Sleep with a Ghost (Mawaru Penguindrum)
Part 4 of my AMV Summer Bootcamp series!
As a heads up, this video probably will probably be harder to understand if you haven't watched Mawaru Penguindrum. Just the nature of this video!
The theme for this round was creating a new ending for an anime, something like "How It Should Have Ended". I affectionately nicknamed this round the "fanfiction round". I racked my brain for anime I would like different endings to. What was an awful ending that I wanted to change? However, I kept on going back to one particular anime. One that I would consider my favorite anime ever. Because the ending of Mawaru Penguindrum fucking wrecked me. Nothing is more upsetting to me than characters and their struggles and sacrifices being forgotten. Don't get me wrong, the ending of Mawaru Penguindrum is amazing. It's my favorite anime after all! But at the same time I just wanted Himari and Ringo to remember Shoma and Kanba. Even that much would ease my heart.
The story depicted in this AMV is partially inspired by a short manga oneshot (forget the term, haha) by Akiko Morishima called Childrens' Dreams, wherein all the characters from the anime meet on a train in their dreams. Alas, I can't find the original copy... it seems the original tumblr post that had it was deleted. Coincidentally, Akiko Morishima was the artist for the Yurikuma Arashi manga! So maybe the story is kinda sorta canon by proxy...? =P
The AMV itself was overly ambitious. Ridiculously so, both in terms of making a video from an original story and the technical editing needed to make the story cohesive. It was my first time doing extensive masking like this. But I wanted to make this story the best I could so that others could understand it, so I sucked it up and spent hours on it, up till the very last night of the round.
Ultimately, this video got a 244 out of 300. My highest scoring round! The concept was highly praised, and editing was solid at some parts and could be synced better at others. My sister liked this video the most out of all the videos I made during the competition. And overall, I feel like I achieved what I wanted to with this video. For those of you looking for a possible epilogue of sorts for Mawaru Penguindrum, I hope you enjoy! For those of you who don't know the show. I'm sorry for the lack of context.
My ranking: 2
My sister's ranking: 1
Anime: Mawaru Penguindrum
Song: Don't Wake Me Up
Artist: The Hush Sound
Program Used: Sony Vegas 12.0