AMV competitions, evaluations, and rankings

Iron Editor: Two or more editors compete directly with one another, editing videos on the fly in a real-time contest in the style of Iron Chef. Most commonly these bouts go for the length of one or two hours and they are held either in person, at an anime convention, or over the Internet. In both cases there are designated judges who compare the videos, either by the theme, the timing or overall production quality of the videos made during the competition. Judges will declare a winner and most commonly this winner goes on to compete against other editors who have won previous parts of the competition. The other alternative is an individual Iron Editor competition, in which there is only one part to the competition and most commonly only two editors, only one of whom wins.

AMV Viewer Choice: The editors submit videos to competitions that are held either at anime conventions or on Internet websites. In both cases the winners are decided by the viewers and sometimes the editors themselves are allowed to vote. In conventions AMVs are usually judged by the category they are competing in, for example an action video would compete with other action videos. Viewers watch the videos and they submit votes at the end of the viewing portion of the competition. The other way that this competition is held, is through an Internet website. Some websites have a similar way of judging the AMVs, by the category they are in. While on other websites the videos compete against other videos of the same or different categories and are judged on which is a better AMV overall, not solely on the theme of the video. The site AnimeMusicVideos.org has the largest known annual AMV contest, the AnimeMusicVideos.org Viewers Choice Awards.

In March 2008, Tokyopop hosted the I-Manga Music Video Mash Up Contest. The contest called for fans to create a music video, using Tokyopop manga and music. As opposed to most anime music videos, I-Manga Music Video Mash Up Contest required participants to animate and manipulate still images with the use of motion graphics. The contest featured art from Bizenghast and Riding Shotgun with music ("Feel the Disease" by Kissing Violet, "Break Ya Self" by Far East Movement). The winner of the contest was awarded an iPod Video, loaded with Tokyopop music and Tokyopop I-Manga webisodes. As well as featured placement on Tokyopop's YouTube channel. There are several public rankings of AMVs available: A-M-V.org StarScale (only for registered users), A-M-V.org Opinions Top10% (only for registered users), AKROSS Rating, AMVNews Overall Ratings.