Music: Xenogears OST, "Stars of Tears"
Genre: Drama, Romance
Duration: 3:30
Format: DivX 5.0, 720x480, 57MB
WARNING: The first few seconds of the video DO NOT have audio. Please DO NOT turn up your volume. There is NOTHING WRONG with your audio codec. Unless there really is.
I didn't expect to do a .hack video so soon, but it struck me one day when I was going through my collection of MP3s and chanced across this song, one of two vocal pieces from that old controversial PS1 RPG, Xenogears. The lyrics are rather abstract and sometimes don't seem to make much sense, as is sometimes the case when Japanese people try to compose English songs. That made it a perfect match for .hack. ^_^;
I've used quite a few effects in this one, probably on par, if not more than the number I used in To Live By The Sword - some are obviously obvious, others are hopefully discreet. Go spot them all. ^_^
I've tried to stay away from anything overtly literal when matching scenes to lyrics, to avoid that jaded feeling of "oh, I've seen this a thousand times before." Whether it works or not is still up in the air, but there was one clear instance in this video where I succumb to my self-named Crying Syndrome, because I felt that it was important to the overall effect and impact of the moment.
Sandrock