Footage: Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu
Audio: When We Were Close by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

VPR: Intense/Quick Changing Colors (C), Flashes/Flickering Lights (F), Textures, Overlays, Patterns, and Particles (T), Continuous Blurs (B), Peripheral Motions/Glitches/Effects on the Edge of the Screen (P)

So this vid has a bit of an interesting story. Rakugo Shinjuu has been on my radar for a while so last year when a friend suggested we do a collab to it, I decided to bit the bullet and give it a watch. However while in theory it should have been right up my alley, I bounced off it pretty hard. Stories about artists wrecking the rest of their relationships in the pursuit of art just don't really resonate with me as I see art as an inherently social thing, I didn't find the cast likeable or compelling, and the pacing bored me to tears. We both individually lost inspiration, and I dropped s1 3/4ths of the way.

However whenever I read up on the show and looked at the plot from a bird's eye view, it always fascinated me. I am a sucker for stories about complicated grief if that isn't apparent from my output already lol. So when one night I randomly heard a new song on the radio almost outline the story beat by beat (down to the deceased having a daughter) I knew I had to make it bc no one else in the world would even combine these two sources if I didn't

I nearly trashed this vid multiple times, the animation in this show is so stiff that even at the best of times it seems hard to work with, much less with a high tempo country song, and I worried the video wouldn't even be contest quality so I should probably focus on another wip for AWA. Cue my surprised when it ended up being talked about more than my more polished vid lmao. If there was a video of mine that would have been described as suffering from "overhype" I would have never described it as this.

Thank you TheLazyDaze for suffering through so much country to give your beta advice and thank you @BioticAMVS for being such a big supporter of this vid and helping me polish my bloom effect

Vids that inspired me
   • [Re-Evo] Dreams, Love & Misery - Shou...  
   • Deception (Arcade Battle Royal IC)  

Awards:
- Anime Boston 2024: Best Concept
- Anime Houston 2024: Best Storytelling
- AWA Accolades 2023 Character Profile Finalist
- AWA Accolades 2023 Storytelling Finalist
- Katsucon 2024 Drama Runner-Up