In Japan, XXX Means "Wrong, Wrong, Wrong"

This is one of the topics that always bothers me, because people always get their facts wrong or ignorantly repeat things or aren't fully understanding of the situation...

The topic is porn stars in tokusatsu. Maybe you're a stickler, maybe you're a prude, but for everyone else in the world, porn star means a performer in a XXX movie performing acts of whoopee for real. Japan calls their X-Rated movies A(dult)V(ideos) and their porn stars AV Idols. Despite tokusatsu being on the air for 50-some years -- dozens of Ultraman shows, 40+ Super Sentai, 30+ Kamen Riders -- people like to perpetuate this idea that either 1) Japan is just sooooooo cool and loose that they always cast AV idols in their children's entertainment 'cuz whatevs (spoiler alert: they're not) and 2) that nearly every actress in these shows is a porn star.

This is not close to being correct. And before I go on, I need to once again make this distinction.

There are 41 Super Sentai shows. Only THREE have featured full-blown, 100%, X-Rated, AV idol porn stars. (Those three: Carranger, Megaranger and Go-onger.)

How'd this even happen? When casting Carranger, the show's producer, Shigenori Takatera, really wanted the Zonette character to be a sexy, pin-up icon. He eventually just decided to cast Rika Nanase (alias Rika Mizutani), one of the lesser-known AV idols who not only did hardcore films, but was trying to break into softcore films. The character proved popular (probably due more to the writing), so Takatera repeated the casting quirk in his next show, Megaranger, casting Asami Joh as villainess Shiborena.

Takatera's final Sentai work was Gingaman. He repeated his trend of having a sexy villainess, this time casting nude pin-up model and B-Movie siren Kei Mizutani. Kei Mizutani is basically the equivalent of a Playboy Playmate who went on to play gangster's molls in B-Movies and starring in risque comedies. (Her best known role is in the movie Weather Woman, a manga-based comedy about a weather woman who has a wardrobe malfunction while doing the news and becomes famous for then doing her reports in the nude. You know who else is in that movie? George Costanza from Megaranger. Guess that bastard's a porn star, too!) If you're a pastor or housewife from the '50s, maybe you consider that pornography. Maybe she qualifies as a porn star to you. But, in the true sense of the moniker, she is NOT. And because she followed Rika Nanase and Asami Joh, it is assumed and she's mistakenly listed as an AV idol.

Cut to 2008 and Go-onger. Now Go-onger, bless its small brain, thought it was the second coming of Carranger. We know it wasn't, but in Toei's head it was. This went right down to casting ex-AV superstar Nao Oikawa as the villainess Kegareshia. Oikawa had been an extremely popular AV idol, but had quit and been attempting to transition to the mainstream by the time she was cast on Go-onger. But, still, her popularity in her past work looms larger than any of her mainstream attempts.

Let me once again make clear the distinction:

X-Rated/AV movies are for reals, yo, and generate porn stars.

B-Movies/late night movies/softcore flicks (what the Japanese classify as Pink Movies) are simulated; fake. They don't count. If you consider anyone in these movies a porn star, then everyone in Hollywood is a porn star, because every actor and actress has done a sex scene in a movie or show. (HBO, Showtime and Netflix original shows, especially, are filled with porn stars if you look at it that way.)

I point this out because there's a misconception about quite a few of the '80s toku actresses. There's the unkillable rumor about Naomi Morinaga -- all she did was some B-Movies and posed nude for photobooks. She's NOT a porn star. But people have also listed Maskman's Mina Asami as a porn star/AV idol and she's NOT. Here's the deal with that...

In the '70s and '80s, production company Nikkatsu found a profitable way to make money -- they popularized a line of movies known as the Roman Porno Series. The Nikkatsu Roman Porno Series, as well as Japan's so called Pink Movies -- as explained to me by a published Japanese film critic, who at the time was preparing a book on the subject of Japan's Pink Movies -- are risque, but softcore flicks. They sound essentially like the classic old Rochelle, Rochelle of Seinfeld; cliched love stories, movies pretending to be arthouse-y, but really just exist for the nudity and love scenes. Further proof Pink Movies and the Nikkatsu Roman Porno films were merely softcore: their demise came at the hands of VHS, which made X-Rated movies more easily available and negating the need for the fake stuff.

Mina Asami was a very popular starlet of the Nikkatsu Roman Porno line of films. As was Dynaman's Mari Kouno, as was Bioman's Yuko Asuka, as was Turboranger's Kanako Kishi, as was Hibiki's Kaoru Mizuki. Not only these actresses, but a lot of toku actors appeared in these Nikkatsu Roman Pornos early in their careers, among them Sunvulcan's Takayuki Godai (which is how he met his wife, Mari Kouno), Flashman's Jouji Nakata, Kamen Rider Kabuto's Hirotaro Honda and Kamen Rider W's Minori Terada. Again: despite the risque nature of these movies, and what the title of the film series implies, this does not make them porn stars. (And guess what, Power Rangers fans? Power Rangers Turbo's Carol Hoyt had some softies on her resume prior to Power Rangers, so don't judge Super Sentai performers!)

Tokusatsu sees so many actors, some more successful than the others. A lot of toku actors get stuck in direct-to-video B-movies, and Japan's DTV B-Movies aren't that dissimilar from America's. These movies vary in genre, but will almost always try to sell themselves with scenes of shocking violence or nudity. You know how one of these movies goes. It will center on an ex-cop or gangster who hangs out at a strip-joint where 90% of the movie takes place, or he and his hooligan buddies all hang around hookers. Whatever the scenario, it means one things -- nuditay. Tons and tons of toku actors have appeared in these kinds of movies, among them familiar faces like Hiroshi Miyauchi, Daisuke Ban, Changeman's Kazuoki Takahashi and Shinkenger's Goro Ibuki among others.

And, of course, a lot of popular tokusatsu actresses extended that popularity (no doubt pushed by greedy managers) by posing nude for magazines or releasing their own entire books. This does not make them porn stars.

I'm sure there's a few people I'm overlooking. Like, I'm not familiar with all of the Ultraman performers, so I don't know offhand if anyone from there has done AV or softcore or whatever. (I know Ultraseven's Anne took her sudden fame to make some cash by doing nude photobooks, and that Nao Oikawa's guest-starred on one of the newer shows.) GARO is jam-packed with AV idols, but it's a late night show targeting a certain demographic. (Same with Akibaranger, which is why I didn't mention Marceena actress Honoka above.) There's several guest stars I know that were Nikkatsu Roman Porno starlets or whatever, but I'm not talking about guest stars here, just series regulars.

There's also been a couple of freak occurrences. For example, a minor or guest performer who was either an AV idol (Megaranger's Momoko Nishida, who guest-starred as Neji Yellow's human form) or later went on to become AV idols (Minako Komukai of the Abaranger movie). There's the odd case of someone like Wizard's Tomorowo Taguchi, an actor known for his eccentricity, who dabbled in AV movies early in his career. And as is the case sometimes in Hollywood, there's been performers who might have done explicit videos early in their career as they struggled (as was allegedly the case with Blade's Takayuki Tsubaki). There's even been a case of a performer's private video getting leaked (GoGoFive's Yuko Miyamura, who even the Japanese fans mistakenly call an AV Idol because of it, which is just so wrong).

There are many shades and layers, but a single truth: there have so far only been three true porn-star/AV Idol regulars in real toku, and they are Rika Nanase, Asami Joh and Nao Oikawa. Rip up everything else you have written down, because it's wrong.

And on one final note...KEI MIZUTANI IS NOT A PORN STAR!

AND NEITHER IS NAOMI MORINAGA!