Uploaded November 2020 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
This description may get spoilery.
It would not surprise me if you've never heard of Kimikiss Pure Rouge. It's a mid-2000s anime that pretty much flew under the radar and has been more or less lost to the annals of time, and really the only people nowadays who would ever watch it would probably be those who have a soft spot for that period of animation and a love of high school romance. It's a very flawed anime in a lot of ways, but it's teenage drama writ large, and it's not an exaggeration for me to say that it's one of my favorite anime of the genre. For all its mistakes, it is an emotionally enthralling series that strung me along and kept me on the edge of my seat. I really loved it.
I wanted to make an AMV showcasing the main arc of the series, and focusing specifically on Mao, as she was my favorite character in the show. I wanted to explore her feelings for Kouichi and the way she deals with them as the series progresses. I also really wanted to make this a super melancholy video; while the ambiguous ending here isn't an accurate depiction of how the series ACTUALLY ends, I thought that doing it this way would fit the song better and leave more of an emotional impact. Learning to deal with feelings we have that we also feel a strong incentive to avoid acting on is a part of the human experience. If nothing else, that's what I wanted to communicate though this video. When that happens, it can be bittersweet (or just totally suck), but going through that is often the way to move forward.
Editing this didn't take long, but was still a challenge. Kimikiss is a very, uh, I'll say "lightly animated" series, in that there's not a lot of motion or visually interesting scenes to work with. So yeah, this is a lot of slow pans/zooms and face shots and otherwise mundane scenery, but hopefully the emotions and such will come through in spite of the generally static imagery. Also, as someone who finds himself much more comfortable around more upbeat, high energy music, figuring out how to edit videos like this is a continuous uphill battle. I think I'm getting better but slow acoustic stuff like this is still pretty difficult for me. I found myself studying a lot of other videos to learn from them when it came to scene selection and pacing and things as I was putting this together. I still need to practice making these kinds of videos, so this is definitely not the last video I'll be making in this style!
Thanks for reading, and please enjoy!
Technical notes:
Edited in Magix Vegas Pro 15. Total editing time was 10-15 hours.
Anime: Kimikiss Pure Rouge
Song: "Intuition" by Feist
Download: animemusicvideos.org/members/members_videoinfo.php?v=206135
This description may get spoilery.
It would not surprise me if you've never heard of Kimikiss Pure Rouge. It's a mid-2000s anime that pretty much flew under the radar and has been more or less lost to the annals of time, and really the only people nowadays who would ever watch it would probably be those who have a soft spot for that period of animation and a love of high school romance. It's a very flawed anime in a lot of ways, but it's teenage drama writ large, and it's not an exaggeration for me to say that it's one of my favorite anime of the genre. For all its mistakes, it is an emotionally enthralling series that strung me along and kept me on the edge of my seat. I really loved it.
I wanted to make an AMV showcasing the main arc of the series, and focusing specifically on Mao, as she was my favorite character in the show. I wanted to explore her feelings for Kouichi and the way she deals with them as the series progresses. I also really wanted to make this a super melancholy video; while the ambiguous ending here isn't an accurate depiction of how the series ACTUALLY ends, I thought that doing it this way would fit the song better and leave more of an emotional impact. Learning to deal with feelings we have that we also feel a strong incentive to avoid acting on is a part of the human experience. If nothing else, that's what I wanted to communicate though this video. When that happens, it can be bittersweet (or just totally suck), but going through that is often the way to move forward.
Editing this didn't take long, but was still a challenge. Kimikiss is a very, uh, I'll say "lightly animated" series, in that there's not a lot of motion or visually interesting scenes to work with. So yeah, this is a lot of slow pans/zooms and face shots and otherwise mundane scenery, but hopefully the emotions and such will come through in spite of the generally static imagery. Also, as someone who finds himself much more comfortable around more upbeat, high energy music, figuring out how to edit videos like this is a continuous uphill battle. I think I'm getting better but slow acoustic stuff like this is still pretty difficult for me. I found myself studying a lot of other videos to learn from them when it came to scene selection and pacing and things as I was putting this together. I still need to practice making these kinds of videos, so this is definitely not the last video I'll be making in this style!
Thanks for reading, and please enjoy!
Technical notes:
Edited in Magix Vegas Pro 15. Total editing time was 10-15 hours.
Anime: Kimikiss Pure Rouge
Song: "Intuition" by Feist
Download: animemusicvideos.org/members/members_videoinfo.php?v=206135
![Touch the Sky [AMV edited by aerialesque]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/SZcEqByvwPw/mqdefault.jpg "Touch the Sky [AMV edited by aerialesque]
First of all THIS IS NOT MY VIDEO. This video was edited by a friend of mine who goes by the username aerialesque (you can find a link to her channel below). She entered this video into Nan Desu Kans AMV contest in 2016, and it ended up being one of my favorite videos in the contest. She sent me the video file so I could have it myself shortly after, but she never actually released the video publicly. Over the next five years, any time I would see her in person (and several times through Discord and other means) I would hound her to release it, but she never did (per aerialesque, due mainly to wanting to re-edit this using the actual series and not the OVAs...she never got around to it though). Finally, she gave me permission to upload this video to my YouTube channel and give her credit.
I cant tell you how happy it makes me that this video is finally out there, available to the world. Its one of my favorite AMVs from aerialesque, who already has a really strong catalog of videos from over the past 15+ years. I love its simplicity and sincerity, not to mention the editing the lyric sync in this is simply top-notch, the energy is perfect, the visual rhythm as satisfying as anything shes ever done. I really cant praise it enough, and its been a staple video for me these past five years but only me! Now you get to share in it as well, and I hope you love this video as much as I do.
Editor: aerialesque (https://www.youtube.com/user/AerialesqueAMV)
Song: Here I Am Alive by Yellowcard
Anime: Little Witch Academia")
