AMV Spotlight: ErMac Studios
By The Eva Monkey on Monday, December 16th, 2013
I’ve been spending some of my time lately going through and organizing my Eva files, and while I was looking through my archive of AMVs, one editor stood out that I felt like highlighting. Justin Emerson, who went by ErMaC, has been out of the AMV circle for close to a decade. When he retired, he cited a progression where the time involvement to achieve his vision was becoming greater and greater. That’s something I’ve experienced myself in the past with generating fan content. You want to make something, but the time required just isn’t responsibly spent on a fan work.
The thing about his videos is that he still has me convinced, even after all these years, that Nine Inch Nails is in some ways a better fit for Neon Genesis Evangelion than it’s actual soundtrack. I don’t mean Sagisu Shiro any disrespect, but ErMaC’s videos like Closer To God and The End Of Me showed me just how well Nine Inch Nails’ industrial sound and raw unfiltered emotion could complement the expressiveness that is interwoven throughout Neon Genesis Evangelion. I’m reminded of the alternative soundtracks for Neon Genesis Evangelion and The End of Evangelion that Carl Horn included with Viz’s release of Sadamoto’s Evangelion manga (which included tracks from Nine Inch Nails), as well as Carl’s review of The End of Evangelion, whose title “My Empire of Dirt”, comes from “Hurt” off of “The Downward Spiral”. There are a number of other great AMVs that have explored the resonance that Evangelion and Nine Inch Nails have with one another, but ErMaC’s still stick out to me even after all these years.
Another of his Evangelion AMVs that I feel is worth mentioning is Soul of an Angel, which is less of a thematic or conceptual video, and more of a visual composition that experiments with layering, stills, and editing to music. It’s not what I would consider a must-watch, but it’s one that’s still a personal favorite.
Links for this post:
- ErMaC Studios’ profile at AnimeMusicVideos.org
- ErMaC Studios’ website
- My Empire of Dirt: The End of Evangelion by Carl Horn
- Alternate Evangelion Series Soundtrack by Carl Horn
- An Alternate End of Evangelion Soundtrack by Carl Horn