Submission Limits

Each person/studio may submit up to 3 AMV’s in total in 3 separate categories.

NOTE: If you are part of a studio, you may submit AMV’s either as yourself or as the studio. You are still limited to the submission limits of each contest no matter which association you apply to each video.

Source Material Requirements

You may use footage from video games, anime, Japanese live action or any other content as well as animation you created yourself*. Your AMV must contain the majority content from works inspired by Japanese video games or Japanese anime. Some examples of animation inspired by Japanese anime or video games would be the Netflix Voltron series, Avatar: The Last Airbender/The Legend of Korra, and Legend of Vox Machina. Submissions will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Videos that violate this rule may still be screened at a showcase per the staff's discretion.

*Exception is the Live Action Category, where you may use any sources of live action content and not just Japanese live action content. To qualify for this category, you must have more than 60% live action content.

Freshness Rule

Videos must not be premiered before September 1, 2024. Further, regardless of premiere date, videos must not have won 3 or more major awards. Major awards are defined as Best of Category and Best in Show.

Submission Length

Submissions should be between one minute and six minutes in length. The sole exception is the trailer/parody category, where the minimum length is 30 seconds. If the trailer/parody category is combined with comedy, the exception will still be given.

You will submit a download link this year; this link can be at any cloud service such as Google Drive, DropBox, or Mega.nz, or from AMV.org directly. If you use DropBox, please note the additional instructions on the form. Please make sure to include on your form submission the EXACT name of your files and double check links before submitting.

We accept most common file formats and codecs (eg. mp4, mkv, or avi). Every attempt will be made to convert file formats and codecs to be screened at the best possible quality. If we are unable to convert your video to our screening standard, we will do our best to contact you.

Files must be smaller than 1GB.

Plagiarism and AI Usage

Plagiarism of any kind will not be tolerated. Any attempt to submit work that is not your own will result in immediate disqualification and a ban from competing in all future Anime USA contests. Note that the use of prompt-based Generative AI (such as language learning models, text-to-image/video generators, or any type of content generator where the tool used could have been trained in uncredited source material) is considered plagiarism and will result in the same consequences.  

Exclusions

Your submission should not include the following: 

• 1. Dubbed audio from licensed content.

  2. Any original audio directly copying the official dub script.

  3. Subtitled, Credits, or logos from your original sources. This includes game footage; a clean capture is required.

  4. Your own bumpers or credits for your video.

  5. Any commercial studio logos or other forms of watermarks that you did not create yourself as a parody of said logo or your own logo. 

  6. Any attempts to cover up watermarks or studio/television logos.

  7. Any form of reference to the MPAA whatsoever.

  8. Unaltered video from your audio selection’s official music video.

For the Main Contest: No nudity, offensive language or excessive violence or gore. The contest will have a general, all age audience. This will be evaluated during judging.

NSFW Contest: This rule is mostly relaxed. Extremely offensive content may still be rejected at staff discretion.Live action videos are accepted in both the Nightmare and Naughty categories.

Submissions are due by August 17th, 2025. All submissions must be attributed to an entry into the Google Docs form for submissions. The file name must match exactly to the question asking for the file name. Finalists will be announced on or about September 14, 2025, with winners announced within 2 weeks after the end of the event.

If any issues with your submission violating these rules are noticed before the submission window ends, you may be contacted at staff discretion to see if you can edit the video for submission.

We reserve the right to reject or disqualify any entry for any reason; all rules here are subject to change and will be applied equally to all submissions. All content submitted submissions may be used in panels or showcasing subsequent to the actual contest airing at staff discretion. Proper credit will always be given to the editor if it is used in any form whatsoever.

Anime USA AMV staff may alter the rules at any time. Any change that is enacted is retroactive to the beginning of the submission window and any submissions affected will be communicated to the Editor(s) at that time.

All decisions by Anime USA’s AMV staff are final.