Story: Kazama Yui, a country girl from Kyushu, was recruited by the Dark Director and given the role of the third Saki Asamiya. In the story, Yui is sent to Tokyo to meet up with her long-lost sisters, Yuka and Yuma, and they inherit the family’s ninja art in order to solve the menace of a psychic terrorist known as the Emperor. Now turned into a trio of kunoichi, they would battle the villain and his army, helped by their mentor Kazuya Yoda and the agents Reia Kido and Obiwan Osho. (MyDramaList)
This was mentioned in the previous post, but rather than dealing with laserdiscs myself, I found a decent quality laserdisc rip of Tomomi’s “Graduation” on the website formerly known as Twitter, split into 13 parts and stitched back together here. The story is about a student’s crush on her teacher. Released by Cosmos Plan in 1987.
Indeed, Mr. Saitoh did.
The drama-like narrative production style Makoto Saitoh was known for is still present. There is a more traditional AV scene in here, but it’s still conservative, and the mosaic censorship is so heavy that you couldn’t make out anything either way (for one, showing pubic hair was still prohibited when this was filmed). Considering the runtime for this was just below 30 minutes, editing it in any capacity would have interfered with the story to the point that it wouldn’t make sense anymore. Still, this is really the “you could have easily shown that on late night TV” softcore type. It’s also genuine art.
The original copy posted was upscaled to HD and not properly deinterlaced, but I managed to remove most of the artifacts via QTGMC, although the heavy compression made it so that I couldn’t derive a 60fps version (the frame rate this was originally shot in) from it. The ending song sung by Akimoto is rather nice and her idol-like charms really blossom here.
Contains nudity and non-graphic sexual expressions.
More vintage Cosmos comfy Plan. First, I made a mistake about the director’s name, it’s actually Makoto Saitoh, not Sakai. This video was released in 1989 and stars Tomomi Akimoto, and it’s a pretty straight love/romance story. Again, what’s notable about Sakai Saitoh is his ability to tell stories from a pure visual perspective without many spoken lines, almost like an image video. He perfectly capture the aesthetics and feel of the bubble period. Unfortunately, a lot of his movies seem to be laserdisc exclusives, and I’m not looking to buy a LD player just for that.
There’s some interview segments with Akimoto cut in between the story scenes. The folder also includes a recording of Akimoto from her idol days that was not included in the movie itself. The song’s lyrics and a relatively recent interview with her are linked on pastebin.
Story: Following the end of the first series, Godai Yoko is a mysterious girl who grows with an iron mask to protect her life. She takes on the identity of Asamiya Saki after being freed from her mask and becomes the 2nd Delinquent Girl Cop in order to discover the responsible for her wasted childhood. (MyDramaList)
1988 original video drama directed by Makoto Saitoh and starring Chiyuki Makimoto. The story takes great inspiration from the famous novel The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and Nobuyoshi Araki’s film rendition in particular.
Although the original story had adult content, this is an all-ages, worksafe (mostly) re-edit.
Another note is that the VHSRip unfortunately suffers from the same visual issues as Pretty Executor, meaning the image being too dark. The capture gear I use has no option to turn up contrast, so please excuse that.
Rare Tokusatsu 