[Poll] Best IV of 2011

[SomethingWild]

Plenty of new visual imagery for us to enjoy this year, but maybe not as much as we hoped for.

Two re-releases on blu-ray, of which Yuko's hasn't released yet. That IV was pretty cool, so it should be even better in HQ.
Acchan on blu-ray should be great, but Muboubi is getting a bit old. I would've rather seen a new Acchan IV.

I haven't seen all of these, but the ones I did see ranged from "OMG Epic!!!" to "do not want."
So I'm interested to see which ones you guys watched and which you liked.

Link to your favorite scenes if you can find them!

[winner]

My fave would be Fujie Reina's Shining Girl. For the wrong reasons...
... it had a Voice CD. Even had tracks of her saying "Nyan~" in 4 different pitches.

Other than that, only watched Akicha's Wonder Land and 4 You. I don't remember anything really memorable from either IVs though...
I felt disappointed Akicha didn't keep wearing that top hat in the Ruin scene. And the scene was way too short.

[SomethingWild]

I'll add my 2 cents.

Mikaponjuuru: They filmed IwaKomo, NatsuMicha, Mikaponjuuru and 4You all on the same trip. As a result, the footage is quite similar. I guess they decided to give Komori the solo DVD because she's the highest ranking/most popular member? I like Komori, but she is not ready for a solo DVD. She needs someone to play off. IwaKomo was highly enjoyable, because Komori's airhead chara and Wasamin's chara seemed to match perfectly. This solo Komori DVD was awkward and boring.

4You: I quite enjoyed this one. The Team Ogi pairings never seem to stop. I remember two things about this release. Komori makes Natsumi laugh a lot, which is nice to see. Secondly, I loved these outfits:



Out of this DVD release spree, IwaKomo was the best, followed by 4You.

Akicha's Wonder Land has its ups and downs. Akicha's first IV was really nice imo, she managed to make boring stuff really enjoyable. This new IV takes a more mature approach. And that'd that ruined this DVD. It's filled with horrible camera effects and horrible music. The absolute highlight of this IV is Akicha's ass:



We know Akicha doesn't have the smoothest skin in the world, and that's fine, but some of the scenes in this IV were less than flattering. Some bad lighting/bad make-up which could've been avoided:



Fujie's Shining Girl is easily the best IV of 2011. IVs are really Fujie's strength. She looks beautiful and knows how to play with the camera. Nice mix of outdoors, indoors, setting, outfits and even some cosplay. There is something in this DVD for everyone.



Acchan's Muboubi and Yuko's Kimi wa Boku no Mono were cool IVs, but for a blu-ray release I'd rather see something new. I think Yuko's can still get away with it, but Acchan's is too old by now. I would've preferred an all new Atsuko IV that was meant to be in high definition from the start.

Serina's Eden is by far the worst IV I've seen this year. It ruined my Serina and SDN48 fandom. I'm not 100% sure why, but it just felt nasty. If this is what counts as SDN48's 'sexy' then I'll stick with my AKB48 girls.

I didn't see Yonezawa's, Sato's and Narita's IVs.


In sum:
1. Fujie Reina - Shining Girl --> go watch it if you haven't already.
2. Team Ogi - 4You
3. Takajo Aki - Wonder Land

[Zorr]

Hmm, probably not totally fair that I vote on this cause I haven't seen all the IV's   I have at the least seen clips from all of them though so at least that kind of counts.  Right?

Anyway, many of these don't entirely appeal to me cause I'm a relatively new AKB fan (roughly 3 years) and I still haven't learned much about many of these girls.  As you'd expect, I've only fully watched the IV's featuring my favourite girls so I can only comment on those.

I'm a huge Komori fan but, I agree with BarrieV, she isn't quite ready for a solo IV yet.  I did enjoy her IV but that's probably helped by my bias.  The true staying power of an IV is if I'll watch it more than once and I haven't watched hers again yet.

Akicha's DVD was a bit of a dissapontment for me.  This is another girl that I love and her last IV was pretty good.  I thought that this DVD was spoilt more by the styles and techniques used.  Again, not to sound like a parrot but I agree with BarrieV's assesment.

Acchan's DVD is the one I voted for.  I totally loved it.  Because it was shot a few years ago it's one of those IV's where there's a lot less 'girl wandering aimlessly shot in slow motion with cheesy instrumental music playing' footage.  Don't get me wrong, I don't mind that sometimes but what's special about this DVD is we get moments where it's just Acchan being herself.    One of my favourite moments is actually the plane ride.  I just love those little moments like with her practising a few words in the local language and just talking for the camera.  I wish more IV's could be like this one.  I've watched it quite a few times now and I'm considering purchasing the Blu-ray just to see if it does increase the visual quality much.

Lastly is Yuko's DVD.  Yuko is my favourite so it was an almost forgone conclusion that I'd at least like this IV.  That said, I didn't like it more than Acchan's DVD.  There are parts that I really liked and I do think that a lot of the footage is shot very beautifully.  So much so that I have ordered it in Blu-ray too because I feel that this deserves a Blu-ray release.  My only dissapointment is that there wasn't enough of Yuko simply being Yuko and it was more focused on being artsy with lots of low depth of field shots.

In conclusion, the Acchan DVD has an unfair advantage.  It was shot back in a time when more IV's seemed to be focused on showing girls talking to the camera and the trend now is more toward these 'virtual date' IV's where the girl doesn't talk and the camera mostly just follows them around.  But like I say, I haven't watched all these IV's so there may be some other gems that I've missed.

[SomethingWild]

Thanks to Maliciel's Yonezawa Rumi - Love Letter rip I'm giving my 3rd vote to Love Letter. Great IV and Rumi is super hot 

[sakura_drop_]

YUKO-SAMA's of course! 

Then Acchan's.

And then "4You"