EDIT 6/2025: Since posting this (in 2015) Youtube now allows these videos to be uploaded so the can be watched in their original form (as submitted to ConnectiCon 2015 where it was a finalist) and an updated form (as submitted to Anime Boston 2016 where it was not a finalist). I also made a few formatting and style fixes in the original post.
It is true, here it is spoilers and everything: view here, download here.
For a while now I have been thinking of doing one of these and I mentioned it as a goal for this year. I recently finished the main anime adaptation of Legend of the Galactic Heroes and it was very disappointing to me the series has such little visibility amongst English anime viewers. Granted its age and its MIA English localization probably play the largest role in its lack of popularity (although it was on HIDIVE for a few years). That said I wanted to do a little something for a show more people should
watch, to that end my first AMV.
For those not familiar with the format, an AMV is a series of anime clips set to music. Sometimes they tell a story, or showcase some action, or are just funny. I wanted to make an AMV that covered roughly the events of the first half of the series (episodes 1 – 53 to be exact). I did not want a flat retelling of events though so I themed it or focused it around the relationship between Reinhard (blonde hair) and Kircheis (red hair). To those not familiar to the series, they are childhood friends who set out to conquer the galaxy.
For the music I wanted something that fit the feel of the series. The show makes extensive use of famous classical music, mostly Beethoven. While not classical I went with Time To Say Goodbye, sung by Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli. I like the mournful nature of the song and the interspaced use of English. I did not want to go with a poppy contemporary piece as it would be jarring with the visuals of the series.
Scene Breakdown
Now that I have given a brief summary I am going to provide some commentary on parts of the AMV.
00:00-00:22, I wanted to start big to give a good scale the series works
with. A shot of the galaxy to begin with and with each strum I narrow the shot until we focus on the ship of our two main characters and then the characters themselves. The preceding shots show a vast battle taking place until we fade out to the end result of the battle, lots of ship wreckage. Not a huge fan of the fade, but it does its job. These scenes are mostly from early episodes so we see a very young Admiral Reinhard.
00:25, Shot of the Odin, the capital of the Empire. Its not important that you know that, but series fans probably recognize it.
00:25-00:31, I wanted to establish that Reinhard is important within the
Empire, but still not the leader. The scene shows him being honored for the
battle we saw in the beginning.
00:32, Start of the flashback. Need to establish the long relationship between Reinhard and Kircheis that started when they were young.
00:38-00:46, This scene with the bully helps establish both Reinhard’s aggressive nature and how Kircheis is always there to help Reinhard out. The rock beating scene also nicely matches up with the music. At times I think it is a bit humorous, but I resisted changing it.
00:47-00:58, These are some scenes set after the bully time frame, but still when Reinhard and Kircheis were young. I wanted to convey Reinhard ambitious nature and I like the imagery of the gun shooting into space that fades into his ship in full action. As you can tell I like fades. There is an important subplot to the series involving Reinhard’s sister that these scenes are important to, but it is not important for the story I am telling.
00:58-01:12. Easy call here to tie Kircheis’s death to the first “Time to Say Goodbye” lyric. It is perhaps a bit quick setup after the flashback, but it is really important that death and lyric are timed up well. This is a pretty big spoiler for people who have not seen the series and arguably the most important event in the entire series.
01:22, I went back and forth on including this somewhat gratuitous death
clip. It is a bit jarring, but I think it works. Kind of quick flashback that
Reinhard is contemplating.
01:25-01:43, Second flashback showing a bit more of Kircheis interacting
with Reinhard and doing his own thing. As a side not we can really see the jump in quality across some of the early episodes in these flashbacks. After the series came out some episodes were remastered so the quality can be all over the place.
01:45, Its debatable if we need this shot of just the gravestone as the earlier scene basically covers what we need to do, but I like lingering here a bit.
01:49, The locket is a very important item to the series so I had to get a shot of it here. You can see it also includes his sister who is important to the story, but I ignore here.
01:50. Kircheis in the stars may be too cliche, but its from the series and bookends this section of the AMV nicely.
01:53-01:56, The music changes and I need to jump a bit chronologically and show how Reinhard has increased in power in the Empire. The scenes with the crowd accomplishes this.
01:57-2:01, This scene is a bit clunky. I want to convey again how in charge Reinhard is and setup the rest of the AMV, but we linger, perhaps too long on planning screens.
02:05, I love this shot of Reinhard and all the ships engines. As a side note that is Mariendorf next to him. She becomes pretty important around the half way mark of the series.
02:06-02:13, This is the planet Fezzan, a planet not in the Empire nor the Free Planets Alliance (FPA). The two major antagonists in the show. It is one of the first planets Reinhard takes on his campaign. It is a relatively quick battle which I used to convey the size of Reinhard’s fleet in action.
02:14-02:19, Some of the most well drawn scenes in the series. Bookends Reinhard’s conquest of Fezzan.
02:20-02:25, Maybe the cheesiest part of the AMV. That is an actual scene from the anime so I went with it. Also you can see the locket again which is super important.
02:26-02:45, Lot of ships again. Start to show some large battles with the FPA, but nothing decisive.
02:52-03:19, Again we return to Reinhard’s ship and then show his decisive involvement in a battle. Lots of FPA ships blowing up climaxing in a nice large explosion. I cheat a bit and take a lot of battle clips from across the series, but we need a lot of different shots here and frankly a lot of these battle shots look the same.
03:20-03:23, Good scene to show after Reinhard’s great success. You can see how lonely he is on the empty bridge and it contrasts well with the first shot of him and Kircheis from the beginning.
03:24, This is Heinessen, home planet of the FPA, after being captured by Reinhard.
03:26-03:27, This is a shot of Yang Wen-li, Reinhard’s counterpart in the FPA. He is super important, but not covered at all in this AMV. I wanted to at least give him a quick showing and I think these two rapid beats help introduce him as the adversary nicely.
03:28, Real cool shot of both of their massive fleets converging.
03:28-03:41, Start of the battle, lots of fireworks to show the scale, but nothing to show who will win.
03:41, Maps again! Its hard to convey how the battle is going so I went with maps (which the series likes using too) to show things going against Reinhard. This shot also has Yang in the middle.
03:44-03:51, Might be asking too much of a person not familiar with the series, but I need to convey the battle turning in Yang’s favor. Showing the map of a fleet disintegrating, FPA ships firing, and a lot of Empire ships exploding hopefully conveys this. It might be difficult to get if you cannot distinguish the different sides ships at this point.
03:54, Great scene of the Empire ships moving to defend Reinhard’s ships. Hopefully conveys how desperate the battle is going.
03:55, Another really excellent scene of Reinhard having the ships guarding his front explode.
04:01, And here we are end of the AMV. This shot is the best in the series and what motivated me to do this AMV. I love the giant imposing FPA ship bearing down on Reinhard. Its awesome and in my opinion, a a great ending with the sudden cut to black.
The thing about that ending scene is, its a massive cheat. The very next second that ship gets blown out by the timely arrival (in true anime fashion) of Admiral Muller’s fleet. I admit its deceitful, but I really just wanted a nice cliffhanger to end on to motivate people to watch the series.
Tools Lets wrap up with a quick tool discussion. All of my editing was done with Sony Vegas 13. I like it a lot since its relatively simple to use. I am sure other editors say Final Cut is just as good, but I have been fiddling with Vegas for a bit now and I know how to do what I want. The only real issue I had was the video sources. I was using files in MKV format and Vegas cannot handle those files. I had to convert each episode I wanted to use from MKV to MP4. I did this using Handbrake which is dirt simple. It was a tedious work around, but it got the job done. I will leave you with a shot of all the clips in the editor. You can see I like to have a lot of clips lying around so I can mix and match and see what works.
