Hi everyone yfoocollector here with February's News Recap and although this is the shortest month of the year it didn't have a shortage of headlines. The retirement announcements of Tsubomi and Hitomi was the biggest headlines but I also want to dive into Aiga Mizuki's vlog and SOD's return to FANZA. This article came out a bit late as a lot of February's biggest news happened at the last few days of the month, but I also reported some things that occurred in the first few days of March.
Spring hasn't started yet and we already have a lot of veteran actresses retiring, this February Tsubomi and Hitomi both announced their retirement from AV in April. Tsubomi's retirement comes as a surprise ash she has been active for 16 years now. It is truly an end of an era as she has been performing even before I got into JAV. Tsubomi debuted all the way back in 2006 for S1 and is a prolific performer and dubbed the petite queen. She has won numerous awards such as 2011's best AV from Weekly Playboy and topped the popularity poll in the AV30 project back in 2012. She was a model professional as she was actively communicating with fans, updated a blog almost daily and from stories from people in the industry they have only sung praises for her work ethic and dedication.
Standout films from Tsubomi's freelance period with her as a 1000 hand goddess [RKI-058] and her as a pregnant woman [DVDES-623]
Tsubomi had an interesting career as she graduated from S1 in 2006 and became exclusive throughout 2007 for Kasakura Shuppansha, after that she became a freelance actress for half a decade. In my opinion her freelance period had a lot of interesting releases as she did of hardcore and weird genres. She really gave her best in her performances and was willing to expand her roles and what she showed in films. She remained freelance until 2013 when she became a WANZ and MOODYZ exclusive, and although her recent works have mellowed down a bit, she was still doing great. Her announcement came out of left field for me as Tsubomi's films were something that I was used to seeing every month, and it is a great loss to the industry that she will be retiring.
Hitomi's retirement announcement.
Hitomi's retirement announcement also came as a surprise for the last day of February. Debuting for SOD back in 2008 Hitomi quickly became one of AV's most popular actresses thanks in part to her humongous assets. Her fame even transcended japan as she is also one of the most recognizable names overseas. Similar to Tsubomi, Hitomi became freelance starting 2009 but mostly releasing films under OPPAI and MOODYZ until 2016 when she decided to become exclusive to OPPAI. She also didn't shy away from hardcore/weird genres as can be seen from [ATID-192] and [RKI-106]. As for her future, she has said that she'll try to continue her gaming streams on Twitch, admittedly I haven't watched any of her streams lately as the last time I caught her live she was still playing Fortnite which is a game I find hard to watch. I would also assume she'd continue maintaining her dog Chacha's social media as well. If you want to read more on Hitomi, fellow writer Panking has been doing a series of articles reviewing her filmography. From these announcements I can't help but agree with a Japanese comment I saw, "I can feel my youth drifting away", I just find it hard to believe that watching a new film release from these two would be a thing of the past.
On February 22nd, Aiga Mizuki uploaded a video on her YouTube channel discussing her experience of getting a False Positive HIV test. This happened over a year ago now, back in March 2021-during her monthly STD screening where she got an HIV positive result. Actors and actresses have to present a cleared STD test result within 30 days of shooting and in the video she outlined the diseases that they are testing for. Performers need to be tested for Gonorrhea, Chlamydia, Hepatitis, Syphilis, Herpes and of course HIV and due to the frequency of these checks the rapid screening tests are usually what they do. Thankfully for Aiga Mizuki a second test revealed that the initial result was a false positive.
Aiga Mizuki's video about her HIV scare
As for her experience on receiving the initial test result, her doctor immediately called for a retest but she was undergoing a hair treatment at a salon at the time and couldn't go right away. When she finally got to go to the hospital, a doctor explained that the initial positive result had weird numbers behind it they ordered for a more precise HIV test. As the second test took a few days to get the results, she got very anxious and her thought about maybe there was someone that was HIV positive in a shoot because she rarely have sex outside of filming. She also had to inform her management and studio as she has a shoot already scheduled for the next month and they have to wait for the results. She was very thankful for her manager though, as he constantly reassured her that it is most likely a false positive which it was.
[MIDV-065] Mizuki's latest film
From this experience, Mizuki was also worried how the general public would react if she indeed was infected with HIV as people already have a presumption that AV actresses being promiscuous. She felt that it would reinforce the general negativity people have towards her profession. I am guessing that she is worried about the incident back in 2018, where an unnamed actress was infected by HIV as reported here. This sent the industry into a panic as actors and actresses were worried about being infected through contact and others were enraged that it took the AV Human Rights Ethics Organization a month to disclose this information. Mizuki also stated in the video, that there are a lot of precautions and safeguards in AV productions to prevent such things and performers are pass a recent STD check before being allowed to shoot. To close the video, she reassured fans that she is having fun in AV and it is a safe environment and that she would like to continue performing even if she was made aware of the possible risk in the profession.
FANZA is holding a sale for SOD's films
SOD has returned to FANZA and we still have no explanation about the situation at all. However it does look like SOD titles have permanently returned to FANZA catalogs it would be just before the delisting in June last year. The whole thing is just so confusing and mysterious from an outside perspective. The two companies didn't even have a statement to usher SOD's return, but they do have a sale for their upcoming and old films are now in FANZA. Releases from June to September 2021 was also not included in the catalogs which makes the whole thing more mind boggling and with the limited communication about this incident, it seems we won't really know the reasons behind it. My main source for this is Mei Miyajima's tweet about the FANZA sale of SOD titles, this just goes to show how little PR the companies have about this delisting. SOD seemed to have held off from releasing VR works since July, so all the films that were ready for distribution was dumped in this sale as well. .
If you have been living under a rock these past few months, a phenomena called VTubing has swept the internet streaming world. This is where people would stream under the guise of anime avatars to add a layer to their streaming personality. These VTubers usually play a character while streaming and most of them are under companies that manage them like idols. On the last day of February, while streaming the game Valorant, VTuber Lauren Iroas accidentally showed his AV folders on his PC. There was only 2 show, MIAA-452 and MSVD-469. The most interesting thing about this incident however was the drama that ensued when people discerned that these films were pirated.
VTuber Lauren Iroas accidentally showing his AV folders
It seems fans are upset over how a VTuber with a lot of disposable income from their streams would still choose to pirate AV instead of buying them legally. Now I don't want to argue about the morality of pirating JAV, I just found it extremely funny that this was the issue people latched on to from this incident. Since that stream both Nijisanji (Lauren's management company) and Lauren Iroas have issued apologies over the issue. This incident wasn't really the first time a Nijisanji Vtuber interacted with JAV as back in 2020 another one of their VTubers was asking for Uta Yumemite's name from a twitter picture. Overall I found this whole thing a bit weird but incredibly hilarious and the cherry on top for me following this story was Ichika Matsumoto's response going viral on twitter.
Social media and other news
- FALENO has setup a special page for Ai Hongo's first film under her new name.
- Miru launches her YouTube channel, Ena Satsuki is considering starting one as well.
- Riho Fujimori deleted all her photos on Instagram, she was apparently upset over harassment she received due to photos with her dog (I'm not really sure I think I missed some of the IG stories for the explanation).
- She will still keep the account for stories and business messages but will mainly post via stories.
- Sakura Mana celebrated her 10th anniversary in the industry, SOD has released a compilation film of her select works
- Mio Ishikawa and Nanami Ogura released the first VR films.
- Nozomi Ishihara announced that she is going on a hiatus in a YouTube community post. I don't know if this break is just for her YouTube channel or AV activities as well.
Transfers and Revivals
- Kozue Fujita has transferred to Attackers after graduating from S1.
- Tsubasa Amami becomes a Madonna exclusive.
- Mariko Sata graduates from SOD Star after 9 months.
- Akane Shiki renamed to Kaede Okui.
- Maki Natsume renames to Nano Nakamura.
- Hitomi Hoshiya has announced that she has left her agency Prime and would perform under a different name in the near future.
- June Lovejoy, also from Prime, has left the agency and is representing herself, she also stated that she is open to shooting stuff abroad.
- Uta Yumemite returns after retiring in December, she'll be performing under a new name with different Kanji spelling but same pronunciation.
Retirements and Announcements
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