Miri Hanai – Charmed Skin (October 29th, 2010)

Girl Works (g-works.net)

Catalog # MKWD-5071 – Region 2 Disc – 4:3 Aspect

Running Time: 120 Minutes include Montage and Making Of

The Skinny: After a fairly active 2009 in which Miri Hanai released three titles: Cara, Maison-de-Miri, and Miri-onaire, this is her first and likely only DVD for 2010. Strictly speaking it is a by-the numbers gravure video with very few high points, and a decidedly even flow to it. I’m not quite saying it was boring, but if it wasn’t boring, it was only a cut above that.

Miri is 26 now, and has been appearing before the cameras since 2003. That’s a long stretch in the gravure world and is a testament to her popularity. It is too bad the director asked so little of Miri in the first two chapters.

The entire video was shot on the island of Okinawa. The first chapter has Miri in a deeply cut, blue and black cocktail dress, and black fishnet stockings. She’s situated on the roof of an Okinawa hotel. We don’t get to see the hotel, but the roof top has at least two large hotel signs. Since we are on the roof, we see the back of the individual letters of said sign supported by metallic struts. Miri doesn’t do much at all other than turn this way and that way without much movement at all. About 2/3s of the way into this chapter, she’s given an umbrella to use as a prop. Most of this scene is dull and fails to take advantage of Miri’s smile.

Two is along the same lines, only this time Miri is at an Okinawa beach. There’s no jogging or playing in the sand. What’s more, there’s not even a hint of the sea other than we appear to be in a just barely on the shore rock formation. Miri is wearing a camouflage bikini that is ruined by a pink band on the bikini top. She’s going to take the top off and utilize the hand bra. But basically this scene has even less movement that the roof top scene which preceded it.

Three is set indoors. Miri is in a bedroom. The bedspreads on the two twin beds pushed together are blue and white, the walls are blue, and Miri wears a blue with small white dots shift.

Here we get some limited movement with Miri crawling and rolling on the bed as well as getting up on her knees to peer out the window. She’s bra-less beneath the shift and she will tug it up to reveal the lower half of her bust.

But despite what must be called motion, this scene is still sorely lacking in energy, and this has been a constant throughout each of these first three chapters.

I find that the director seems to loathe giving Miri the okay to improvise. Maybe he’s uncertain about where or what she might do, and he fears there would moments or instances when he has to react quickly and might misdirect his lens. Dude, that’s why you have to work at the editing console.

Four is out on the back yard lawn. Miri poses before a tree, in front of some green hedges, and even on the lawn itself. She wears a cute country hat. Her costume is kind of hard to describe – shorts with some other worldly suspenders and a top which is mostly yellow. We get a much more animated and energetic Miri this time. That means more smiles and changes of her facial expressions. She will take the suspenders down off her shoulders, then even lower her shorts to her knees revealing her bikini panties. And that’s it.

Five has Miri back indoors. She’s seated on a chair and she wears a lacy slip (maybe it is a dress) over a frilly bra. There’s a nice amount of the famous Hanai cleavage on display. We later see that her panties are a match to the bra.

What makes this chapter special is that finally Miri has decided to really engage the viewers. There’s lots of broad smiling. This time (at last) Miri seems to be enjoying her work. But at 30:03 there’s a jump cut to Miri in a different bedroom.

She’s wearing the same slip/dress as we saw before. The bra and panties are covered up again. But now Miri is going to remove that bra from beneath the slip; and ultimately lower the straps of the slip. After some moments of posing with the slip on but lowered, there are two top to bottom pan shots which both first show Miri  the take her out of our view and the camera is looking at the sheets. After the second time, we get Miri again, only this time, the slip is gone, and she’s bare except for her panties, and this concludes the 5th chapter.

In the sixth chapter, Miri is actually on the beach. We not only see the ocean and sand, we get Miri in a white bikini with pink trim.

As the scene opens, Miri is standing in the shade created by one of the big coral rocks that are found on the Okinawa coasts. Eventually she does come out into the sun.

She will pose on the sand for awhile, before the camera briefly looks skyward to allow for a repositioning.

Later, she is standing in the water to a depth of mid-calf. When I said ‘standing’ in the water I meant that literally. While Miri will turn her torso, and move her arms, she doesn’t take much more than half of one step.

Despite the rather ordinary camera work, and the director’s continued use of scanning upwards until Miri is out of the picture and all we see is the sky, over and over – this is still a rather pleasant and likeable scene.

Seven is a bath scene. Not unexpectedly, these bath/shower scenes always seem to follow a beach scene. You might find it perplexing that for this scene, Miri is wearing a dull brown shift dress the begins at the neckline and covers her all the way down to mid calf.

There is a peek-a-boo opening for the cleavage. But Miri remains passive as an off screen assistant handles the hand-held shower. Miri is soaked in stages eventually opening up the shift’s neckline to offer up some cleavage. She is going to gather up the soaked dress and squeeze the water out of it.

On the plus side, she’ll bring the shift up far enough to reveal a major part of her breasts. You will also find it perplexing that in this bathroom with the window clearly closed there is enough of a breeze to make her hair move. The hair movement was a nice touch but hardly necessary for a bath scene. Which is a misnomer on my part as there was no soaping or cleaning of any kind.

Eight is a country road scene. The dirt road, the blue sky, and the sea, along with the corn stalks provide a beautiful setting. Again they have Miri in a hippy sundress and sandals. The bonus is the sun hat she wears. She simply walks for a while and on occasion the cameraman forgets that the sun is behind him so his shadow falls on Miri. Soon enough, there are some cloths put out on the grass and Miri is posing while reclining on them. She will open the top buttons of the white and red polka dot sun dress to reveal a good amount of cleavage and eventually a frilly red and white striped bikini. Once more we have an occasion when the cameraman’s shadow intrudes into the picture.

Miri loses the sundress then poses nicely in the bikini. The sandals come off too. Suddenly we hear a jet plane passing by and then, the scene abruptly ends.

Nine has Miri back inside seated on the floor (tatami mats). She wears a multi-colored bandeau top and matching panties and it looks they given her some small objects to to toss and catch as well as some not fully inflated balls to keep afloat by batting them into the air. Miri looks great and she certainly has some quite decent hand/eye coordination. Besides that she’s having fun. In fact, this is the most animated and lively Miri that we’ve seen so far in this video.

In the second part of this chapter, Miri has removed her top. Her breasts are covered on one side by her hand and two of those  previously mentioned objects. The other breast is concealed behind a fan. This segment lasts only about a minute and Miri is on her back throughout and doesn’t move.

The last chapter is outdoors with Miri standing in a flowing creek. The water is about ankle deep. It looks to be late afternoon as the shadows have some length to them. Miri wears a short lace wrapper over her bra and panties. Quite early in the scene she will remove her bra and toss it aside. For most of the chapter she stands, looking towards the sun which proves to be less than a good idea (see image top left above). But eventually, she does get down into a squat, so the lighting situation improves. At 1:07:35 this chapter ends, and this was the last of the main chapters. By the way. this chapter was the source for the cover image.

The last 13 minutes are all behind the scenes and making of footage. A good portion of this has Miri being photographed by a woman who handles the still camera. The video camera shoots this activity. As expected, we get some vocal exchanges between Miri and the crew that included some  laughter and smiles.

Summary: The DVD had 10 main chapters which stretched over an hour and three minutes meaning that the scenes were all between five and seven minutes long. Which is an optimum number. When you start getting into 10 minutes and up per scene, you are going to have some bloated scenes that usually required more editing than they got. I was disappointed that video was produced in the 4:3 format. These days it seems as though 16:9 should be the standard.

Miri, as always looks great. She’s a beauty with her great facial structure, huge eyes, and her terrific smiles. She also has a superb figure. Which is often displayed the way you want and expect in a gravure video.

The direction was humdrum at best. When action was called for we didn’t get it, and when we did get some movement and action, we had to put up with those annoying scans toward the sky or the ceilings.

In short, Miri did her best to make this video worth seeing, and in truth, she is still a top flight gravure idol, but I feel the production wasn’t the least bit special.

If you are a fan of Miri Hanai then you should see it, but if you don’t see this one, you will not be missing  one of Miri’s best DVD’s as this one surely doesn’t rate inclusion in that select group. I’m scoring this one at three point two five.