Music Video Winners:
1. Resident Evil or Parasite Eve {pretty sure it was Parasite Eve} (Radiohead's National Anthem [is that the title?]): What an awesome video. Wonderful editing, nice effects, and good sequencing. The content wasn't too extreme given the game's mature and disturbing imagery. Tastefully done and one of my favorites. Definitely the best video game video I've seen.
2. Sailor Moon/Street Fighter ('One More Time'-Britney Spears & 'Smack My Bitch Up'-Prodigy): The video started with a bunch of Sailor Moon fluff. I cringed when I heard the song playing with it. Then, all of the sudden, it just stops and the video cuts to Ryu throwing a punch and it seems like he hit Sailor Moon. Then the video goes into 'Smack My Bitch Up' and clips from different Street Fighter series. Nicely edited and full of action sequences-as to be expected.
3. Kare Kano ('You Spin Me Round'-Dead or Alive): This was a cute video. Nice editing done on behalf of the creator. There were many funny moments. Just an all-around cute video. How can you not have fun with Kare Kano? A vast change from the Audience favorite last year, which was a masterfully done Kare Kano video to 'Far and Away'.
4. Menshi (sp?) (Aaron Copland's song that is used in the 'Beef. It's what's for dinner' commercials): Funny! That's all I can really say. The video was just a big spoof with Menshi the cat as everybody's choice for a culinary delight. Added with a voice over talking about the essentials needed for a balanced diet and whatnot. All ending with, "Menshi. It's what for dinner" dun, dun, dun.
If there was another winner, I can't remember it at the moment.
BakuDan's Choice: (best video game theme video {that makes no sense})
Final Fantasy 9 (A song from Blink 182 that says, "So sorry. It's over." If that helps any): Nice job with this video. The video contained nice visuals and good sequencing. It's so tough to review video game music videos for some reason. Nothing just seems to fit. I don't know how these people take relatively short sequences and make a video from it. Anyway, nice job and the video was really colorful.
Audience Choice:
Ranma ˝ ('The Man Song'): Oh my gosh! What a complete change from last year. Least year's winner was a dramatic song to Kare Kano and, now, we have humor at its best. Wonderful editing and a funny song to boot. With lines such as, "I'll come home as late as I want…and sleep on the couch" and "Everything I say goes…right out the window" and stuff like that. So it's the funniest thing seeing Ranma do all this stuff and then, the contradictory things. It's so hard to describe something this good. So I'll say it again, Funny!
My personal favorites:
The song I voted for:
Ruroni Kenshin OAV ('Possession'-Sarah MacLachlan): Now I had a really hard time choosing a favorite, but I went with this one. A dramatic song that was beautifully intertwined with the show. Just a nice job editing and putting things together. It managed to dramatize the show than just placing it with loud music and fight scenes. It seemed to bring on more meaning. My sentiments reflected an other's when she said, "kick ass" when the video finished.
Others I liked:
Akira (a song by Tool): A really awesome music video. I thought it would be another video putting loud music to anime. Boy was I wrong! Wonderful editing and the sequencing was down pat. A spectacular job. I was going to put that down as my favorite video. I'm surprised it didn't win anything. I thought it was very well done.
Macross Plus ('Call Me'-Cowboy Bebop): I liked this solely because it used my favorite anime music with my favorite anime show. Nicely done. There was nothing too outstanding about the video. The song goes well with the whole scheme of things. I really love Macross Plus and I really liked the video. So, yeah, some bias there.
Top 5 Choices:
1. Ranma ˝ ('Man Song')
2. Parasite Eve (Radiohead song)
3. Ruroni Kenshin OAV ('Possession')
4. Akira (Tool song)
5. Macross Plus ('Call Me')
Other Videos I Remember:
Ranma ˝ ('Once In a Lifetime'-Talking Heads): awesome song, cute video.
Ruroni Kenshin OAV ('Kryptonite'): another perspective on the RK OAV.
Another one from RK OAV: I believe this one was an operatic song.
A couple of X videos. I particularly enjoyed them.
Big O video with a Genesis song. Nicely done. Glad to see Big O once again.
A tribute to Megumi Hayashibara and the characters she's voiced.
Team Rocket video to 'Whip It'. Funny little sketch.
'Because You Loved Me' by Celine Dion to a bunch of different anime shows. Romantic.
A Perfect Blue video that was rather disturbing.
A Yuu Yuu Hakusho video to Buffy the Vampire Slayer that served more as an introduction than a video.
A Jubei-chan video to fast tempo classical music. I liked the music…and the video was cool, too!
A Blue Submarine 6 music video aired. I got to see some of the things Cartoon Network edited out.
A music video with some anime show and a song by Bjork (I think). Anyway, the lyrics talked about being hunted and such. It was a very morbid video. There was lots of killing and the ending was, like, -oh man. A lot of us just sat there kinda stunned. Then we clapped. We were also muttering under our breaths, "well, wasn't that nice." A good video. Just reeeeeealllly morbid.
Um…wow…
One video that was well done but kind of shocked many of us was a song (don't remember it) to the anime Grave of the Fireflies. That's like making a music video to the movie 'Life is Beautiful'. Grave of the Fireflies is really that serious. So some of us are watching, thinking is this person really doing this and to this anime of all things?! I've never seen the anime (or 'Life is Beautiful' for that matter), but just watching snippets of it during the video made me want to cry. So it was tastefully done (it had to be. You don't joke with this anime) and beautiful. A nice video once you get over the fact it's Grave of the Fireflies. It received a reaction similar to the really morbid video.
Overall, a wonderful showing of videos. I'd say they were a lot better this year than last. A very tough choice which was the best (for me, at least) and my top 5 aren't in any particular order. Looking forward to next year's videos!