Japanese adult video stars launch K-pop group, spark divisive debate
For a freshly-minted K-pop band, the trio could not look any more ordinary. Dressed in bright colorful dresses, the bubbly ladies of Honey Popcorn sang their catchy synthpop track, "Bibidi Babidi Boo," during their debut showcase on Wednesday in Seoul, dancing adorably like any other by-the-numbers rookie girl group. These seemingly unassuming women, however, have found themselves at the center of a public brouhaha, with tens of thousands demanding the government ban their activities. To a large extent, the controversy was unavoidable. The three singers are all Japanese adult video actresses.
The Honey Popcorn members, Mikami Yua, Sakura Moko, and Matsuda Miko, all started their careers in the Japanese entertainment industry as singers in the J-pop idol scene. After retiring from their bands, SKE48, NMB48 and Bakusute Sotokanda Icchome, respectively, they turned to the Japanese adult video scene. Mikami later joined Ebisu Muscats, a musical group composed of Japanese adult video stars, in 2016. The group's formation was announced in late February, along with plans to hold a showcase in Seoul on March 14. The news of the members' steamy professional backgrounds was more than enough to turn heads. Many parents and conservatives became vigilant and demanded the group cancel their debut. A petition was filed on the presidential website, requesting the government to ban Honey Popcorn's debut.
[...] By all accounts, the members appear genuine in their passion for K-pop and their project. According to Kyun Create, the members are huge fans of K-pop music, with Mikami's partiality towards Korea and Korean culture fairly well known among her fans. On her YouTube account, Mikami has several videos of her dancing to hits from A-Pink, Cosmic Girl and TWICE. According to the company, Honey Popcorn is essentially a passion project funded by Mikami. The band also does not appear gimmicky, with production values for the music and videos on par with standard rookie K-pop acts. Not all opinions are negative either, with many supportive comments posted on their artist page on music streaming service Melon.
"I want to live in a world where Honey Popcorn can sing with confidence," Melon user gkakf123 wrote. "Korean girl groups also often perform lewd dance moves. Is there a reason why these girls can't follow the footsteps of idol girl groups?" posted user ktmsh1211.
2018 in South Korean music. Honey Popcorn at K-pop Wiki. And an article about K-pop.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday March 23 2018, @11:10PM
Well, a K-pop group is singing their own version [youtube.com] of a Japanese song [youtube.com], so that should even things out a little.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bob_super on Friday March 23 2018, @11:10PM (1 child)
"You're a bad person because you do porn! Get a real job!"
"Fine! I'll go back to singing, now."
"You can't get a public job! You're a bad person because you used to do porn!"
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday March 24 2018, @01:14AM
In the age of selfies and the whole internet-never-forgets thing, in America being an ex porn star (for example Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton who were both nobodies until their big breaks) is the rule rather than the exception, though I don't understand why all of the retired porn stars go into teaching preschool if they can't make it in show-biz. Probably because their students are too young to recognize them "on film" and lack the access or ability to perform any meaningful internet searches.
What I was looking to post first besides that was the mention of Aubrey 'O' "Duckface" Day, who was a porn star before she was Weinsteined into a 1-hit wonder girl group. References of her porn career disappeared from the internet just like the references to Mick Jagger's "relationships" with 13 year-old girls. Anyway, I was surprised to hear that Aubrey O' Day has newfound infamy as a former fling of Donald Trump, Jr.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday March 23 2018, @11:16PM (4 children)
Child porn was legal in Japan until westerners started finding it on the Internet.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday March 23 2018, @11:18PM (1 child)
Which party do you think is being hypocritical here, and why?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by krishnoid on Saturday March 24 2018, @12:33AM
I'm just waiting until the cephalopods get connected up. They're not gonna be happy either.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday March 24 2018, @02:14AM
Can't wait 'til we get to hippocracy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @07:24PM
By banning this data (photos are just data) we make it difficult to investigate. Smart people who stumble upon it will wipe/destroy their hard drives and never say a word. We also manage to punish and deter (because nobody wants to rely on ill-defined exceptions) stuff like self-porn, innocent baby pictures, cartoons, and medical pictures. There have been cases of people being tried as adults for making child porn of themselves!
If we actually cared, we'd require tracking info. We might require registration of the data. You can keep it if you reveal where you got it. This would let us trace it back to the source, and then we could see if there is any sort of coercion or worse happening.
(Score: 1) by cocaine overdose on Friday March 23 2018, @11:48PM (4 children)
> "I want to live in a world where Honey Popcorn can sing with confidence," Melon user gkakf123 wrote. "Korean girl groups also often perform lewd dance moves. Is there a reason why these girls can't follow the footsteps of idol girl groups?" posted user ktmsh1211.
Fucking weeb salarymen. Moshi moshi sudokari.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Saturday March 24 2018, @05:30AM (3 children)
Here, you can get the DVD for 3200 yen. Don't forget to post your review.
https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/B071J9YGQB? [amazon.co.jp]
https://duckduckgo.com/?&q=松田美子&iax=images&ia=images [duckduckgo.com]
https://duckduckgo.com/?&q=桜もこ&iax=images&ia=images [duckduckgo.com]
(Score: 1) by cocaine overdose on Saturday March 24 2018, @08:35AM (2 children)
And the reviews. I gotta agree with Bai Guanxi here, but in a broader stroke. "ワーストクソ監督" is right. I've been meaning to post a review of a porno, even my very worn out and soaked copy of Kanojo-VR, but it's all trash. Everytime I turn on the sound or subtitles, I'm blasted in the face with just the most annoying, immersion-breaking, and ridiculously inane dialogs. Hentais are infamous for doing this. I believe because it stems from the "moe" movement of freaks getting off on high-pitched aliens with ultra daddy issues and some sort of executive functioning disorder. For example, I was experiencing the latest Oni ChiChi release, which have now been scrubbed clean off of all the regular sites, and I couldn't get past the first few minutes. The last few seasons have just been non-stop rape, humiliation, and mind-breaking. And now we're being slapped in the face with "oh yeah, I love your cock, give me your seed." Naw, man I ain't havin that. You've been raped to pieces for years on end and now the stockholm syndrome's finally kicking in? Directors don't know shit about writing good porn stories or making their work unique besides the rabidly common "bang bang sploosh," where it's two monkeys, one who most certainly has fake tits and looks like shit, is getting in and outted for 15 minutes, before the dicking-monkey finally gets out of breath and decides to wrap it up.
And the porn stars are to blame to. There's nothing wrong with corny porn a la "let me take a look at your pipes." It's simple and it works. For fucks sake, don't give me the "you wanna see my pussy? Mmmm yeeah? yeeaaeeaah?? oh daddy can I have your big... hard... cock?..." You're not a goddamn Oscar-nominee, so don't even go in that direction. My immersion has been severely broken after being unable to focus on anything besides your annoying voice and terrible story setting. Then there's male porn stars. What the fuck is wrong with all of you? "Amateur" couples videos just contain one guy furiously humping his gf like a chihuahua and all recommendations to spice things up, like "you can pull my hair if you want," are met with emasculated grunts or autistic silence. The ones that are professionals, just look dead inside. Where's my A Serbian Film, Milos? I'm going to kill your wife and children if you don't show me some passion.
Fuck. And why do the girls look like shit now? I remember being a wee 6th grader going through puberty; I had nothing less than an entire universe of good looking babes to jerk it to. There was just a never ending supply of professional and amateur porno, where the girls didn't have signs of genetic mutations. And the amateurs, whooo man, they were hot as fuck. I don't get it. I remember being being 13 and wacking it to jailbait my age. Every fucking photo online from back then, featured a cute girl who wasn't teetering on obesity/anorexia, and had very good looking skin. Now? What the fuck, I can barely find a single good looking pic to wack it to, let alone a porno. Everyone's misshapen, surgically botched, and has poor skin, from what I imagine is an overzealous reliance on makeup to cover up problems, instead of fixing them at the core. I even see the same pics I've came to tens of times floating around every so often. They haven't changed and they're exactly as I remember them.
Is it because shit's no longer curated? Is it because any old sacks of shit can make a porno, sign up for a patreon, and start raking in dosh? Fucking normies with no taste, ruining the last pure creative outlet of our times.
As much as I would like to torrent that movie you linked, I'm aware of the very high possibility I won't finish. I'll probably get frustrated that the cameraman's being a jacakass, getting up close and personal on the dude's asshole. Or that the goddamn nip squeals like a pig and I'd have to turn the sound off, making my review less accurate. What a terrible state of affairs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @10:29AM (1 child)
why am I reminded of this post: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=2652&cid=61971 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by cocaine overdose on Saturday March 24 2018, @01:34PM
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday March 23 2018, @11:54PM (3 children)
How can people even tell? Isn't jap-porn mostly mosaic blurred since they have some thing about showing genitals and then a lot of tentacles? It's not like they are going to suck people off on stage? or are they ...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday March 24 2018, @12:03AM (2 children)
I wonder if we will see a DeepFakes-style machine learning unblurring tool...
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @02:19AM (1 child)
If they blur after the fact then there should exist perfect training data.
I wonder if releasing a pretrained network alongside the censored porn would sufficiently skirt the law since it would only contain the lewd images in an extremely unusual sense of the word contain.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday March 24 2018, @02:55AM
Looking around, I found this:
https://www.extremetech.com/g00/extreme/177435-depixelating-porn-is-it-really-possible-to-restore-8-bit-genitals-to-their-former-glory [extremetech.com]
Nice 2014 prediction of DeepFakes.
Anyway, the Japanese authorities might go after companies that try your suggestion. There was a case in which someone was arrested over easily-circumvented mosaic censorship. I think it could be this one with Katsumi Ono, chief censor of the Nihon Ethics of Video Association:
http://variety.com/2008/digital/features/japanese-cops-arrest-porn-censors-1117981744/ [variety.com]
Point being that even though distributing training data might seem like a great way to respect the letter and not the spirit of the law, a Japanese court might punish a company for trying that anyway. All of this stuff is on somewhat shaky legal ground in Japan.
An easier idea could be to move production offshore or something. Or transmit the uncensored footage to an offshore company for editing and international distribution. Heck, maybe they already do something like that, I have no idea.
Here's another case in which a guy/team seems to have gotten the uncensored footage under the table from the production companies (story is not clear about this) and then tried to sell copies by mail order:
https://japantoday.com/category/crime/illegal-mosaic-free-porn-business-busted [japantoday.com]
If that's how it went down, it could be done in a smarter way. Getting it into the hands of the Japanese customers just requires digital downloads instead of DVDs mailed in from overseas that could face seizure.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday March 24 2018, @01:36AM (7 children)
Bunch of hypocrites. Everyone from blue-haired church ladies to blue-haired SJWs gotta hate on these fine examples of womanhood and capitalism. Right up until they feel like rubbing one out, then it's off to pornhub and morality be damned.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @02:08AM (1 child)
Morality? They did nothing illegal. Morality my ass. This is how to create fear in others.
Keep pretending you want freedom while controlling others (freedom).
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday March 24 2018, @10:36AM
I think your reading comprehension is lacking. Controlling others ain't remotely part of my morality except through judicious application of logic and reasoned debate. It is very much part of anyone's morality who tries to curtail these fine young capitalists' efforts though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Funny) by c0lo on Saturday March 24 2018, @02:17AM (4 children)
Went to check pornhub for blue-haired church ladies rubbing one out, found nothing. Not recommended.
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @07:02AM (1 child)
You just weren't searching hard enough I bet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @07:17AM
You lose.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday March 24 2018, @10:32AM (1 child)
Rule #34 doesn't specify pornhub in particular...
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday March 24 2018, @10:51AM
You did
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @07:23PM
I'm sure many of their fans might want to root them... ;)