I've been away a while myself. Welcome back!WesW wrote:I kept meaning to come back to this thread. Nice to see your thoughtful responses to my criticisms.
I've heard it had some influence on Eastern thought as well; when Christian missionaries arrived in the East, they found that the Buddhists had a number of legends about heroic sufferers that echoed Christ's life story quite a bit. Vash the Stampede in Trigun might be based on some of these legends, although of course the makers of that show also had the benefit of modern Christian influences.WesW wrote:This reminds me of a segment in the preview segment to HBO's Rome, where the actress said that you don't realize how much Christianity permeates Western thought until you delve into the period before it existed.
That's the difficulty with subtlety: sometimes it leaves my viewers scratching their heads. As I warned in the description, it pays to have seen the series.WesW wrote:It seems I missed a lot in my initial viewing of the vid, then. One thing fades can do is give you some extra frames for a scene, which maybe could've made the context of the scenes more obvious. If people haven't heard the song before, and therefore are trying to take in both new audio and visuals, being as obvious as possible is a benefit.
I see what you mean about the extra frames giving some context, but that probably doesn't apply so much to this series. Did I mention how easy it was to get tight compression on Koi Kaze? Everybody spends so much time standing or sitting around talking in this story that very little ever changes from frame to frame in most scenes. Most of the frames cropped for time constraints in this AMV were just the same as the frames that came before or after them.
WesW wrote:Well, I'm 38, so I don't know about being a young whipper-snapper.I guess it's too bad I didn't get into anime and AMVs "back in the day", because a lot of the comments I get are from kids who don't appreciate taking your time in a scene, the use of subtlety or a soft-sync.

Hey, those are some of my favorites too! I think I know what you mean about the lifestyle baggage: I didn't like a lot of the 1980s music until I was well out of that decade and a lot of those singers had faded from the scene. I like a lot of my parents' music for similar reasons; paisley and bell bottoms are long gone and a lot of the 1960s singers are dead now, but their music still holds its own.WesW wrote:As far as song choice, I actually prefer softer stuff to listen to than what I normally choose for my vids. Some of my favorite groups are Chicago, Journey, Heart and Boston, to give you a taste of them. I actually didn't care for the whole Hair Rock scene back when it was in style. It was only after these groups started appearing on VH1's "Where Are They Now" that I went back and just listened to the music, without all the lifestyle baggage that went with it, and found that the best of it was actually pretty good from a musical standpoint.
I know what you mean, but well... there has been some pretty conclusive research on this subject, albeit by online comedians:WesW wrote:I hope Bryan wasn't making a sexual reference with Summer of '69. It sounded more autobiographical to me, with the band and all.
http://www.cracked.com/article_16442_6- ... think.html
I'm sorry if I ruined it for you; I felt just as bad when I found out about it.
We'll see when we'll see, I guess. I don't really have any plans for making another AMV myself right now, though I'm considering doing something with Vampire Knights eventually. (I want to see what happens in the second season, though.)WesW wrote:I don't think you'll like the vid I just released, but you might like the next two I put out. One is a re-make of Every Time, and the other is a visually beautiful piece set to Journey's "Lights".
Ooh... that's one really, really sappy song as I recall. Maybe it does capture the feeling, but are you sure it won't sound a bit too much like you're endorsing incest?WesW wrote:As for Koi Kaze, the song I have in mind is Dan Hill's "Sometimes When We Touch". I think it captures the way the guy feels about his sister. I feel about like you do as far as how the relationship would eventually turn out, (to me she seems like the classic rebound relationship) but for the vid I think I'm going to try and stay neutral.
That was what had me rejecting one love song after another for this AMV: so few of them expressed any guilt or misgivings or doubts about love at all. What gave "Waiting for Wednesday" the edge over the others was that it had the virtue of the singer seemingly going back and forth over she wants "to show you goodbye" or not and wondering whether she'll be able to withstand her guy's seductive qualities when he's in close proximity to her.
I did consider a few songs from my parents' era for this as well:
"Go Away, Little Girl" by The Happenings
"Young Girl" by Gary Puckett
"Go Away, Little Girl" had a line, however, about the singer belonging to somebody else, which neither Koshiro nor Nanoka ever really did after their respective romantic interests rejected them. "Young Girl" focused entirely on the age difference, which was at most a minor concern in Koi Kaze. (The legal age of consent in Japan is 16, and in a few years the age difference wouldn't matter to anyone anyway.) Hence, I rejected them both.
Bottom line: picking a song for a Koi Kaze AMV is tricky business. Think twice and choose carefully.