I’ve been up to a lot since I last checked in with all of you. Not least two whole trips to Japan (among other countries) in which many events have been attended.
That’s included seeing one oshi twice, seeing another oshi twice, seeing an all-time great seiyuu in Korea, and seeing my first idol oshi graduate. Not to mention meeting all manner of others out there and getting involved in various other interests of mine. Idolmaster was cool, Bandori was fine (VTuber Kasumi section excepted), taking in my first fes-style live was a nice wild ride, Hashtag Night was highly enjoyable with some nice surprises along the way, Mimo was excellent, and so was Oyui. Even with the unsurprising hour-long line to talk to her at the graduation live. That wasn’t the longest line I stood in, by the way.
Oh yes, and I do indeed have a ticket to Ijigen. I rolled for both days and won a ticket to the sacred Day 2 on the first lottery. As it’s turned out, the hard part of this is getting a travel plan in place that actually gets me there. So far, what’s happened to my plans is:
- Had British Airways decide they didn’t want to run the flight I initially had booked, on the very specific day I had to fly with it. At least they had the courtesy to give me 3 months advance warning.
- Having refunded the four-figure sum I paid for that initially ideal plan, I proceeded to serve BA right by booking a plan which – despite booking an overnight stopover at an airport hotel – came in at less than the initial plan. Only trouble is, the flight out was late on Friday 8th.
- So what should happen but my workplace’s Christmas party get scheduled for…Friday 8th. No refunding my plan this time: I was forced to change the outgoing flight to a Saturday early-morning one, and book a hotel nearby the place where the party in question was held. Because getting to Heathrow from my house is a ball-ache normally, never mind at the time you’d need to actually get to Terminal 4 in good time for a 6:30am flight. After a party which is scheduled to end at midnight. And with me having been up since 5am so I could get to work in the first place. And I won’t even get any air miles for my trouble.
Still, all that will be worth it to see my top 5 seiyuu in action. Well, apart from the fact that one of those top 5 has been replaced by a returning seiyuu. You’ll know who it is probably solely based off the fact she is now in my top 5. And the fact she’s scheduled to do her first real activity in precisely three days time. But never mind. At least I’m flying with an airline known for its time-keeping reliability.
…Oh.
If there’s any time I go over again soon, it’ll be February. That’s when Cinderella Girls has a live in Yamagata featuring none other than Dea Aurora, a must-see for me given a) my Secret Daybreak experience and b) my two favourite characters together. It also coincides with Arisa Komiya’s birthday event and a Liella live in Tokyo the following weekend. Mind you, by all accounts, it’ll be impossible to win a ticket for it with the lottery I chose to bid on. The gloating if those accounts are proven wrong shall be real.
Even if I don’t win it, though, there is a sense within that I might need something of a break from east Asia, bearing in mind I’ll have been not just to Japan four times, but South Korea and Vietnam as well. But how do I keep the void filled if I don’t go there? Again, it means I’ve been looking to evolve my current interests from where they are now, branching out a bit further from what I know and love, and I think I have the answer. Gravure idols.
NSFW coming from here, if you couldn’t have guessed.
Yes, I know. I already go on enough about idols doing gravure. But there’s a crucial distinction. Idols who happen to do gravure, no matter how often it happens, should be separated from gravure idols, for whom their gravure is their central attraction. It’s the latter I’m moving more into.
Of course, gravure is something that many idols do as a matter of course. It can come as part of the job to an extent where you can’t get by without it to succeed. But perhaps this necessity to do it explains why so many idols have ‘it’. The relatively unquantifiable x-factor that makes them work in the scenarios they are put in, the cutesy, innocent idol look and vibe which snowballs their success into tangible reward.
You certainly see this a lot in the mainstream idol groups. Meaning, anything that comes with a number on the end. Their strike rate in finding suitable idols that work in this regard is pretty incredible, when you come to think of it. And yet…something is not quite right with them to me. They have the intangibles that make them work doing gravure to so many, but to me… I think the general corporate woodenness of the groups themselves, the sheer numbers resulting in oversaturation and the relative samey-ness of them all means that, to me… I feel nothing.
That samey-ness is the real key, in fact. They’re all fine taken in isolation, but in reality, they have nothing to make them stand out from the crowd. And that’s the vital factor here. It’s also perhaps a reason why they are idols who do gravure, as opposed to gravure idols.
That’s not to say all of the more conventional idols should be shunned in this respect. Outside the big leagues, there’s more than enough to commend if you find it. That’s where we get into some examples, from our good old friends at 01familia, and to start with, their most conventional idol group, Babababambi.
Even taking away the since-graduated Akane Yoshizawa and Meruda Ikeda from this picture – both of whom are superb at gravure in their own right – what we’re left with is a group of idols who do manage to turn out excellent photoshoots on a consistent basis. Best proof of this in the past month has been Usa, whose wide-eyed look is instrumental in making her stand out.
The other idol in their group who really captures the attention is Mio Minato. On the face of it, there isn’t much to differentiate her, but her mature look is more than enough by itself, especially in the context of her fellow members.
I suppose there is room for one conventional idol when it comes to this, though. Then again, Miyu Kishi was one of the first I found.
She might just be the blueprint other standard idols should follow to make themselves known. Simple, effective work. Miyu manages to impress without having anything too special in her locker. Minuscule height notwithstanding (and it’s not like that’s the sort of thing you can assume at a glance in gravure, if you’ve never seen the idol in question before).
Of course, Bambi’s efforts are nothing compared to their colleagues in 2i2, who really incorporate the spiciness of gravure into their atmosphere as a matter of course.
Toomi is a particularly good exponent of this. Again, her distinctive wide-eyed look gives her the stand-out quality I look for to differentiate from the norm.
Yui Oku and Anri Morishima are no shrinking violets, either. Yui actually used to look even more unique than this, but her return to a more standard but still notably distinctive look has actually worked for the better. Anri is the least likely candidate for one of these, but as the rest of the group carries the impression,
she leans into it and comes out on the other side nicely.
(…No, of course I’m not forgetting about someone. I’m saving her for later.)
I did say earlier that gravure ends up being a critical activity performed by a majority of the most successful idol groups, but there are ways to succeed without it, though. 01familia might be laying out their template for this as well, with Mooove! While each of their four members has a modicum of experience with gravure, they aren’t pushing them to do it particularly right away. They’re setting them up for success with a standard pathway of cuteness and a wholesome ambience, and they have the potential to get there. Gravure may come into it later with them, but with the way they’re heading there’s every chance they might just stick with what they do best and become far more relaxed counterparts to Bambi and 2i2, with the latter at the extreme end both in regular idol activity and feeling, with Bambi providing a happy medium.
But idols doing gravure is not what I’m looking for at this stage. I’m looking for gravure idols. And 01familia certainly isn’t short of them either.
Even here, though, there’s a problem. There’s obviously no shortage of girls going around doing photoshoots and putting themselves into the myriad of magazines that go around on a weekly basis. After all, such magazines wouldn’t be viable if the industry, the demand and the sheer scope wasn’t there. But with so much to take in, how on earth do you sort out the best from the best? Once again, it all comes down to having something to make you stand out.
And so we come to the crux of this post, in that we see the ways in which a gravure idol makes themselves appeal above all others.
Now the clear and obvious factor that could be cited here is the various bodies that are put on show in all these gravy shoots. Forget all of them. Taking gravure in simply for them is simply the wrong outlook. Gorgeous bodies can be taken for granted in these. You have to go above and beyond them to find the gems.
Instead of focusing on the body itself, more important is knowing how to use it. This is the first way in which a gravure idol can appeal.
Nobody within 01 demonstrates this more vividly than my long-standing (meaning, over one year now) and permanent (no matter when she graduates, but given how long she’s been running I don’t anticipate that being any time soon) favourite, Kisumi Amau.
Obviously, she too – despite her considerable body of work – is still, ultimately, an idol who does gravure. Perhaps her position as such is why I’m not looking for another one. But that’s immaterial here. She does have a body that has been conditioned perfectly for gravure, but what she does with it is what keeps the masses around. Observe, if you will, her entire recently-made TikTok.
The ironic thing is that her body is so good, she arguably doesn’t need to resort to this. But who are we to stop her? It’s why her lines are over an hour long. It’s why I stand them, have been there, done that and stared into the abyss, as it were (her Hashtag Night outfit was a visual treat). It’s why you can’t really get a word in with her these days, but if you can only really address her with translated Nihongo she’ll defy the staff and ensure you stick around long enough for her to read it/you to say it. Like I said, it’s about more than just what you’ve got.
I can see why some might not take to Kisumin’s blatant approach, though. Not everyone wants the issue forced upon them. That’s totally understandable. There is another way to go about this, though. And that’s by carrying the kind of aura that makes you look anyway.
01’s bellwether in this sense, despite some hefty competition, has to be Iori Io.
If Kisumin’s tone tends to be “Hey, look at me!”, Iori’s tone is “You will look at me.” And there are examples that go well beyond the above. It’s hard to explain how she manages to carry such…power about her. And how she makes it look so effortless.
Perhaps it can be explained by another, simply inescapable aspect of gravure. And that is what I like to call ‘expression game’.
The difference this can make is genuinely astonishing. If you can pull off multiple great expressions, and the right sort of expression, you can go from ordinary to extraordinary.
The thing with it as well is, it often becomes the secret weapon of those who have ‘a little bit of everything’. And I would suggest it’s what makes 01’s ace, Nashiko Momotsuki, as good as she is.
I’d argue Nashiko isn’t a gravure idol either, mind. That’s because she’s also a cosplayer, an actress and a show host, among all sorts of other things. I don’t know what you’d call her, really. Perhaps that’s why I tend to resort to deeming her my ‘tarento’ oshi. But perhaps her acting background results in her expression game. She’s not alone in this; there are others who partake in both acting and gravure at the same time, with notable expression games. Standouts in this respect include Sayaka Tomaru and Nana Asakawa.
In fact, expression game is so important that if you can pull off a game like no one else, it can carry you. To prove it’s not all about 01, here’s where we introduce the first of those I’ve discovered of my own volition.
This is Otono Sakurai, who has an expression game like no other. There’s a reason she goes down this road with her expressions often, which is that she’s probably…a bit conscious of her teeth. She does smile every now and again, but she does have imperfect teeth. Not bad, but noticeable. So she gets round it with expressions like these which, at their best, are absolutely killer. At 20, her best years are ahead of her. You wonder if she will fix up those teeth and move her game on yet further. But she doesn’t need to. Because, again, already she has an appeal which, importantly, is unlike any other gravure idol.
Again, you’ll note I consider her undoubted assets as relatively trivial in the grand scheme of things. The only way you can stand out with some part of your body for it to be so good as to be unavoidable. But it takes something seriously special to do that. If you’ve got something seriously special though, I will notice. After all, I did devote a considerable amount of a post to Arisa Komiya’s arse, which was some feat when I hadn’t even found the best picture of it yet.
Arisha is another who is an exception to all this though, as a seiyuu who does – or did – a lot of gravure. With acting on top. Which in turn gives her some serious expression game as well.
It’s not easy getting to the bottom of these girls sometimes.
There are others with especially notable cakes, like Sumire Yokono, but perhaps the most to be gained out of this is in the face. There is simply no better way to stand out among your peers than to look like no one else on earth. Quite a few of the aforementioned girls are notable in this regard, but this is also where we really get into the realms of the new idols I’ve found. Not only that, but those I’ve found can consider themselves truly among the elite. I can be really quite obtuse when it comes to the mainstream figures, but not this time.
This is Emi Kurita, or simply Kuriemi. She’s got it all: the sweet face, sweet smile and an oftentimes liberal attitude to the shots she’s taking. How do I know this? Well, I have one of her PBs on Kindle. And another physical one on pre-order. And the best shot in the former is…well, just look at it.
Put that in the (Japanese equivalent of) the Louvre. Though if anything, the credit here should go to the person responsible for the framing of this. Don’t let this be your overbearing memory of the self-proclaimed ‘fetish angel’, though. She’s got a lot more to intrigue. Most noticeable is her attraction to AI, which would be fine…except she’s applying it to herself. I don’t mind AI art as such: just not when it’s being applied to someone for themselves. Then again, there is a possibility she applies enhancements to her own pictures, to make a real half-and-half situation. That I won’t knock her for; that’s entirely her right. The real deal, though? That’s where it’s at.
The most personal way a gravure idol can get into your head, though, is for them to bear likeness to someone you like in your own life. I won’t lie when I say this has helped me fall for a couple of idols: Nashiko and Arisha are my own examples. And it happened again in the middle of all this, courtesy of someone else entirely. To be honest, the idol in question is someone I knew about, but had been shunning for far too long. Wrongly, as it turns out.
Umi Shinonome is absurdly popular, for all the reasons you might expect. She does have an aspect of her body to be proud of, namely her 100cm hips. She’s got the expressions you want a lot of the time, from a soft smile to a naughty little tongue-out action, with eyes that are just right, and she more than her fair share of cosplaying. But what really clinched it for me was how well she rocks glasses. And she does this far more often than just about anyone. When I clocked this in the wake of recent real-life happenings for me, I could finally see what everyone else’s admiration was all about. Now I’m fully onboard her train. And I’m not getting off any time soon.
So we’ve delved into the constituent ways gravure idols use to appeal to us all. But what if you could find someone who can bring all these things together? Grabbing your attention in the best way, towards a body that differentiates from the norm, with an expression and a face to die for? This is the holy grail. And, for sure, some do try.
01’s closest attempt to someone like this is Naomi Majima. Her following can’t be wrong: she strikes a perfect balance between the flagrant fishing of Kisumin and the voluptuous vibes of Iori. She can pull some expressions up there with the best of them. And she does have a standout for her body, in the form of her incredibly long legs. For while you might not be able to tell that someone’s short – just look at Iori, for example – it’s usually easy to guess when someone is tall. And Naomin is up there in the holy grail of 170+ cm gravure idols. Now that’s notable enough to shout about. No wonder everyone falls over themselves in her presence, as 01TV demonstrates. She often dominates any scene she is put into. Can it get any better than her? Yes.
And here we arrive at the biggest find of the lot. In more ways than one.
If you took everything about Naomin and made it at least 10% better, this is who you’d end up. Here’s my new real gravure idol oshi, Yasuyo Saito.
The first thing I noticed with her was, as you probably guessed, her expression. And that expression was the smile you see in these pictures. It. Is. Stunning. What’s unusual with her is that the rest of her expression game isn’t all that special. But so good is this one expression of hers that the rest of them are all irrelevant.
With that smile on the dial, you think all is right with the world. And then you clock her legs as well, and you wonder “Just how tall is she?” When I got the answer…well, I knew I’d found the answer.
1. 7. 3. Owned. That’s nearly as tall as me! And given she spends a quantifiable amount of her time in heels, that means she’s realistically taller. You could have the greatest body in the world – and indeed Yasuyo has a booty that is close to top tier – and yet you could still be beaten out by someone with nothing but height in my eyes. Deep down, it is my biggest kryptonite. No wonder she carries out her job with such ease. She doesn’t need to flex her body in any kind of way. It’s not like you could miss it, anyway.
And here’s something Kuriemi might want to chew on.
You don’t need AI gravure when you find someone who pulls it off in reality.
Despite what that age of 27 might tell you, and her experience elsewhere – not least as the Miss Earth competitor she was – she’s still relatively fresh to this side of things. But having released her first photobook – which would help explain why she cropped up on my Twitter feed out of nowhere, as these gravure idols are wont to do – her star is on the rise. You need only look at her rising Twitter followers to see that.
This is the exact sort of thing that happened when I came across Kisumin for the first time, and now look where she is. Yasuyo is getting recognised by the big magazines as well, not least this project from Weekly Playboy – ironically along with Naomin. There’s some other big guns in there as well, such as the aforementioned Iori, not forgetting the likes of Mea Shimotsuki, Moe Kawase and even a burlesque dancer in there. Yacchan’s in there with the best of them already, but she can go right to the very top. There’s still room for improvement, too, in relation to the rest of her expressions. This is only the beginning for her.
Yasuyo will be far from the last gravure idol I find attractive, of that I have little doubt. But what she has done is find a door that was ajar, opened it and walked right through it. There was a gap there, she’s found it, and I dare say she’s filled it. And so, she can go down as my latest oshi. Specifically, my gravure idol oshi.
All I have to do, of course, is find out how to see her. Or is that even necessary with a gravure idol? Possibly not.
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