Anime Boston 2008

Anime Music Video Contest

Just as Anime Boston itself is sometimes throught of as the opening event of the “convention season”, its music video contest is often the first time that many fans get to see the videos that then go on to pick up awards and spread throughout the reaches of the Internet later in the year. And with only 30 entries, in five categories, it is already a good overview of the best of the best of the year's crop of anime (and not quite anime) music videos.

Of the thirty, a total of nine were honored with either a technical award, as determined by the judges, or selected as best of category by attendees. The best of show winner was also chosen by fans.

The Judge's Choice award went to Jason Scheiner's Let them Eat Rei, which competed in the drama category and used video from Neon Genesis Evangelion set to Jonathan Coulton's Still Alive, the ending credits song in the computer game Portal.

Best Concept was won by Lauren Chicoine's “Busted”, bringing together Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, and Ray Parker Jr's Ghostbusters theme song.

The final technical award, for best editing, was picked up by “Attack of the Otaku”, a thoroughly hyperactive mix of scenes from fan favorites The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Lucky Star, and Ouran High School Host Club.

Voting for winners of the individual category awards, viewers chose:

Best drama – “Escaping, But Not Far” (The Bird and the Worm – The Used; Death Note)

Best romance – “Ouran Day” (Ordinary Day, Vanessa Carlton - Ouran High School Host Club)

Best action – “The Deth of Anime” (the opening theme and other songs from Adult Swim's Metalocalypse cartoon, and video from Blue Submarine No. 6, Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040, Death Note, Elfen Lied and Neon Genesis Evangelion

Best comedy – “The Anime Network” (anime clips set to themes from early '90's television cartoons like Darkwing Duck, which works surprisingly well with Vampire Hunter D.)

Best fun/upbeat/other – “Unbreakable” (Move Along, All-American Rejects, video from the Ah! My Goddess! OAV, movie and television series, the Naruto movie and anime series, Inu Yasha, Shakugan no Shana, Fullmetal Alchemist, Bleach and Hikaru no Go.)

Once the votes for best of show were calculated, it turned out to be a good thing that at least on the ballot form, the term “anime music video” was never actually used, as the contest's winner was Mysterious Rider's "Falling Dreams", composed entirely of full-motion video scenes from the two Kingdom Hearts videogames.

The rules for the contest specify that "At least 75% of each entry must contain anime-oriented footage," but leave the final decision on whether a particular entry qualifies for the contest to the judges.