This is my second video, using the track 'Kamp' by Kukui. This is not on any OST, but it is used in Traumend when Suigin Tou returns to her N-field and first encounters Bara Suishou.

Spoiler Warning: Contains scenes from Rozen Maiden episodes 6, 11 and 12, Traumend episodes 6 and 11, and both episodes of Ouverture.

Download the high quality version (~35MB): Here

This is version 1.0 of the video. I may from time to time replace it with a newer version with timing or other improvements.

Description:

Like Shukuteki this video was inspired by the music rather than by the anime itself, however in this case I felt the music suited Suigin Tou in particular, and certain parts of her story, so from the beginning it was designed to tell some of her story. It is built around the two sections which feature Suigin Tou being awakened in the church in Traumend, with the significant events in her story being retold throughout.

This video is slightly more advanced than Shukuteki in that it makes use of overlays to show two clips at once, both for the sake of showing two clips at once (\o/), but also because it is a short track, and some bits were easier to do that way. There are also more fades, as it suits the music better than hard cuts. For the most part it is still simply a clip show though. Some of the 'filler' sections, such as Suigin Tou flying through her N-field, and the clips of her fighting the other dolls, were arbitrary choices for those sections of the track. While I'm happy with the quality of the result, if I had had time to do alternative sections the content might have been different, in particular the section where Suigin Tou beats all the other dolls may have been replaced with various shots of Suigin Tou herself, in order to keep the other dolls out of the video. Them all getting their asses kicked by her works too though, and fits with the timelines of the video.

Speaking of timelines, there are 2, one which starts in the past in Ouverture and leads into Series 1, and another which sticks with Traumend. The first one starts at the start of the video, and shows her trying to follow Rozen and finding her dress. The next scene from this is her sinking into the water N-field and being found and saved by Rozen. This occurs after her being 'defeated' by Sousei Seki, which I couldn't fit in as the track is too short, and because I wanted to keep the other dolls out of it. After this it shows her meeting Shinku, telling her that she now has a Rosa Mystica and is now a real Rozen Maiden. There are several hard cuts and an overlay here to show Shinku's unfavorable reaction to this news, and Suigin Tou's rapid transformation from "happy" Suigin Tou to "I'm going to kill you all" Suigin Tou. After their initial fight there are shots of Suigin Tou's face and her flying through her N-field which, going by the linearity of the anime, are out of sequence, but they are generic shots, so let's just pretend that they occur sometime between Ouverture and Series 1. The final sequence in this timeline is Suigin Tou fighting the other dolls, first in her N-field, then defeating Suisei Seki, Sousei Seki and Hina Ichigo all at once, then defeating Shinku for the first time, then breaking Shinku. That timeline terminates there, as Jun's meddling gives Shinku a second chance (without which Suigin Tou would have won and become Alice). The other timeline is far simpler, it starts with her emerging from her box in the church, and consists exclusively of the shots of her in the church, except for the very last part which is her in the hospital with her medium. This timeline actually takes place after the other one, but I think it works quite well all cut together.

This video didn't take as long as the first one, as I knew what I wanted to do with it from the beginning, and it's a fairly simple concept. I also used a slightly more advanced AviSynth file which reduced the time wasted making timing corrections. I think it probably took only around 15 hours. The most annoying bit was working on the overlays and the more complex fades, which are too computationally intensive to be rendered in real time, thus requiring me to render them to a file to check if they looked ok at full speed. The aspect ratio of the video is off a little as the bottom of every scene is cut off to remove subtitles. This doesn't matter on computers, but the video is a little stretched is displayed on a widescreen TV. Also, the shots from Ouverture has to go through an extra resize filter due to being at a different resolution to the Series 1 and Traumend episodes, but it doesn't seem to be noticable (it's only a few pixels). While it is possible that I will make general changes to the video in the future, as with Shukuteki, if I find the time I'll almost certainly alter the overlay in the scene where Suigin Tou is talking to Shinku. It's the part of the video I'm least happy with, but also the most difficult to work on.

Due to the length and the style of the track I was only able to examine one aspect of Suigin Tou's character, despite dedicating the whole video to her. Since ouverture her character has become probably the most interesting, so I would be interested in doing another video about her using music which would give me more freedom at some point in the future. No plans yet though.

My fourth video, based on the song 'Angels' from the Within Temptation album 'The Silent Force'.

Spoiler Warning: Contains scenes from Rozen Maiden episodes 3, 6, 11 and 12, Traumend episodes 11 and 12 and Ouverture episodes 1 and 2.

Download the high quality version (~61MB): Here

This is version 1.1 of the video. I may from time to time replace it with a newer version with timing or other improvements.

Description:

This is the first AMV I have done with music not found in the anime. Angels is a Within Temptation song, the words of which fit Suigin Tou's perspective of the events of Ouverture quite well I think. Thus, this AMV basically aims to tell the story of the ups and downs (mostly downs obviously) of Suigin Tou and Shinku's relationship. This is done in a similar way to the Kamp video above in that there are two timelines, past and present, but these are more obviously seperated by the use of sepia toning, and are more related to each other, as one timeline is about their fights, while the other is about how they began fighting.

The biggest new thing I did for this video was lip-syncing in order to get Suigin Tou to appear to sing the words in various places. These range from the simple, where all that is on screen is her head anyway, to the more complex, where she is actually walking along while 'singing'. These were actually the first part of the video I did, since they obviously require very precise timing I decided which sections were going to be lip synced and worked everything else around that. There is also the sepia-toning, which was easy to do, but unfortunately interacts very badly with the compression artefacts, so the sepia sections don't look as good as they should.

The video opens with a 'past scene' of Suigin Tou appearing through a mirror to Shinku's home, and apparently becoming friends with Shinku, though the words of the song already give away that something more is going on. It then cuts to the 'present' with Suigin Tou once again arriving in Shinku's home through a mirror, but with a far different atmosphere this time. As the first lip-sync scene ends the music picks up and the fight sequences begin. The first fight sequence ends with Suigin Tou losing, leading into another flashback of Suigin Tou's dreams while she was staying with Shinku, which is actually a sort of flashback-within-a-flashback. When this one ends it opens into Suigin Tou chasing Shinku through her N-field, catching her, and then another lip-syncing scene before another fight sequence. As Shinku is defeated and hits the ground it jumps into the longest flashback of the video, which covers from Suigin Tou being 'killed' by Sousei Seki all the way up to her and Shinku's first fight. At that point it jumps back to the 'present' and the video ends with Suigin Tou's two major defeats.

This video was done over the course of a few months, with the hard work (the lip syncing) being done early on, and the less interesting bits (everything else) only added when I finally got around to it. Then it sat on my hard disk for a few more weeks until I got around to uploading it. This AMV is twice as long as the ones which preceded it, but it is also far slower paced, so it balances out. This video does not have the aspect ratio issues of the previous videos, as I removed subtitles in a different way in this one.