Something quite epic.

     Before getting into the deeper meaning behind this AMV, which was created in May of 2007, I would like to talk first about its quality. While Youtube doesn’t always have the greatest video quality, the AMV itself is top-notch. The lyrics and overall tone of the song that the creator chose perfectly reflect the video clips that were chosen, and the clips are, for the most part, timed very well. I especially love the way that 0:42-0:44, 1:50-1:57, and 2:06-2:16 were done. It isn’t another AMV that has clips thrown in without proper transitions, etc. Also, the creator used some sort of computer program (Adobe Photoshop, perhaps?) to place the video clips in the screens that Ura (a character from the anime OVA Pale Cocoon, who appears to be, in this AMV, “singing”) is viewing, replacing what was actually on the screens in the Pale Cocoon OVA. This is a technique that I very rarely see in AMV’s. The creator clearly put a lot of time and effort into this AMV, and it absolutely paid off, in my opinion.

     Now, for the really interesting part: not only did the creator of this AMV succeed in constructing an attractive AMV; they succeeded also in creating a meaningful one. However, in order to understand it, one first has to know the plot of the anime OVA Pale Cocoon. In this OVA, planet Earth has become uninhabitable due to environmental destruction, and a group of humans has since retreated to an artificial colony above the planet’s surface. After the move, much of recorded history was forgotten, and all that is left remains in a large archive of data, much of it in corrupted formats. One of these humans, Ura, is a member of the “Archive Excavation Department”, and spends his days obsessively trying to recover remnants of history through restoring these corrupted files.

     So, the anime clips that Ura is watching in the AMV were actually, in the original OVA, files that Ura had recovered. When taking into consideration the song and the idea behind Pale Cocoon, I believe that the creator intended for it to be as if Ura was discovering the anime clips, as if they were recovered history chronicling the triumphs of the human spirit. Of course, people can come up with their own interpretations, but that is my own. In short, this AMV is, in a word, beautiful.