An editorial by ZENRA

JAV and the act of obscuring private parts have been bedfellows since the dawn of the industry. Originally, pixelation (or at times simply obscuring the area entirely) was used in concert with actors taping over private parts and emulating coitus. Full-on penetrative sex only started happening later in the 1980’s (Netflix’s Naked Director does a decent and entertaining job of covering this). Rather than provide a long-form history lesson on mosaic and JAV, I’m instead going to just talk about how it’s been playing out in the 21st century, because for most of us, when we see JAV on the Internet, we’re watching content produced well into the Heisei Era and beyond.

As I covered previously, I am of the opinion that pixelation is here to stay, as it is just the way things are. Sure, not too long ago there was a politician who voiced support for eliminating censoring in manga and frankly I agree with him on many fronts, but until he gains support from a larger number of his peers, his plans will forever remain a pipe dream. What we have to deal with until that happens (if ever) is censorship for domestically produced JAV. What’s interesting and what I will be discussing here is why mosaic in the modern era has grown and shrunk over time.

Currently, we’re in a downward swing – mosaic is fortunately getting thin again. Studios may deny it (which is wise), but compare current releases to the dark, dark year of 2017 and you will see noticeably smaller and more ‘form-fitting’ pixels. Go back a bit further and even the biggest, most conservative JAV studios were really pushing the limit. So what happened? And if mosaic went to hell-in-a-handbasket in 2017, could 2016 then be considered the high point of pixelation in JAV?

As crazy as it may sound, the most form-fitting (but not necessarily thinnest) mosaic I’ve ever seen in a JAV movie was a title we showed on our site a few years ago that was originally released way back in 2002. Mind you, the entire movie wasn’t like this, but there was a CFNM teacher-student sex-ed demonstration scene that had pixelation so fine it only covered the portions of the actor’s shaft that appeared in between her fingers. The blowjob portion as well was incredible: her lips remained clear the entire time. No face half full of pixels, which was the norm then and even now. Come to think of it, it gives me weird “noids don’t have sex with doodles” Cool World vibes.

The most form-fitting mosaic we’ve ever seen in a JAV movie and it’s from 2002

The 2000’s – especially the earlier part of the decade – were the wild west of JAV and also its Golden Era. You had indie companies producing movies with mosaic that rivaled the big makers and the ones producing multiple movies each month with huge casts. From post-production alone, the costs to destroy something beautiful one pixel at a time must have been astronomical.

What many be surprising to hear is that while there are some ways to help speed up the process of obscuring private parts, it’s still mainly a labor of hate (or perhaps love, depending on who you ask). Somebody is sitting in front of a computer all day everyday covering up the “good bits”. Depending on their pay and skill, you may get something beautiful like that 2002 release or incredibly sloppy output – it really can vary. Even for big JAV studios both then and now, mosaic thickness within a single movie can vary depending on the play. Sometimes you may get form-fitting pixels (handjobs and blowjobs), but a wall of masturbating men such as in a bukkake movie? Nobody wants to see that so sometimes a wall of flab and unsightly erections are covered with an equal amount of distaste while the actress in the foreground is given proper treatment.

This all brings us to the era of FHD. JAV makers originally confined to 720×480 resolutions found themselves with the ability to work with a lot more real estate. As more and more of them adopted to shooting in higher quality, more and more began to see if they could submit movies with smaller and smaller pixelation to Ethics companies (organizations that need to “OK” a movie before it goes on sale at big Japanese sites and stores). Some may have been rejected, but others got through. Besides, it’s in the interest of both Ethics companies and studios to release movies that are popular and what better way than to keep pixelation as tiny as possible?

This worked for some years and it remains questionable if the IPPA, the industry-wide organization that started as an anti-piracy outfit but now sees itself more as the de facto industry trade group, knew what was going on from the get-go or only took action after finding out. What I do know is that in late 2016 we saw crackdowns on uncensored production (spoiler: didn’t work) and troubling accusations by former JAV stars strike the industry hard between the legs in a one-two punch of actual bad publicity. The IPPA finally decided to take action. Now, what do you do if you’re a trade organization for JAV and you want to show you can combat uncensored JAV production while ensuring a safe environment for actresses? Perhaps attempt to block uncensored sites from being accessible in Japan? Have a public outreach to address actress concerns? Blacklist those who appear in uncensored works?

Or how about simply deciding then and there to issue a diktat to Ethics companies that mosaic had to be incredibly thicker? From the perspective of any sane person, making movies already befouled by unsightly pixelation even harder to watch is a jaw-dropping insane move. What better way to get your audience to stop buying “legal” JAV and switch to the dark side? What was done here is the equivalent of firing all your green shells into a wall you’re directly facing after running over a banana peel. Things got so bad that one very big conglomerate even considered forming their own Ethics organization so they could go back to using smaller mosaic. Sales were not fantastic in 2017. This was a dark period in JAV. The pixelation was almost 90’s level bad at times and fans weren’t happy. Some studios even went out of business.

While I never heard of any official proclamations, time has seen mosaic pixel size and thickness shrink again. The optimist in me believes with the rise of user-created uncensored content (something we addressed in our previous editorial’s conclusion), this time JAV studios will not back down if orders from “above” tell them to drastically thicken their wares. The law is silly and outdated: that’s something everybody – fan and studio alike – agrees with. They don’t want it, we don’t want it, nobody does. It adds needless time to post-production and is far from cheap with your average two hour title costing $500+ USD to censor (and VR costing twice as much!!). We’re in a mosaic downturn now and this time it just may stick.

This editorial was written by ZENRA. ZENRA is a JAV site specializing in subtitled content. It is one of the very few foreign-owned sites that maintains close relationships with dozens of studios and only shows content that is licensed. All downloads are DRM-free and most updates focus less on vanilla themes and more on what makes JAV truly unique.