People are creative by their nature, and sometimes this creativity is reignited by a certain type of media, one that fuels your imagination and cannot let you go of a specific idea.
These works are called fan works — transformative works that are based on an existing IP. Anime culture is highly transformative, a lot of stuff can be done to the original shows that allow people to explore their creativity. One of the interesting forms of such creative works is AMV — "anime music videos".
The idea is simple: you take the footage of your favorite anime and slap your favorite song on top of it. That's how the first AMV was created: in 1982 Jim Kaposztas connected two VCRs to each other and used the most violent footage from the show Star Blazers with All You Need Is Love by The Beatles as the soundtrack. But as with any craft, it progressed and became more and more sophisticated.
AMV culture peaked in the 00s when the digital releases of shows became a thing and video editing software became more accessible. Then YouTube was launched, which streamlined the process of sharing these video creations in a land that was still barely untouched by the copyright laws.
Some AMVs used only the video footage from the show itself; others also included fanart, manga scans, pictures from the official merchandise — anything related to the topic. People were pouring their love for the shows in their creations, some using extremely sophisticated editing, and AMVs served as advertisements for the anime.
Back in the early days of YouTube, there were moments when instead of official music videos for certain popular songs you were first shown the AMVs, and some people, impressed by how good the videos were done, thought that they were official works and that the songs were featured in the anime, so they ended up watching the anime.
At that time some of the most popular song choices for the AMVs were tracks from Evanescence, Linkin Park, Prodigy, and even TaTu (which was used mostly for the yaoi-themed AMVs, but still). It also worked the other way around: some AMVs helped people discover new artists when they were watching videos of their favorite anime and marveled at how greatly the footage matched the beats. There were even AMV-related contests and conventions.
The AMV culture didn't die, but it transformed: our media consumption patterns changed, we spend more time on social media apps than on YouTube, so the standards for the AMVs also changed. They are mostly created for phones, they got shorter, and there are quite serious editing apps available on phones. That led to the change of the titles — nowadays works like that are called "anime edits" or "fancams".
But people still love combining their favorite shows with their favorite music tracks. And we still find new series and new artists through these lovechildren.
And how it declined.
People are creative by their nature, and sometimes this creativity is reignited by a certain type of media, one that fuels your imagination and cannot let you go of a specific idea.
These works are called fan works — transformative works that are based on an existing IP. Anime culture is highly transformative, a lot of stuff can be done to the original shows that allow people to explore their creativity. One of the interesting forms of such creative works is AMV — "anime music videos".
The idea is simple: you take the footage of your favorite anime and slap your favorite song on top of it. That's how the first AMV was created: in 1982 Jim Kaposztas connected two VCRs to each other and used the most violent footage from the show Star Blazers with All You Need Is Love by The Beatles as the soundtrack. But as with any craft, it progressed and became more and more sophisticated.
AMV culture peaked in the 00s when the digital releases of shows became a thing and video editing software became more accessible. Then YouTube was launched, which streamlined the process of sharing these video creations in a land that was still barely untouched by the copyright laws.
Some AMVs used only the video footage from the show itself; others also included fanart, manga scans, pictures from the official merchandise — anything related to the topic. People were pouring their love for the shows in their creations, some using extremely sophisticated editing, and AMVs served as advertisements for the anime.
Back in the early days of YouTube, there were moments when instead of official music videos for certain popular songs you were first shown the AMVs, and some people, impressed by how good the videos were done, thought that they were official works and that the songs were featured in the anime, so they ended up watching the anime.
At that time some of the most popular song choices for the AMVs were tracks from Evanescence, Linkin Park, Prodigy, and even TaTu (which was used mostly for the yaoi-themed AMVs, but still). It also worked the other way around: some AMVs helped people discover new artists when they were watching videos of their favorite anime and marveled at how greatly the footage matched the beats. There were even AMV-related contests and conventions.
The AMV culture didn't die, but it transformed: our media consumption patterns changed, we spend more time on social media apps than on YouTube, so the standards for the AMVs also changed. They are mostly created for phones, they got shorter, and there are quite serious editing apps available on phones. That led to the change of the titles — nowadays works like that are called "anime edits" or "fancams".
But people still love combining their favorite shows with their favorite music tracks. And we still find new series and new artists through these lovechildren.
