AMV Hell

THE WORK, WHICH BECOMES A NEW GENRE ITSELF, WILL BE CALLED......... AMV HELL

One of the premiere Anime Music Video (AMV) movements on the Internet. It uses short AMV-ish clips to parody whatever animes and/or songs it uses. There are two primary methods it uses to do this. One is to take a fairly normal (often pop) song with metaphorical lyrics and use the clip to suggest a more literal interpretation. This new interpretation of the lyrics will often create extreme Lyrical Dissonance. The second method is to take a song which is already weird, funny, or obscene, and match it to a corresponding weird, funny, or obscene anime.

Now, on to the history. In May 2004, a handful of AMV makers released the original AMV Hell. It was little more than a fun little experiment, but it caught on, much to their surprise. The creators simultaneously released AMV Hell 2: Son Of AMV Hell, the place for the less family-friendly content, so as not to "pollute" the first; that way, the first could be shown at conventions without fear of inappropriate content (which it was, many times).

The establishment of AMV Hell as a serious franchise came with AMV Hell 3: The Motion Picture in September 2005; roughly an hour long, it featured dozens of contributors and had no end of oddball (and often downright hilarious) shorts. The jump from short five-minute humorous snippets to an epic like that made a lot of people stand up and take notice.

Simultaneously released with AMV Hell 3 was AMV Hell 0, which the creators described as "the more irreverant [sic] side of AMV Hell. And by irreverant, we mean its [also sic] one of the most offensive, disgusting, pornographic, vile, worthless pieces of garbage ever conceived." Similar in concept to AMV Hell 2, it consisted of a series of seamier clips with overt sexual or scatological content that would be unsuitable for public consumption (AMV Hells 1, 3, 4, and 5 were produced with theatre showings at conventions in mind, and their content is censored to reflect this). Consequently AMV Hell 0 has a high Squick factor and is prefaced by an Adult Content label.

In June 2006 came AMV Hell: Championship Edition, a contest held by the AMV Hell creators in which contestants were given specified songs and told to make the funniest video they could. The top 55 videos were turned into the Championship Edition compilation.

And then there was the big one: September 2007 saw the release of AMV Hell 3: The Motion Picture II: AMV Hell 4: The Last One. With over two hundred and fifty videos, it was another hour-and-a-half epic, and the AMV Hell team swore they'd never do it again...probably because the effort on this one almost killed them.

But, of course, they didn't stick to that. In September 2008, the team released AMV Hell Divided By 0, which in a case of Refuge in Audacity deliberately set out to push the extremes of X-ratings (and poor taste) - whereas Hell 0 was largely comprised of conventional hentai, Divided By Zero jumped further still by focusing mainly on openly fetishistic content.

After letting the series rest and recuperate for a few months one of the original creators, Zarxrax, introduced the "AMV Minis" in July 2009. In an attempt to maintain and provide an outlet for continued interest in the AMV Hell brand while lessening the workload of its management, the "AMV Minis" consist of a series of shorter videos released more frequently, as opposed to the feature-length events of Hells 3-5. These Minis are comparable in scale to the original AMV Hell, but are comprised entirely of submissions from other editors and do not have clips created by Zarxrax himself. The "first season" of the Minis runs to thirteen episodes: eleven regular editions and two special editions - one focusing exclusively on Azumanga Daioh (an abidingly popular subject for clips and skits throughout the AMV Hells) and the other a collection of "Bad Stuff", something like the Minis' own Episode 0. The second season was launched in April 2011; the first episode of the new season responded to viewer feedback that criticized the proliferation of dialogue-based skits and skits that felt dragged out and overlong in earlier Hells and Minis by limiting submissions to a maximum of seven seconds and requiring their accompanying audio to be music or song, as well as banning skits based on Family Guy. This immediately provoked a rash of complaints moaning about a bewildering pace and a nostalgic fondness for Family Guy, illustrating that the AMV Minis suffer from a petulant and Unpleasable Fanbase.

While the first season of AMV Minis was being released, the next full feature - AMV Hell 5: Dedicated to Dio (dedicated both to Ronnie James Dio as well as an AMV creator whose works had graced previous AMV Hells) was developed alongside it. Co-creator SSGWNBTD began accepting submissions to in September 2009, and on July 30 2010, AMV Hell 5 (partially) premiered at Otakon 2010. It was shown to be almost complete, only missing an opening and closing. It premiered in full at Anime Weekend Atlanta 2010 on September 17, 2010, and is now available to download from the AMV Hell website or watch on YouTube.

On May 31, the next two projects were announced: AMV Hell 6: Final Fantasy Hell and AMV Hell 6: The End Of The Universe. The former will be entirely composed of clips either taken from or referencing parts of the Final Fantasy franchise, and the latter will mostly have to do with the 2012 End of the World theory.

The series has had a considerable influence over AMV making - imitators who were inspired by the "multiple-short-AMV-clips" style have been described as making their videos in "AMV Hell style." In essence, the page-topping quote became a reality.


 * Actor Allusion: As a nod to the dub cast of Ponyo, one clip in AMV Hell 5 features Ponyo's father quoting the Badass Boast from Taken.
 * Affectionate Parody - AMV Hell 2 contains a parody of the "Evangelion Opus" AMV; AMV Hell 3 contains parodies of the "Danger: Low Brow Humor", "Euphoria", and "Shounen Bushidou" AMVs. For good measure, AMV Hell 0 does a second parody of "Euphoria" (mixing RahXephon with Mindless Self Indulgance's "Faggot").
 * AMV Hell 3 also has a parody of Kevin Caldwell's "Believe".
 * AMV Hell 3 contains an edited version of the Neon Genesis Evangelion end credits (mixed with Azumanga Daioh) and AMV Hell 4 contains a version of the second season Death Note opening (mixed with Lucky Star).
 * AMV editor Vic Bond 007 is infamous for his use of the lens-flare special effect. AMV Hell 3 features a clip attributed to "Vic Bond 008" that consists of nothing but lens flares.
 * The Aristocrats - Appears in Divided By Zero, narrated by Nyamo.
 * Ascended Meme - Mediablasters has used signs that only say "Gentlemen, behold! CORN!!" to advertise Boku no Sexual Harrassment at conventions.
 * Ax Crazy - Divided By Zero does this one literally.
 * Black Comedy Rape - "Gentlemen, behold! CORN!" and its sequel "Gentlemen! I bring you...MORE CORN!"
 * Brain Bleach: /0's closing credits will do their best to ruin your sex forever. Breaking the Fourth Wall can be scary indeed.
 * B-Roll Rebus: A lot of humor comes from visually representing lyrics literally.
 * Colon Cancer - AMV Hell 4's full title is "AMV Hell 3: The Motion Picture II: AMV Hell 4: The Last One"
 * While AMV Hell 5 was eventually released under the more manageable title of "AMV Hell 5: Dedicated to Dio", during its development phase it was advertised on the animemusicvideos.org website as "AMV Hell 3: The Motion Picture III: AMV Hell 5: Your Banner Is Too Big". For at least one con appearance, the last bit was instead noted as "Your Subtitle Is Too Big".
 * Covered in Gunge - A little all over, but mainly concentrated in AMV Hell 0 and AMV Hell Divided By 0.
 * Dead Baby Comedy - Taken to its literal extreme in AMV Hell 0 and AMV Hell Divided by 0; you will be offended by these two videos, guaranteed. Hell, AMV Hell 0's disclaimer says that "this stuff is so bad we never should have even made it".
 * AMV Hell 5 had a clip where dead babies were crawling out of the ground -- the anime is Detroit Metal City, and the song is Tragedy's metal cover of "You Should Be Dancing".
 * Even Evil Has Standards - Averted. Grave of the Fireflies and Barefoot Gen among others are made fun of just to prove it.
 * Fan Disservice and Fan Service - 0 and Divided By 0 are made largely from Hentai.
 * Fan Vid
 * Freeze-Frame Bonus - Tay Zonday's head in the Barefoot Gen Hiroshima nuclear blast in Divided by 0, and several in the Rozen Maiden Master of Puppets clip from AMV Hell 5.
 * Ceiling Cat in the School Days clip in Divided by 0.
 * Gallows Humor - AMV Hell Divided By 0 does this one literally.
 * Girl Watching
 * Incredibly Lame Pun: Crops up from time to time with things like Shonen Batman or Microsoft Excel.
 * In Memoriam: AMV Hell 5 is dedicated to both legendary rocker Ronnie James Dio and Justin Rollins, an AMV creator (and major contributor to AMV Hell 3) who fell victim to cancer.
 * Intercourse with You
 * Kick the Dog
 * Mundane Made Awesome - The "Previously" segment at the beginning of AMV Hell 4.
 * And Tomo, Kagura and Osaka combining their intellects... to the sound "Destiny Combining, Gurren Lagann! Just who the hell do you think we are!?!?!"
 * " Koyaanisqatsi..."
 * Mushroom Samba - I'M ON SHROOMS!
 * Panty Shot - AMV Hell 4 has a montage of this, which comes entirely from Najica Blitz Tactics.
 * There was one in AMV Hell 3. Except nobody noticed that because the rest of the clip involved a guy who gets boobs and THAT in his face.
 * Rapid-Fire Comedy - Most segments last no more than thirty seconds at the most, and many are shorter.
 * The AMV Minis' first episode of the 2nd Season has all of its clips under 7 seconds.
 * Real Song Theme Tune - Well, kinda. AMV Hell 3 had as its intro AC/DC's "Highway to Hell", set to original animation, and AMV Hell 5, in keeping with its dedication to Ronnie James Dio, had Tenacious D's "Dio" set to K-On! and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
 * Refuge in Vulgarity - Debatably at times.
 * Divided By 0 is about 25% coprophilia jokes.
 * Running Gag - AMV Hell 2 had one spoofing the the long shot of EVA-01 grasping Kaworu from Neon Genesis Evangelion; AMV Hell 3 has a series of variations of the "Ellen Fleiss" parody segment from AMV Hell 1. In a case of either a Running Gag or everyone going to the same well, AMV Hell 5 seems to use clips set to "Always."
 * The credits for AMV Hell 3 refer to them as "Osaka Cutaways".
 * They now have an AMV Mini devoted exclusively to Azumanga.
 * A visual example is found in the deleted scenes from AMV Hell 3 beginning at the 7:24 mark.
 * AMV Hell 5 also features about three clips set to "Halo".
 * 4 has repeated clips to Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek".
 * One of them did so many variations of the end of Cowboy Bebop that it really turned into an Overly Long Running Gag.
 * The Western Animation special had 3 "Dear Sister" jokes, but after the third the server crashes, stating that "the Dear Sister quota for this video has been exceeded".
 * Scooby-Dooby Doors - Done with the cast of One Piece, with Fred and Daphne fly by on a carpet in the background.
 * Soundtrack Dissonance - Much of the humor comes from such juxtapositions.
 * Quite possibly the ultimate example, in AMV Hell 5... Unicron eating a planet, set to Parry Gripp's "Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom"!
 * Visual Pun - Sprinkled about for good measure.