“Big Tits Soldier” from Zen Pictures (Guest Review by MAV)

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Absstar avatar
5 years ago

Great review Mav! But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, ( well, at least I’ve mentioned this to you in private messages Mav )it’s really too bad that Zen/Giga DO NOT make custom videos! And that’s totally sucks!!

Heroineburgh avatar
5 years ago

Darkwrath makes salient points. I’ve only been watching Zen/Giga for maybe five years, but their quality has indeed stayed about the same whereas various Western producers’ qualities have gone up and also proliferated. My favorite series from the Japanese producers have been Leona and Spandexer. I really like the Spandexer theme song! And yes, it’s a mystery to me why there aren’t more producers like them in Japan, at least that we know of?

Darkwrath016 avatar
5 years ago
Reply to  heroineburgh

That’s crazy heroineburgh as those are two are my favorite series from them as well. Really like the Spandexer costume and I especially love the Leona costume. It’s quite honestly the hottest costume in the entire genre for me. And the current actress playing Leona on Zen, Narumi Ookawa, is a real treat to watch on screen. So beautiful and gorgeous.

zilch
zilch
5 years ago
Reply to  Darkwrath016

Narumi Ookawa is the hottest girl in the superheroine business. As long as she’s making videos for Zen, I refuse to say they are in decline.

Slater74
Slater74
5 years ago
Reply to  heroineburgh

There were actually a lot of producers like Zen/Giga in the early 2000’s but most of them are now defuncts. The only two that remains active are Big Peach Entertainment which produces the kyodai heroine Mighty Lady and Center Island which is now mostly active through its Youtube channel. A strange coincidence: actress, stuntwoman and director Nami Hanada has worked for the three producers.

Hagarb
Hagarb
5 years ago

I watched that latest release from Zen and I liked too. In fact I’m really a fan of zen pictures. Love all Leona and Burning action series. Too bad it seems they don’t like to do otk backbreakers on their videos.
Giga is too extreme to my taste.

MAV avatar
MAV
5 years ago
Reply to  Hagarb

I agree I don’t like most of Giga’s releases. That label focuses on sexual torture, usually of the vibrator variety, which doesn’t really do it for me. Every couple of years they do put something out with a good heroine torture scene. I think the last one that did it for me was Miki Sunohara in “Dark Wizard Guiltickers” which had a real good AOH whipping scene of the heroine.

wilsonp avatar
5 years ago

I’m firmly of the opinion that their quality has gone down alot over the last few years. The fight quality in particular is largely non-existent now. I remember moves from about 5-8 years ago having some really strong fight scenes where the heroine would eventually lose after a long drawn out battle. You used to be able to bank on about 30-45 minutes of solid action followed by 45 mins of sex. These days its straight to the heroine losing after a feeble punch/potion/kryptonite etc. in about 10 minutes, then the rest of the move is just pure sexual content.… Read more »

MAV avatar
MAV
5 years ago
Reply to  tony

Giga and Zen in the past did have some models who could stunt fight well, like Sara Azakawa in Space Special Agent Ami and, IMO, Yui Aikawa in Masked Seductive Heroine. But you may be right that in the last few years they’ve focused more on those who just need to be able to do sex scenes instead of the action scenes also.

John
John
5 years ago
Reply to  tony

What reddit forum is it? And can you recommend me those movies with long fight scenes? Thank you!

Imagineer
Imagineer
5 years ago

Does Giga have competition in their home market? Do they own their market, or are they just the only part of the market us gaijin can see? I think in both the Japanese and Western productions, technical quality has improved and producers have learned what their markets overall consider valuable (i.e. what’s profitable). I don’t think it’s fair to call Giga’s DRM “extremely restrictive,” unless what you’re comparing it to is no DRM at all. It doesn’t have the breadth of device support that Netflix / Amazon / Hulu have, but if you stream Giga from your broadband-connected PC, DRM… Read more »

Darkwrath016 avatar
5 years ago
Reply to  Imagineer

So that part about producers and learning what their markets want is a very good point and something that I should have mentioned but failed to. It could very well be the case that Western productions have just become very good at catering to their western audiences while the Japanese have become very good at catering to their Japanese audiences and the venn diagram where these two intersect has diverged so far that it’s largely non existent or really really small. And yes I was comparing Giga extremely restrictive DRM to no DRM at all. For me, I download all… Read more »

Imagineer
Imagineer
5 years ago
Reply to  Darkwrath016

It’s a trivial matter to connect a laptop to an HDTV, if you want to watch it on a large screen. Five year old modestly-priced laptops can do it.

Darkwrath016 avatar
5 years ago
Reply to  Imagineer

True. What I was kinda getting at was that I’m lazy and don’t want to go through that hassle. It’s already kind of out of the way disconnecting my external drive from my main computer to connect it to my PS4. Asking me to plug a VGA connector from my TV to my computer, choose the right output setting and all that is a bridge too far……………

I’m really lazy at times. I’m not proud.

DarkStar avatar
5 years ago
Reply to  Imagineer

How do you think the lack of DRM is holding ship back? If you mean because of piracy, I can promise you that Zen and Giga are as much, if not more so, victims of piracy, compared to any other producer. I stopped buying Giga and Zen videos all together, because of the drm. I’d rather buy a file that I own and can put on other drives and back up, than buy a movie from a company that could go out of business tomorrow and leave me with a bunch of wasted money.

Imagineer
Imagineer
5 years ago
Reply to  Django

You can promise me? BS. Giga sells a lot more, and produces a lot more. Even if they represented 50% of the titles downloaded by pirates (not just 50% of the titles posted) it wouldn’t be as significant a problem for them as it is for US SHIP producers. I’d rather download and own unencumbered HD files of Marvel films, but that’s not a legal option. Mainstream media and even mainstream porn is shifting to the DRM-streaming model. Obviously an individual studio with a typical customer base of 200-300 people can’t make the DRM leap on their own. But would… Read more »

MAV avatar
MAV
5 years ago
Reply to  Django

From what I see from Giga and Zen having purchased a couple of movies in the past year is that DRM is needed for higher quality playback, but the streaming player gives you an option to download a low-res (640×368) copy.

DarkStar avatar
5 years ago
Reply to  MAV

Before the sp player (I believe it’s called) you had to download files from the site, but those files had drm in them, and could only be viewed with windows media player and would only work on a computer that you had registered with the zen/giga.

DarkStar avatar
5 years ago

I would tend to agree that it’s more a case that Zen/Giga have stayed around the same quality and it’s an acceptable-to-great quality. It just depends on what you look for in a heroine peril video. I love plenty of their releases, of course not all of their releases contain scenarios that I’m interested in. Surely someone is. What hurts them most is the censorship (obviously not their fault) and having the drm and forced use of their video software, imo.

MAV avatar
MAV
5 years ago
Reply to  Django

You mean the pixelated censorship for Giga videos? I guess that can prevent some buyers but for me it doesn’t affect it as I’m more about the heroine peril/torture scenarios instead of the sex scenes when I do find the occasional video that has a scene of interest for me (and is not too crazily priced).

DarkStar avatar
5 years ago
Reply to  MAV

Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. I can’t say it bothers me to the point of disliking their videos, though if you were watching them for sex (and there is plenty of that in Giga) it takes away from the video. Given the choice between watching the same scene with or without censorship, you’re probably going to choose w/o. I can’t imagine that those into sexual peril (and I am, to a certain degree.) aren’t turned off by the pixilation.

Imagineer
Imagineer
5 years ago
Reply to  Django

Imagine harder 🙂
Pixelation is just Japanese pubic hair 🙂

Darkwrath016 avatar
5 years ago

Question: Do you think that it is case that Zen/Giga’s quality has gone down or is it more the case that Western producers quality has gone up over the years and Zen/Giga has just sort of stagnated? I’m more of a fan of the latter to be honest and here’s why. There are some things that Zen/Giga do better and have always done better than their western counterparts. They tend to have better stunts involved. Their locations are very expansive and exotic. Their films are nearly three times longer which allows them to tell a more movie like story (I’ll… Read more »

RobHinx avatar
5 years ago
Reply to  Darkwrath016

I’ve never been a fan of Zen/Giga but I think you’ve raised some excellent points and I enjoyed reading your thoughts.

MAV avatar
MAV
5 years ago
Reply to  Darkwrath016

I’m not sure, but I think they do shoot 1080p (if the 1920×1080 resolution of my screencaps is correct), but maybe the frame rate they use is not close to 60FPS or whatever the standard is by western producers like Lucia/HM/Rye.

Decendingskulls avatar
5 years ago
Reply to  MAV

No one is delivering heroine peril in 60 fps. Some of them might shoot at high frame rate to create a slow motion shot (Dan-O did this a lot) but no one is exporting the final product at 60 fps.

dkm
dkm
5 years ago
Reply to  Darkwrath016

To me “gone downhill” for these videos means they offer more of the same, but back in the day they were very innovative and creative with how they killed off their heroines and the peril they were put in. (which is why I liked the Zeus and Giga stuff). Now, the production quality is better but I don’t see much variation.

Slater74
Slater74
5 years ago
Reply to  Darkwrath016

One of the reason Zen seems to have gone down is because they were much more prolific in the past and did a lot of two parters, which allowed much elaborated stories and better character development. I think it’s because Zen and Giga producer, Shin Iizawa, has since started working in the local hero niche market with the Yatsurugi series and its numerous spin offs (Ayaka Tsuji and Narumi Ôkawa does a lot of works for this products, by the way).