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Information

• Member: AmadeusReborn
• Title: Our Conclusion
• Premiered: 2021-12-05
• Category:
  • Romance
• Song:
  • One11Twenty Stuck
• Anime:
  • School Rumble 2 (TV)
• Comments: "Our Conclusion" echoes Harima and Eri's dynamic, while at the same time telling a new story. I had a lot of fun making this, even if it's not super fancy, and I hope to continue with this hobby and learn more technical skills!
  
  School Rumble always surprises me with how much I love it for what it is, and Harima and Eri are certainly highlights. The begrudging but unavoidable chemistry is fantastic, and this story takes that and imposes it in a more self contained story that places them more directly in each others path.
  
  Interpretations
  I won't go into too much detail in this section because AMVs tell "fuzzy" stories that do well at communicating emotion but are hard to nail down, and this is no exception. Roughly, the story progresses chronologically, but there are many scenes that are reflections back on the night out motorcycling and in the temple where these two felt strong feelings for each other. In the daytime act (the one where Harima has sunglasses), something has come between them. An argument, awkwardness, uncertainty - it's unclear exactly what it is. Both keep thinking back to the times when it was easy. Despite the rift they can't help but have these feelings. Both try to deny them or keep them under control. There's a moment where for a brief moment we see them turn around - but no more after that. We see Harima and Eri on a collision course with a truck - and this moment is open to a lot of interpretations.
  One assumption assumes that there was death involved, another that the relationship ends, yet another that they're facing the scary but exciting next step head on and taking the plunge. The latter interpretation sees them come through the ordeal closer, committed, happy and more beautiful together. Marriage might be implicated here (suit & kimono), or just the first step towards it. If you interpreted the crash as the end of the relationship then the final act is the two thinking on what could have been one last time in a bittersweet "We'll always have this feeling" - before the final act we see Eri with eyes closed, implying that what follows may be just another "delusion". If you interpreted it as a tragedy, the ghosts of Eri and Harima - shown dressed in white and shadow respectively following the crash - are reunited in Heaven together with all obstacles, anger, awkwardness torn away leaving us a bright, shining bittersweet epilogue.
  
  Symbolism:
  I've deliberately left several interpretations open, but I wanted to fill in a few uses of non-character imagery - ideally I'd prefer you watch it first and make your own judgment.
  -The chopsticks: It's hard to say even in the source material, but Eri here is meant to be struggling with chopsticks. She has a nice, beautiful meal right in front of her, but it's hard to enjoy it. This is meant to highlight the uncomfortablability and difficulty she has making sense of how she feels about this guy. Does she still like him? If she still wants him, how does she mend this rift between them? If she doesn't, then what is she supposed to do with these feelings that won't seem to go away? It's easy to appreciate the "nice" meal or the "nice" feelings, but to actually engage them is tripping her up.
  -The Clocktower: This briefly appears in between cuts of Harima and lyrically lines up with "You're". I'm trying to identify the Clocktower represents Harima. It stands tall, looking down on everyone else. At this point in the video, Eri has gotten fed up with Harima and walked off - but Harima remains poker-faced, doesn't look at her. Harima, like the clocktower, is too proud to run after her and try to fix things between them. It's clear, however, he deeply cares about her despite his stubborness. There's a bit more here about "knowing when time is up" but I'll leave that up to interpretation - really it's Harima's ego that is important.
  -The Truck I foreshadow the truck right at the start of the video - there's a "wrong way" sign on the road, and you see it cresting the hill. When it comes back later, it can be interpreted a couple of ways. The obvious one is that, well, it's a truck - and the couple are on a collision course. In the "Death" interpretation of the story, the truck collides with the bike and kills Harima and/or Eri. The scene hard cuts to Eri dressed all in white laying in the moonlight, and a suited shadow implied to be Harima. Another, less tragic interpretation is that the truck is the where the "just having fun" moments meet reality - the looming, tough challenge of facing the relationship and it's challenges head on. The signs are there (on the road!) but the two ignored them and now someone is going to get hurt - the ride has to stop here. This is a pivotal moment in the AMV, and more ways to interpret it - what you think happens in this scene decides how you interpret what the final act means.
  -The Trees & the muffler The trees are a mirror of their relationship in this story, at least before the second half. Glowing brightly, looking magical. You don't even know what they really are, just that they're beautiful. They burn brightly as Eri clings to Harima tightly on the bike, - but even though the engine is roaring and pumping like the beat of their hearts, their relationship is running on fumes. Just as one's eyes adjust to the light over a period of time, the trees fade and it becomes clear what they are. Likewise, their hearts adjust and see more clearly the normal, nonmagical person the other is . The memories of that mystical time, however, never depart.
  
  
  Technical:
  I wanted to make this with only cuts - no special fx, no transitions, and no zooms. Every instance of that in the video is part of the original footage that I either had to lean into or work around. The one exception is I had a fade to the endcard - it was just too gross of a transition otherwise and I didn't want to put text directly over anime footage. A lot of effort went into getting the lip sync just right. My favourite instance is in the shower scene, when Eri is singing along all dramatic-like then a straight-faced Harima chimes in from across the room to finish her line - prompting a reaction and a warm upbeat "...yeah!" It felt like a real interaction built into the song and fits great with this chapter of the video showing them happy and close.
  
  This AMV features primarily external sync but also a decent amount of internal sync - School Rumble has very little movement so I was happy with that. Some of the internal is subtle - when Eri is running the items in her box bump along with "top it off", or the motorcycle around 0:20 swinging back and forth. There's some direct lyrical(?) sync, such as with the coffee, shower, head on knees but the priority was more the story.
  
  Behind the Scenes:
  After making a "practice AMV" out of trailers found on Youtube earlier this year, I recently had the itch to edit. I was having a really hard time finding a song that would both fit an AMV and be available for direct DRM-free purchase/download. I happened across "Stuck" and my first thought was "Oh I think I've heard this in an AMV before, this is exactly what I'd want". After a week or so of searching though I determined that I actually hadn't heard this in an AMV at all, which basically cemented that I'd need to make one myself.
  
  The next problem was source material. I didn't want to torrent (my landlady operates the internet, and I didn't want her to get threatening emails from our ISP) so the next bet was my physical collection. I only have two movies and the 2nd season of School Rumble, which even was missing the first disc that I left back at my parents house. From there, I narrowed my subject matter down to Harima and Eri who had one of my favourite character arcs. There's lots of AMVs out there that 'summarize' the Harima x Eri ship, but I wanted to do something a little different. The result is the story told in this AMV. I took all the clips from just ~2 episodes in Season 2, where there is a lovely arc about Eri being forced into an arranged marriage, and how Harima helped support her through it (somewhat against his will but whatever).
  
  I spent around 18 hours on this over the course of 3 days - I'm new to this hobby, so it was a little slow going but I can't remember the last time I was able to sit down and focus down on a single task like this from beginning to end without being distracted. It was a great feeling, and to be honest - I've never been as proud of myself as I was at 2AM rewatching my nearly completed piece over and over, in disbelief that I made this.
  
  Final note: Shoutout to AMV creator CrackTheSky, who helped me appreciate AMVs as an art form. We haven't met but I love reading your writing and seeing what you create, and it inspired me to make my own.