AVOD-301 is a 2017 video from studio… well, AV Open.
Okay, so this is a bit of a different kind of video, which I'm reviewing because I randomly selected a video from my collection to review and this was it. The AV Open was an annual contest that ran on four occasions from 2014 to 2018. Studios would compete against each other to create the best video in a handful of categories.
It was an event that I would get very excited about each year, as the studios would really push themselves to create very unique videos. On 2017-08-01, exactly a month before the entries themselves were released, AVOD-301 was made available for purchase.
At over three hours long, the majority of the runtime is made up of trailers for the entries. Although trailers are available online, they are only one minute in length and low quality. The trailers in AVOD-301 are each two minutes in length, and in high definition. If, like me, you were excited to find out what videos would be part of the contest, then this was a great way to get a sense of each video.
Aside from the trailers, there are 23 minutes of additional content at the end. This includes interviews with the three AV Open image girls: Shiraishi Marina, Takahashi Shōko and Hashimoto Arina, and the promotional video they feature in (which first depicts them in angelic white outfits before glitching and showing them in sultry red lingerie). Despite them appearing naked on the front cover, there is disappointingly no nudity from them in the actual video. It ends with a highlights reel from the previous year's awards show.
Not everyone will find value in a video such as this, but at 540 yen, it's not particularly expensive and was nice to have in advance of the actual videos' release. At this point, however, its use is limited, although it does serve as a historical record of sorts of the videos released as part of the contest (some of which have now been delisted). This video is somewhat made obsolete by AVOD-302, released four months later, which is similar but contains a 10 minute (rather than two minute) clip of every video in the contest.
★★★☆☆ 3/5