AMV Creator: Unsure (uploaded by YamchaChannel)
Series: Dragon Ball/Dragon Ball Z
Song: 'Never Too Late' by Three Days Grace
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Ahh, Yamcha. Love him, hate him, feign complete indifference either way - no matter how you feel about the guy, he gets one of the biggest bum raps in Dragon Ball history, and that's saying something given how prone people are to hate on poor Krillin.
Yamcha's there from very early in the Dragon Ball story, almost from the very beginning really. He's Goku's first fellow fighter friend, he gets to be in a relationship with Bulma, and he gets to...that's about it honestly. Very early on, unintentionally or not, Toriyama began to misuse Yamcha to the point that it leaves a lot of Yamcha's fans (and believe me, there are actually tons of them) extremely sad about where things go with his character, and where they don't go. Even before DBZ proper starts, Yamcha is already relegated to losing in the first round of every single tournament he takes part in.
Because of all of this, it's easy to look back on the character with a bit of a bittersweet feeling going on, and this AMV captures that perfectly. Showcasing a lot of Yamcha's actually finest moments as if they're memories flowing through his mind while he's dying at the hands of Android 20, this video strikes an extremely powerful cord within me, even though I'm one of those that's kind of indifferent to Yamcha.
More so than the video itself at times though, this song particularly fits with the Yamcha character, as it intones about the world never turning out like you expect it to - and that's poor Yamcha's life to a T. The footage in the AMV doesn't always fit extremely well with that, but it tries it's best with what it has. Which brings me to my final point on the video - it's not exactly the best AMV ever made. Let's face it, this video wouldn't have won any awards at a convention, but hey, we're not all master AMV makers with every editing program known to man at our disposal - I know I'm sure not. Still, a lot of care clearly did go into making some parts of this vid work, and it really shows. I especially like how it keeps cutting back to the 'present moment' with Yamcha's 'dying', and how it shows the reaction and memories of everyone who's looking for Yamcha as they sense his lifeforce fading.
And really, much of the real problem with the video has to do with it's sources - some footage being widescreen (albeit forced into fullscreen in this particular upload of it) from the Season Sets, others being proper fullscreen; some being from video rips that still have logos or subtitles; the various dub clips being from different dubs for the material. All of this could be easily corrected now with better releases and sources for this stuff available, but it may not have been back when this video was made.
Overall though, the strengths of this AMV outweigh it's weaknesses to me, so hopefully you guys get some enjoyment out of it too.
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