Utakata Lullaby

First of all, I should say that this song is not really my genre of music. This was recommended to me by a friend. I'll get right to the review.

Story 6/10: This song is from a movie. I haven't seen the movie. I'm not sure if I was supposed to know what was going on, but I assume that it was symbolic of some events of the movie. For a music video though, it has above average story. My interpretation is that the girl is scared of her dark side and trying to flee from it. Then she decides to face it and eventually absorb ... it into herself and become a whole, self-actualized person. Pretty heady stuff.

Art 8/10: The art is high quality. It's also wildly colorful and chaotic. It matches the song very well. I have no problem with the character design of One Piece, which some people do. I love One Piece. I also don't hate CGI in anime like a lot of people do. If you dislike One Piece character design or CGI, you will probably dislike this video.

Sound 5/10: I don't like this song. That's my opinion. I usually don't like rap and the harmony of this song is often discordant, which I don't dig. The singer has a great voice, though. That's not an opinion, it's a fact.

Character 6/10: She's cute. I don't know who the hell she is, because I haven't watched One Piece past episode 572 and I have only seen 2 of the movies. She actually has a bit of an arc throughout the video, (if I'm interpreting it right) going from running from her inner demons to embracing them.

Enjoyment 5/10: I couldn't enjoy the video much because the song was mediocre IMHO. I was curious about the character and enjoyed the visuals a bit, though.

Overall 7/10: My personal score for this anime is a 5, because I just don't like the song and the video is not very original or interesting. It's pretty standard stuff. Yet, as I have said before, rating a music video is not so much about the music or story as it is about how much the visuals add to the song. Whether I like the music is largely irrelevant, because it's too subjective to matter much what my opinion is and the song is it's own entity, available without the video. Why would anyone watch a music video when they could just listen to the song? If the video part of the audio/video experience adds some value. In this case, it does. I think the video compliments the song very well. If I liked the song, I would probably watch this music video once in a while, because they really combine well to make a whole experience.