Yoko Matsugane – JAM Resort (May 20th, 2010)
Line Communications / I-One
Catalog # – LCDV-40421 – All Regions Disc – 16:9 Aspect
Running Time: 77 Minutes including the bonus chapter
Location: SAIPAN
The Skinny: The Queen of Gravure is back! Yoko Matsugane has apparently settled in at what I will call her mid-range size-wise. I doubt we will ever see her as voluptuous as she was back in the day before Body Scandal. But the current model is slender only in the hips and legs. Her face has beautiful proportions these days, and her bosom is still grandly majestic.
She’s back in business with I-One this time around, and the DVD was shot in Saipan. Yoko has not altered her game plan for this video. It seems that the only changes we see in a Yoko DVD are the locations and the costumes.
Here we have an opening montage, then 12 main chapters, and the usual I-One Tee Shirt closing. Then there’s the Special Movie aka bonus chapter which is always a brief behind the scenes look at Yoko at work.
We meet Yoko as she’s out for a walk. She spies us and introduces herself, “Matsugane Yoko des (I am Yoko Matsugane).” Soon we are in an abandoned building. Yoko plays her demure card briefly before getting down to just a bra and panties accompanied by her audible breathing. This chapter specializes in closeups of her monumental boobs.
Next, there’s Yoko out by the pool in a snugly fitting, red, one-piece Arena bathing suit. At the beginning the camera follows her into the pool and delivers a series of both underwater and above the surface shots.
Which are fine except for the water drops visible on the lens cover. So they abandon that and the rest of the chapter is Yoko posing either in the shallows of the pool, or alongside it; with a lens cover free of water drops.
The camera continues to shuttle back and forth from her face, to her bust, and then to her crotch. Though you do become aware of the repetitiveness of that sequence, you still can’t take your eyes off this goddess.
The third of the main chapters has Yoko in a turquoise bikini working out with a large exercise ball. The setting is in the middle of a large grass field. There are two sound tracks – music and Yoko breathing heavily. Mostly she’s just astride this big exercise ball bouncing away. She’ll change up from sitting astride to kneeling with camera looking up at her from beneath. By the end of the scene Yoko is plum worn out.
Next is Yoko in the kitchen. it’s not a cooking scene. It is an eating scene – like Yoko teasing us as she eats a banana and other fruits. She wears a red satin trimmed with white lace apron, or maybe it is an abbreviated maid’s costume. There’s white stockings and white with colored polka dots panties. And no bra. Once Yoko is up on a table with her head down, her tail up, it is easy to untie the apron/costume which we do. That means Yoko will have to stay in the tail up position.
A bath scene is next. First Yoko applies the soap herself. Then she leans back and soap is dropped onto her from above. Then she remains passive as someone with the hand held shower apparatus rinses her off. This was kind of a disappointing scene.
In the next one, Yoko appears with lots and lots of make-up. We are below and she is above, in bed of course. Her dress (?) or costume has a frontal zipper that runs from her throat to her waist. The lighting is low, no doubt from a low wattage hand held lamp.
Yoko humps up and down for while, breathing heavily. Once that ends the zipper is lowered even further and Yoko poses as a solo.
I didn’t much care for this scene either = the music was weak, Yoko’s face looked too shiny in the lighting, and the posing segment was all on her back. Additionally, I thought the combo and the make-up gave Yoko a harder look, as well as it ‘aged’ her a bit. In short, this was an unimaginative scene and poorly done, to boot.
Yoko is in bed in the next chapter. She’s wearing a pink and white checked bikini. Someone is holding an ice cream on a stick and feeding it to her. Then the ice cream drips into her cleavage. Then Yoko begins yet another workout which causes her to breathe loudly and heavily. The camera zooms in and presses against her boobs a few times. Then some more posing on her back with a good deal of attention on her breasts.
A massage scene follows. Yoko wears just a skimpy bikini. This is much more of a professional massage than I expected. This is not to say that Yoko’s bust and butt don’t get a lot of attention. It just seems to me that there was less of the clutching and grabbing that we have seen in other massages recently.
Yoko as an office lady follows. She’s in a cute short skirt,with a buttoned vest over a long sleeved, white blouse. There’s no office work involved, likely because we are no where near an office. On the plus side it is nice to see Yoko in something you might see on any downtown street in any city. Of course, as expected, Yoko gets down to bra and panties. She will also press her imposing bust against the glass desk, with the camera beneath, of course.
A shower scene follows. Yoko sort of cowers against a corner She’s situated in a bath tub. She wears a white bikini. Some of that clear, gooey, soapy gel is poured onto her. She rubs it in. Not a single drop of water is seen. This was a very brief scene running less than five minutes.
The last of the main chapters has Yoko posing beneath a large rock formation on the beach. This a great scene for Yoko’s fans. She’s alone, there’s none of the pseudo-sexual element that Yoko likes to offer us. Her skin looks superb in this lighting. Fade out with Yoko on the sands.
Summary: I don’t think Yoko can make a bad video. What she can doo is make the same video again and again. With her looks, her smiles, and her beauty, she’s one of the few who can do this, again and again and still please the viewers.
I’ve no bones to pick with JAM. Watching a Yoko Matsugane DVD is always exciting even though you always know what’s coming. I’ll score this one at just four point zero, which is a terrific score. I’ll recommend the DVD. And I’ll go so far as to say, that Yoko is still a major crowd-pleaser in the crowded world of gravure idols. But this video did have two weaker scenes in it – the 1st bath scene and the zippered dress scene. As such I’ll not call this one ‘great’ nor will I say it is a must see.
I’ve got this one on order. No matter how similar Yoko’s DVDs are, I can’t seem to resist them, and I suspect I’ll stick with her until the end of her gravure career, whenever that may be.
Thanks for the comment Nanashi -
I can’t resist her either. The only DVDs of her’s that I didn’t buy were the Boxed sets. I wonder when Yoko’s career might end. Hopefully not too soon.
jmm
It looks you’ve been rising the bar, Mike, now even 4s are hard to come… to Yoko’s credit, I’ll say she plays her part well, I love Nonami but even last year, it looked as if she wanted to play the ”sweet 16 year old” role too often…
Thanks for the review JMM!!!!
Hi Xater -
as always thanks for the comments. I don’t think that I have consciously raised the bar, or have raised my own standards to make higher scores more difficult to attain.
But I do think that for models that I have reviewed religiously over the years – meaning every release excluding boxed sets – like Yoko, Rio. Nonami, Miri, Anri, Hana, – that there’s a possibility that the familiarity does make it harder to be ‘amazed’.
Like the just released Yoko might be deemed as amazing or unbelievable by a new viewer, but for me (and you) it was just more of what we are used to.
As for Nonami Takizawa, another reader emailed me and said the new photo-book that she released is a bit more risque than she’s previously done.
In any event – I have ordered the Nonami June 25th double release from amazon.co.jp. I would have ordered from the amaiami shop but Arragon tried them last week and they turned down his order stating that they are unable to get enough copies to fulfill the order.
That was in May – Amiami was unable to secure enough copies of a June 25th release. Probably the distributor can only allocate them 5-10 pieces. I wonder about that especially since cdjapan isn’t selling them to overseas clients any more. One would think that this should cause a change in the dynamics of the wholesaler’s ability to distribute.
But my thinking is that Amiami’s main business isn’t gravure idols – likely they’ve ordered on a ‘need’ basis rather than – give me 5 of everything released on X date. As such, a distributor is going to allocate to his main and regular retail outlets first before increasing the size of Amiami’s allocations.
jmm
Dear Mike:
Whether it’s you or me or both of us, I think the bar for Yoko is higher. She is undoubtedly the most mature (and I mean that as ‘womanly’), stunning gravure model out there. She has taken the form farther than anyone else. She is totally professional and the camera does love her.
In the past I’ve disagreed with scores you’ve give several of her videos — there are a couple that I think are virtually perfect. This one was not. It was, frankly, a bit tired. Yoko was her fabulous self — beautiful, self-aware and confident — but the whole thing was, as you’ve commented, more of the same. Mind you, like so many, I’d watch her reading the telephone book in a business suit but this one didn’t have the imagination, the ‘tease’ if you will, that has characterized some of her past work.
Clearly Yoko is coming to the end of her career — not for a while we hope — so her swan song(s) should be more memorable, more erotic, the best of what’s possible in the gravure medium; after all, she is surely one of the most seductive women on this planet. I want her to retire as undefeated champion!
Thanks again for a great review.
Elias
Thank you Elias for the great comments about Yoko.
I think you are right about the standards each of us set for a Yoko DVD. She’s been in the game since 2002, and because of her longevity and her obvious charms, and because of our often huge expectations for a Yoko video – then it does follow that the bar is set higher.
It also follows that because of our expectations AND familiarity with her work, that we will notice some of the flaws in the video.
I guess it is both an honor and a burden to be considered the best. How do you improve the product? How do you maintain the level of excellence. Yoko’s age is not catching up with her.She still has the looks. As you say, we’d all be pleased to watch her read the phone book, which brings us to the inherent limitations of the medium.
As a gravure idol, there are the built in limitations of the genre.So really we are at the point with Yoko that there’s not much left for her to do in this field. There will be an endless supply of beautiful women entering the gravure idol world but Yoko will never be replaced.
But there aren’t a lot of new producers/directors in this genre. That’s where the new ideas have to come from – a model is only the onscreen performer. I wouldn’t think that the model would be the source for creative process.
Which is why Yoko’s videos will continue to be repetitive. She’s locked into that niche.
You know what I’d like to see – Yoko in a few new environments. How about New York, or Paris, or even a travel DVD about Japan. I recall that Hiroko Sato did videos set in Shanghai and in Rome, Italy, and even Sardinia.
And Chisato Morishita did the Artemis and Aphrodite videos in Mykonos, Greece. Mikie Hara did one in Vietnam.
it’s not a maybe or an if – it is a certainty. By putting Yoko down somewhere’s new, even if it required her to wear more clothing for various scenes – that would introduce a freshness and some new elements.
Easy for me to say, right? I’m not paying the bills for I-One, or Takeshobo, or E-Net, am I? I’m just a consumer.
she has terrific boobs