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Information

• Member: WUNETTI Productions
• Studio: WUNETTI Productions
• Title: Neither
• Premiered: 2007-09-02
• Categories:
  • Drama
  • Serious
• Song:
  • Garbage Happy Home
• Anime:
  • FLCL (Fooly Cooly)
• Comments: Winner of First Place: Drama at the Dragon*Con 2007 AMV Contest,
  
  There's no easy and simple way to describe this vid, but here's the short version: this is not what I'd think most people usually expect from a FLCL AMV.
  
  Long version:
  
  For all its weirdness, wackyness, and sheer bloody randomness, FLCL is an incredibly depressing series. Haruko shows up from nowhere, tears the hell out of Naota's life and rips up his relationships with everyone he knows, confuses the absolute hell out of him and uses him ruthlessly for her own purposes, then bails out when what she wants is gone. Watching the series for the third time, I saw all this for the first time, and decided it was part of the story worth focusing on.
  
  This was not an easy video to make. Focusing on how much someone's life gets screwed up by an outside force (even one that's living with him) is never fun or comfortable. But I think I pulled it off. I chose to focus on how Haruko screws things up for both Naota and Mamimi, as they're the ones who suffers the most thanks to Haruko's interference. I think.
  
  This was also not easy to make for technical reasons. Whether due to an odd DVD rip or to problems with Premiere, I'm not sure which, there was some strange flicker between scenes at transitions. Instead of just going from one scene to another, it would blink back and forth between them - I'm not sure how else to describe it. But I decided to work that into the video, and I think it gives the thing an odd sense of dissonance and disruption, which works well.
  
  As for the song... Garbage is my favorite band, they have been since their first album, and I've always thought they were incredibly underrated. This song is the final track on "Bleed Like Me," their fourth CD, and the actual song goes on for another three minutes - one long instrumental full of angst and thrashing, an amazing way to close off both this song and the album. But I chose this song for the vid because I thought it fit with the impression of FLCL I was trying to give. It's never clear on whether it's happy or sad, whole or broken, love or pain or indifference. It's a painful song, but at the same time, it's comforting in a way I don't have words for.
  
  And interestingly enough, it seems I'm the first one at the site to use this song. Might even be the first-ever AMV done to this song. Nice.
  
  And yes, this vid won first place in Drama at Dragon*Con 2007, which I'm very proud of, even if my initial reaction was one of utter shock and awe. I wasn't able to get to the AMV contest thanks to the rescheduling, but I hope everyone who saw the video there enjoyed it. Much thanks to the judges or whomever was in charge of choosing which vid got which place; it's an honor to have won.
  
  I'm also proud that this won for a very different reason: I think it proves that, to have a good vid that wins awards, you don't need to have mind-blowing and complex special effects. You don't need to use the newest and most amazingly popular anime or music. You don't have to go with a commonly accepted theme for AMVs of the series.
  
  All you need is a story worth telling, and the willingness to tell it and do it right.
  
  Thanks if you read all that. Hope you enjoy the vid, comments are always welcome.