Lets just be SUPER CUTE GIRLS!

godix · Post by **godix** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 12:20 pm

Are we still arguing about this? For gods sake, it's not worth dragging out. I think Bakadeshi used to have his own style but recently has just been emulating the wondertwins and with this video is just emulating Decoy & MAD makers. I've seen most of Bakadeshi's work and enough of the wondtwins/decoy/MADs to compare so it's doubtful I'll change my opinion. Bakadeshi feels he's making what he wants and isn't just emulating other editors. Being the guy who spent so much work over this video it's doubtful he'll change his mind. Can we spare the fanboyish me tooish and leave it at that? After all another page or two of comments won't change anything.

Streicher · Post by **Streicher** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 2:02 pm

The song makes this a heart breaker for me.

PaperIsland · Post by **PaperIsland** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 4:03 pm

I have something kind of different to say about this, sorry if it's kind of long...

I'm somewhat surprised at how easily people are willing to accept this as just a shallow well-edited fanservice video. Then they go on to say, "but the music doesn't really fit the lighthearted nature of the images", or something along those lines. I think the clash in moods between the song and images is meant to say something about the images. I think that this is in fact a "deep" AMV, just according to different criteria. Instead of making a traditional "deep" AMV that tells a story or describes a friendship and a rocky past, this AMV highlights a general aspect of anime (cuteness/fanservice) and invites us to think about it.

The song itself discusses gender/cuteness as a performance and a way to achieve power. When linked with the images, the anime characters that we normally see as cute innocent and vulnerable are complicated. Why as an audience have anime fans enjoyed watching "cute" girls (not cute as in just attractive, but as in a personality)? Also, what kind of power do girls get from acting cute? I don't want to spend a long time going into the specifics of what the video could mean and it doesn't have to have just one secret interpretation that we're meant to find either. But I do think the video's choice of music indicates that it is more than purely a "fanservice" video and we're meant to think about it. I'm also not sure I know exactly what a fanservice video is. JCD's Princess Bride video seems to be what this video might be like if the anime and music had the same lighthearted feel. But what is the purpose of a fanservice video? Is it dreaming of a certain lifestyle, softcore porn, humor, cameos of everyones' favorite cute characters put together?

Ok, I've gotten used to you emulating the wondertwins so I wasn't expecting much. But come on, what's with combining Decoy's and Piano's styles together? As has become usual for you, technically well done but wasn't worth the time to download or watch. When are you going to return to your own style already?

As a total side note, spastic camera action and effects does NOT equal action, dance, or fun. Not if during most of the video the characters aren't actually doing much.

I don't think this is the same as Decoy or Piano because Decoy changes the images so much that you can no longer contemplate the meaning of just the original source and Piano doesn't really stick to one theme in an individual video (as far as I can tell in what I've seen). They also both use music that doesn't really complicate anything, just cements it.

For the second comment... I'm not sure. It's not only spastic camera action, the girls do dance, fight, kiss, etc... but it's possible that in showing such an overwhelming number of characters that the video does lose some action variety and duration. I do think that sometimes video makers ignore the backgrounds and scenery to focus on just the characters a bit too much. That's all I have to say. I don't mean to sound pretentious, but I just wanted to point out that sometimes things that seem shallow can have more depth than we give them credit for (particularly various videos which might not be able to say a lot about a particular series, but might be able to say something about anime in general, like SenshiMamoru's Cartoon Heroes).

godix · Post by **godix** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 5:03 pm

PaperIsland wrote:lots of stuff

Totally offtopic but join #amv-review in IRC on monday night. Seriously. Quadir would have a joygasm to see someone who analyzes videos like this.

Bakadeshi · Post by **Bakadeshi** » Tue Aug 14, 2007 12:58 pm

godix wrote:
PaperIsland wrote:lots of stuff
Totally offtopic but join #amv-review in IRC on monday night. Seriously. Quadir would have a joygasm to see someone who analyzes videos like this.

*comes out of seclusion working on 3d stuffs for ayumix for this*

totally agree ;p that was some analyzin you did there. youd make a good opinionator. Thanks for the ... indepth... comments

*goes back into seclusion working on 3d stuffs for ayumix*

chambeyc · Post by **chambeyc** » Thu Aug 16, 2007 7:35 am

That was technically impressive, with excellent editing, BUT i too feel like the music doesn't really fit the video footage.
Yet i liked it

4/5