Silent Lucidity

Recently I was going through my hard drive and found a folder full of AMVs that I had forgotten I had.  Watching these brought back a flood of memories of AMV contests from years past, and I saw quite a few of my favorites in the mix.  One video, in particular, absolutely floored me when I first saw it years ago, and still evokes an emotional response to this day.  This video, “Silent Lucidity,” pairs two seemingly disparate sources – the anime Card Captor Sakura, and the song Silent Lucidity by the progressive metal band Queensrÿche.  But it works.  Oh, baby, it works.

Besides being a truly excellent AMV, this also serves as yet another example of that old adage “never judge a book by its cover.”  On first blush, Card Captor Sakura looks like a kids’ show, and indeed it has its cutesy kid elements, with the cute characters, bright colors, etc.; however, when you strip all that away, what you find at its core is really a very deep, dramatic, exciting, and enjoyable story.  The takeaway from all this is that it’s nice to step out of your comfort zone every now and then and try something new, a new title in a genre different than what you usually get.  It’s something I’ve started to do lately.  Now, admittedly doing this was a lot harder to justify several years ago, back when you actually had to pay fairly big bucks for an anime DVD; but in today’s world of low(er)-cost “classics” releases and discount “thin pak” box sets available at discount retailers such as Amazon and Right Stuf, “all-you-can-eat” video rental services such as Netflix or RentAnime and online streaming sites such as Crunchyroll, it’s not only possible, but easy and cost-effective to do so.

Anyway, back to the video.  Here it is, in all its glory and awesomeness.  Mad props go to Otaku Outpost for creating this wonderful video. If you want to download the higher quality version, or read more about the methods and methodology behind the creation of this video, head on over to the AMV.

(PS: if this instilled in you a great desire to see Card Captor Sakura, beware – there is a similar sounding title “Card Captors” that was in fact an early English dub – but a horrendously butcherized ones.  Entire episodes were left out, large parts of the remaining episodes were chopped out, and the lines were rewritten to focus more on action.  Avoid it at all costs!  Fortunately they wised up and released the unedited episodes, with the original Japanese audio and English subtitles, under the “Card Captor Sakura” title.  Unfortunately it’s out of print now; however you might still be able to find it at some of the DVD rental houses or perhaps online.  Trust me.  It’s worth it.)

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