You can see it here. This video was submitted to RICE 2025 (in two parts). Parts of it will be parceled out throughout the year to be submitted to other competitions. There is also a video to reveal that I did this here.
Essentially, this is five videos in one with the form factor being a shortened episode of an anime (Iria’s Darplace). We have an OP (book I), the first half of the episode (book II), an eye catch to signify a commercial break, a commercial, an eye catch to signify the commercial break is over, the second half of the episode (book III), and the ED (book IV). This format is the final evolution from my original plan, which was to do three videos with no ED and no commercial break.
Slightly before RICE 2024 I had decided to make an Iria: Zeiram the Animation AMV. You can thank my good friend (Dr. Pettengill) who introduced me to both this anime and its two live action films. I had two ideas in mind and I could not choose between either so I decided to do both. You can see this idea play out on a larger scale with my Patriotism series. Since I was doing two videos I really wanted some sort of intro so I decided to add a third video at the start to try and ease people in. This is why my initial project was titled: Iria Triptych. As I started to get into it and worked to segregate clips I felt I needed a closing video so it expanded to four total (making a quadriptych). Work proceeded fairly smoothly on these four videos concurrently. I had decided I did not want to reuse clips since it is really just one large videos so it was occasionally challenging to decide which clips to use in which video. I know I wanted to keep the Zeiram confined to the third video so I only hinted out it in the first video. I did break that rule in a big way with the MS paint trailer, but I felt it was worth it for the joke. Overall this process took two or three months of fairly steady daily work completing sometime in March 2024. Throughout the year I would occasionally revisit and adjust, but for the most part things were largely kept the same minus the following three large deviations.
The first deviation is the title of the books. During RICE 2024 both my videos were randomly played next too each other, which reinforced my desire to make this a series of related AMVs. Originally I wanted to structure this as play with four acts (the titles being: The Cast, The Spotlight, The Drama, and Escape), but when the theme of RICE 2025 was announced I pivoted to book titles to make this a collection of fairy tales (aka books). My thinking was the first book would introduce Iria and supporting characters, the second would focus on how lethal Iria is at work, the third would show Iria’s biggest fight (the Zeiram), and the final would wrap it all up with a lighthearted send off. That structure seems to have largely not worked, mostly due to the videos being somewhat divorced from the fairy tale motif and all of them being largely emotionally different from each other. I still like how its a big mix of themes and feelings, but it can be hard to enjoy such whiplash.
The second diversion is the credits in the final video (book IV). These came in a few days before I submitted to RICE 2025. As I was reviewing things it really struck me how the first video (book I) has credits, but not the last video. I experimented using VEGAS’s basic credit tool and I really loved the idea of it. So I copied the credit style of the song I was using. The credit tool is very basic, but I got 90% of what I wanted so I did not feel the need to do more work in this area.
The final deviation is the MS Paint trailer (in between books II and III). Originally I had hoped to submit one ~10 minute video to RICE 2025. When I realized this was not to be I split it into two parts (books I+II and books III+IV). I wanted some sort of hint that the two were connected (more so than just the titles) so I added in the eye catches to signify a break, much like an anime going to commercial. It then felt a little odd to have the break, but no actual commercials. By pure luck I had about a minute to play with so I searched around for what I could find that would fit. I briefly considered putting in a commercial (or two) wholesale with no changes, but discarded that idea as not being interesting enough. I then thought about making a fifth video parodying some yet unfound commercial using whatever Iria clips I had left. This felt like too much work so I eventually settled on an MS Paint remake of this ‘Zeram’ trailer I was lucky to find. This has the benefit of fitting almost exactly all the time I had left to fill, was related to the anime, and was just absurd enough to fit the overall vibe of the video. I went with the MS Paint remake because I wanted something different, something transformative, and something odd in the middle. I also knew my aforementioned friend would enjoy the end result. It actually turned out to be quite a bit of work. I think it took me around 8 hours to do all these shots and add in a bit of animation. Even with all that work, some of the shots are pretty shoddy.
Overall, I am very happy with how it all turned out, but I am usually very happy with my final products so no surprise there.
Director’s Commentary
Book I : Iria and the Three Hunters
Obviously I am a big fan of the humor from Garth Marenghi.
00:33 : There is some fancy mask work here to preserve her hair crossing her mouth, but also keep it closed. It took a bit of work.
00:35 : The font here is close, but not a perfect match for the original opening.
00:39 : I had a lot of internal debate on keeping or removing the lip flaps. In the original opening they do speak so I decided to be faithful to the show.
01:02 : This is the Zeiram in the background here. A little hint of what will be showing up soon.
01:05 : This is from the opening. I felt the creditless opening I had was not quite as good quality as the rest of the show, but I like this clip too much to remove it and it is fairly quick.
Book II Iria The Giant Slayer:
This is my favorite of the books. I felt very on the ball with a lot of my selections here and I like how things all gelled together well.
01:44 : My favorite editing sync is explosions with beats.
01:57 – 01:59 : Some more masking here to hide the lip flap, which took a lot of work to get decent.
02:19 – 02:28 : Maybe the weakest section of the whole video. It is fine, I just felt like it never was compelling enough.
02:40 : I debated on using the clip inserted here (which is from the OP), but I like the flair of it so it remains.
03:30 : Like I said, I like explosions.
03:07 – 03:09: This is some feedback I got to improve the transition. I happen to think it looks “slick as snot” as they say.
04:00 – 04:05 : A little odd at the end to have her jump into a place and then jump out, but I did not have a better ending solution.
Eye catches and Zeram Trailer:
See the comparison with the original trailer here.
I went sequentially when I did these so you can watch the quality drop over time as I realize just how much work this is.
04:31 – 04:33 : I messed up this fight shot and drew one picture when I should have drawn one background and then the characters as a second picture. That is why you see two different backgrounds here.
04:44 : I quite like how smooth the slide is here.
04:59 : I should have animated all the stuff going on with her gun here, but I was lazy.
05:27 – 5:30 : The actual trailer goes on for a little longer, but I had to cut the final title short a little to fit it in the remaining time.
Book III Iria and the Beast:
Book III is fine, but its fairly linear. There are not a lot of surprises to it as it just retells the main storyline. It is adequate.
06:11 – 06:25 : I really like the voice over here. It is from the source audio.
07:19 – 07:21 : There is a mask here covering the lead guy’s mouth flaps which was absurdly hard to get right. The bouncing head alone is tricky to line up, but for some reason Vegas would absolutely frag it from time to time for reasons I could not discern.
07:28 : I really like Iria’s second introduction here.
09:39 – 10:00 : This was the most challenging part of the piece. It was very had to keep things moving along fast with the tempo of the song, but also make sure I could tell the story that was happening. It took quite a number of revisions.
Book IV If You Give a Girl a Magatama:
A lot of funny jokes here, but the exercise is left to the viewer to figure them all out.