J-Mate

J-List is a peaceful island of Japanese pop culture for you

Reviewed by Peter Payne
Publisher: EIC
Available at: J-List
Cost: $60
Quality: Very sexy
"H" factor: Very erotic
Overview: A great 2nd release for Maichy fans

Mai Hagiwara, aka Maichy, created a genre unto herself with Bauhaus, the extremely hardcore-softcore DVD, featuring extremely sexy poses and costumes and nude shots but no sex. She'd said in interviews that it was only a "matter of time" before she crossed the line and started doing hardcore, a very rare thing for nude models to do. This is her second release, and while it's kind of shocking to see Maichy actually going "all the way," it's fun and satisfying to watch.

Of course, Mai is not perfect. In the rough-and-tumble adult video world in Japan, Mai is fortunate to have a large base of fans who will overlook the fact that she's basically an amateur, who is opening her legs and doing what comes naturally to her, without any of the hard training that other JAV stars have to go through. Other actresses, such as the svelte and slender Mai Sakashita or the busty and experienced Kyoko Ayana, probably mock Maichy for being a prissy girl who doesn't know how hard it is to make it to the top of the pantheon of Japanese AV.

There's a Japanese sense of aesthetics called "wabi and sabi," which can be translated as "humble simplicity" and which basically means "less is more." Rather than several dozen beautiful red roses in bloom, a single red rose is more beautiful. Mai's works in the past really had this working for them -- what they lacked in raw satisfying sex, they made up for in artistic beauty, superbly erotic costumes, and delightful camera angles that made up the difference. Seeing Maichy wearing just the right kind of tight panties, or strip nude and pose in just the right way, was awfully exciting -- potentially more so than seeing her get creamed.

Still, Mai does give us exactly what we want: to see that delicious body carefully ravaged by a big meat popsicle. And what a lovely body it is -- she looks better than she has in several of her later softcore releases. It's very nice to see one of our favorite faces from Japan make the plunge into AV, despite the fact that she's got a few things to learn about life in the big city. We'll cheer for her!

This DVD is 90 mins., and zoned for all regions.