I remember about ten years ago as the internet was still in it’s infancy, one of the big things people were doing was mixing clips of Dragonball Z with Linkin Park songs. I went to Anime Banzai this year in Layton Utah and one of the biggest attractions was the AMV (Anime Music Video) contest. It was done in the main hall and the entire room was packed full of people. This tradition of people mixing their favorite music to their favorite anime scenes has become a huge thing when it comes to any anime convention.
I was impressed as the quality had gotten higher since the days of DBZ and Linkin Park, but it wasn’t until the very last video that I suddenly realized the actual potential there is in AMVs. The last video they showed was an AMV by Nostromo called Pure Thrust. It ended up winning the Best In Show award at Anime Banzai.
and finally the last video wasn’t just done by Nostromo but by him and a couple of other AMV wizards. This one has my favorite anime Cowboy Bebop in it, and they created interesting rules for the video. The first person who worked on it used clips they wanted for their portion. The second person could then only use clips from the first person’s clips. The third could only use clips from the second and so on. It’s a very interesting concept and one I really like.
As of writing this Anime Banzai has yet to put all of the contest videos up on their site but have said that they will be there eventually so check back at http://amvs.animebanzai.org/ in the next couple of weeks to see more of the contest videos.