a fault of the AMV maker.

      FF8. I don't get it. The ratio of good AMVs to the quality of the game itself is absurd. The game has some unusually creative fans. Makes me wish I could see the game from their perspective.
      I Found Away: Liked it a lot. Maybe VIII SHOULD have focused on teen emotions and angst instead of whatever it focused on originally.
      No Light, No Light: I think the AMV was good, so you're not alone. Loved the dance scene being cut up and spread across the whole thing. Worked pretty well IMO. Also, that song was really good. All in all, I wish the game was as good as this AMV.

      FFX
      I wrapped up a playthrough last week. Oh boy, does this double dose of feels hurt. The 10-2 clips were well-used, and unexpected.

      I'll hit up the Zelda and P3 videos later.

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    3. I hear you regarding FF8 AMVs. Although to be fair, just having a single FF8 AMV out there in the world of decent quality is by itself a ridiculous ratio of good AMVs to the game's own quality.

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