Mai Nishida – Koi Gokoro (August 28th, 2009)
Pony Canyon
Catalog # – PCBG-10969 – All Regions Disc – 16:9 Aspect
Running Time: 80 minutes

The Skinny: I’ve always liked Mai Nishida. And this was a pleasant surprise seeing Mai appear in a Pony Canyon DVD. Long ago, and early in her lengthy career, Pony Canyon released a DVD which starred Yoko Matsugane. That was Violation which was released in December 2002. You can read that review here. In fact, in my lengthy career of reviewing IV’s, I’ve only done two other reviews of DVDs from Pony Canyon. One was with Miki Hara – in the Beach Angels series and the other was back in 2007. That was Dazzle which starred Yuriko Shiratori. That review is here.

The video opens kind of slowly. We find Mai dressed in a black cocktail dress. She’s kind of flirting with the incoming surf on this Okinawan beach. Too much of the time we are behind Mai and looking at her back.

Then they go for something different. By now Mai has taken off her shoes and is just sitting on the beach. The camera and the cameraman are now a ways out in the surf. Now we can see Mai’s face. But the strong ocean currents cause the camera and cameraman to bob up and down and the resulting image has the same up and down movements because of the instability caused by the ocean.

So they head for shore. Now we get some fine closeups of Mai. But she’s just sitting and the scene is cross-cut with repeated fully black screens with Japanese text written across the bottom. Mai doesn’t speak or respond to these writings, so I can only assume they are written commentaries by the director or producer, or maybe even Mai herself. I can’t say because I can’t read the script. Needless to say, this doesn’t make for scintillating video. Especially since she’s just sitting on the beach.

In two Mai is in bed. She’s wearing a blue top and white panties. Not doing much of anything. She gets a phone call. This isn’t scintillating either as Mai says Mushi mush, arigato, wakata, and not much else other than making repeated mmnnnn sounds at intervals.

We assume she’s been asked to show up on the beach for a shoot because that’s where she can found in the next scene. Unfortunately, this is an uneventful scene. Nothing at all happens other than Mai walks a bit, and looks into the camera a lot.

When we find her next, she’s back in bed. She opens her eyes and says “Ohayo“, or Good Morning. And a few other short statements or questions. Ultimately she becomes the subject of the camera which pans and sweeps over her lush body. She roll over onto her stomach, and raise herself up. She looks great – then she crawls around on hands and knees on the bed. Also looking great.

In the next chapter Mai is walking around at a big shopping center, likely the Mihama American Village in Chatan, Okinawa. She shops, eats an ice cream cone, and rides a huge Ferris wheel.She looks cute in a vee-necked tee-shirt, short denim shorts, and a baseball cap. But most of this segment after the shopping is spent with one close-up after another. While we are in the Ferris wheel, more textual comments appear. Mai is speaking but we don’t hear any of what she says. Instead they give us a musical track.

Later back at the hotel, Mai collapses on the bed after the strenuous day.

She’ll pose for a bit before taking off the tee-shirt and the shorts. But the camera intentionally avoids showing us any more than one fleeting glance from the side of her bra-encased boobs. It’s like they go out of their way to avoid showing us her underwear.

In the bathroom we watch Mai washing her face, then there’s a lengthy scene with her posing in red on the bed.

Next we have Mai in a pink bikini. She’s just off the beach. We can hear the surf, but not see it. Mai heads away from the beach to the Beach House Maneuver, which looks like a hotel to me. There’s a wooden staircase heading up from the beach. We follow her up the steps. She turns around to face us every third step. Kind of boring and not particularly interesting as once she’s atop the stairs, all we get are some facial closeups.

After that interval, we’re again back at the hotel and Mai is posing again in the red lingerie that we saw earlier. This time they do emphasize her body. Mai is bra-less in this segment. The camera provides the bulk of the motion. There’s a lot of tease in this chapter, by the camera – not Mai. But really – how can you complain when you’re looking at this goddess.

Then it is the next morning. Mai sits on the floor near the window. She has a glass of water. We hear the insects chirping, but eventually the piano takes over the soundtrack. Mai’s in a night gown.

She plays with an ice-cube from the water glass. And 45+ minutes into the video, the director finally decides that it is time to offer us a good look at Mai’s beautiful bosom.

As you can see from these large captures, the wait was worth it. Only, had I been directing, there wouldn’t have much if any wait.

That afternoon, there’s a rain shower. They’ve got Mai in a yellow bikini. All they can do is position her under a big umbrella and offer us a multitude of closeups with a few peaks at her cleavage.

Following that we’re back indoors. Mai is back in some fashionable bra and panties set. This scene is overly red.I don’t mean the sheets or the walls, I mean the lighting.

There’s a bath tub scene next, and I’m sorry to say, it is almost exclusively Mai’s head and shoulders, and hardly any of the shoulders at that. The bath tub is lit by a series of candles, but all we’re going to see is Mai’s chin resting on her hand.

And then we have an airplane taking off. They used an extremely long telephoto lens and as the plane begins to lift off, the focal length of the lens is reduced, and pulls back and back. Turns out we were pretty far away. But this is only a symbolic way of telling us that the video is over. By the time the credits have completely rolled by, there’s still 17 minutes and change minutes left. And they fill that with some rather inconsequential footage – behind the scenes, making of, even some spotty video that looks like it was shot by Mai herself.

Summary: The video is marred by entirely too much of facial closeups. In fact, this is the predominant mode of shooting. Oh keep in mind that Mai is very nice to look at, but this is a video not a photo album. The locations in Okinawa were well chosen, and consistently you’re going to like looking at such a lovely woman. But when you overdo one kind of shooting to this extent, it harms the overall value of the DVD. Three point five is the rating. I’ll recommend this video to Mai’s legion of fans, but this is far from the levels of her last DVD – Beach Angels in El Nido which I thought was excellent.

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