You did a great job here.
There's a lot of history to overcome here (how to break through the
been there-done that attitude that tons of people are going to have just reading the title of this, no it's not fair but I'm just stating the obvious), a big audience that's going to be immediately receptive to this concept but possibly an even bigger one that's just going to roll their eyes at the prospect of another angsty
Naruto AMV. Their preconceived notions of what this video is going to be will be mostly wrong, and hopefully they'll give this a chance.
At first, I wasn't really into the idea of this being a lyric video, but since I've already followed along with the subtitles of the exposition for the first minute and a half, eh, why not? And as far as all of that exposition in the beginning, using the dialog over the music... I mean, you made this work as well as it possibly can, I think. Viewers will probably get into this as much as their personal history with
Naruto dictates that they're going to. And that's still a massively relevant thing in 2019! I'm kind of just rambling here, but my personal feelings are that so many of these videos fail because the lyrics and/or subtitles just look clumsy or clash with the video in a gaudy way. They're extremely easy to read in this video! And not having watched these episodes since they first aired, I found them really helpful in retracing the lore of this series and the plot of these episodes. So it was easy to understand and follow.
But who cares about that? How's the editing? The editing here is... pretty great! You match all the movements of this song really well, and even though I'm really not into this kind of music, I enjoyed this and it actually helped me appreciate the music in a way I probably haven't before.
Really smooth use of effects, great scene selection, kind of exhausted myself talking about this AMV in meta-terms and now I'm kind of glossing over all of the aspects of the actual editing that you put into it, but wow, this just feels big and epic and actually earns those words in ways that 99% of Epic Naruto AMVs come up short in delivering. This probably won't illuminate the series for non-fans, but that's not what it's for. If you love the
Naruto universe and/or tragic Uchiha family backstory stuff but want to get it like a expertly-aimed bat to the face instead of the dark sadboi meme that it's become, or just want to see what that's like because you can't imagine any of this working on a sincere level anymore at this point, this is the AMV for you!
It's hard AF to tear people's eyes away from whatever they're distracted from to watch a normal-length AMV, so convincing people to watch one that's seven minutes long is... something I don't know how to do, but I really hope people give this a chance. It's not going to deliver the retro nostalgia of "
MY2007," there's none of that appeal here. But damn, this is just the biggest monument to
Naruto I've ever seen.
This definitely trounced my expectations, and I always love how that feels.
