MAD Movie

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A MAD Movie (MADムービー Maddo Mūbī?) (ミュージックアニメ動画, Music Anime Dōga, litt. Anime Music Video) is a Japanese fan-made video, much like an anime music video (AMV), that generally originate from the Japanese website Nico Nico Douga. MAD can also describe the Japanese AMV community, although they can be anything from audio clips, edited pictures, to wholly original creations. MADs do not necessarily even need to be related to anime, though the more popular ones typically are. The term MAD (occasionally M@D) is thought to be a reference to the name of one of the original MADs, rather than a particular acronym for anything.


Today the word MAD stipulates an edited video or tape made as a parody from dōjin circles. However, the true origin of this word comes from the Osaka University of Arts and Music. Around 1978, two members, Mr. Shimagawa and Mr. Y, of the group CAS began making medleys of anime and sentai show songs with guitars. After a while, they decided to try and use their recordings as the actual background music for the shows. After this initial test, they eventually went into the realm of parody. Thus, the MAD was born.

At the same time, in a completely different place in Osaka, a middle school student named Imai had started his own MAD creation. It all began from his desire for the background music from the anime show Space Battleship Yamato. At the time no drama records had been released, so he recorded the BGM from the TV show where there was no dialogue and pieced the clips together to make a full song. After enjoying success in this first endeavor, he began to piece together dialogue from the show and create his own memorable scenes for the show. Upon sharing his works with his Yamato-loving friends and having fun playing with words and quotes, they decided to actually edit the video as well. This ultimately led to the creation of the MAD Yamato club in their high school years. Finally, when Imai entered the Osaka University of Arts and Music, the fate of these MADs were brought together. Imai, excited that there were others interested in such zany acts, took in the Sound MAD created by his senpai and released his NEW MAD SERIES.

Types of MAD Movies[edit]

MAD Movies can be divided into a number of subcategories. MADs are also not limited to a single category, but can be a member of multiple categories.

Anime MAD[edit]

Anime MADs (アニメMAD, also known as MADアニメ (MAD anime) and 動画MAD (dōga MAD)) are perhaps the most common type of MADs, these are roughly the equivalent of anime music videos. It is basically anime footage edited to some music. Some use elaborate video techniques resembling opening video themes of professional anime.

Still picture MAD[edit]

Still picture MADs (静止画MAD (Seishiga MAD)) use images as the video source. The images are often taken from visual novels or eroge, and they usually contain extensive animation and effects work in order to create a video from the images

Unison MAD[edit]

These MADs take the opening sequence from an anime and recreate it using a different video and audio source, often for humorous sync value.

Neta MAD[edit]

Neta MADs (ネタMAD) usually contain a quick joke. They are often 15 or 30 seconds in length.

MAD database[edit]

A very large MAD database is available from


External links[edit]