Shoko Takahashi
This post is NSFW 19+ Adult content. Viewer discretion is advised.
Shoko Takahashi is not simply someone who “really, really wanted to do AV.” After a private sex tape was leaked and she came under intense pressure to be blacklisted from the entertainment industry, she reluctantly chose to debut in AV. Debuting under the Muteki label itself symbolizes the fall-from-grace performance of an exiled angel—a kind of head-on breakthrough strategy.
Shoko isn’t a “failed idol” but rather someone who reaffirmed her sexual subjectivity through AV. The pure image she’d built up as a gravure idol was shattered, yet she adopted a B-level marketing strategy of erotically deconstructing the fantasy of innocence. In other words, She isn’t purely porn, but rather a kind of self-destructive performer compelled to dismantle innocence into lewdness.
Through defeat, she paradoxically establishes her own subjectivity. She returns the desire of the public as voyeurs, striving to become the subject of her own eroticism. It isn’t the clean pleasure which is typical of AV; it’s a self-reflective monologue of someone who’s already lost something and now wants to lose even more. It’s at this juncture that a certain empathy and complicity arise between her and the public.
However, Shoko lacks the AV’s essential obscenity. Her heavy brows, strong facial contours, and boyish look belong neither to the naïve passivity nor to the fatal aggressiveness usually expected in AV. Of course, from a purely formal-aesthetic perspective, her full, round breasts—with their unique inverted nipples—could offer a fresh stimulus. However, While her balloon-shaped breasts may work well in gravure swimsuits, mere size doesn’t evoke the porn-specific, obscene materiality of tits—nor do her inverted nipples project any intense vulgarity. In other words, When watching her, one should literally want to fuck her pussy.
Ultimately, she is closer to a mirage or disguise born of the public’s excessive fixation on the boundary between the mainstream entertainment and AV. The premium of being a former gravure model made her AV performances seem mystifying and grandiose, but in reality, she never effectively reached the intrinsic obscenity and aesthetic of the AV genre. Her success in the AV industry is largely the result of popular appeal.
#AV #japan #debut2016 #ShokoTakahashi
