Breaking News: R18 Permanently Closing!

Over the past few months we've seen a myriad of issues over at R18, and now finally those issues have come to a head: R18 will be permanently closing down. That's right, effective this week they will stop selling content and effective early next year they will be permanently gone. This will include users being unable to access previously purchased content. We saw them stop updating content several weeks ago and I think some people have feared the worst. Unfortunately it's the absolute worst case scenario now . Hopefully not too many of our readers are going to be out a hefty amount of money for porn they've purchased from them.

We recently wrote an article about this and theorized that adult billing and credit card companies were the culprit for it. That would make a lot of sense given the trend of those companies and what's happened recently at R18. First MC no longer being accepted, then a lot of questionable content disappearing, and now this. I've mentioned it before off handed but I think there's a pretty big mismatch between what the western world accepts in porn and what Japan accepts in porn. Censorship in JAV has always caused them to be creative, I mean we have live action tentacle porn for crying out loud! But seriously, I do think that the JAV industry never cared about what anyone thought about their content and it finally caught up to them. The kind of genres that the western world is trying to move away from are so commonplace in JAV and anyone really paying attention to what R18 was doing could tell they were on borrowed time. While studios are careful to make sure they're shooting with actresses who are above the age of consent and are explicitly giving consent, some of the content still rubs certain people the wrong way. I think a lot of fans of JAV are pretty open given what the industry produces.

R18 has been a major part of the industry for the nine years that they've been operating. While they might only be a small slice of the pie when you look at the western and domestic industries combined, R18 has been all some fans in the western side know. It's also been a big rallying location that has brought a lot of people together. People scouring the internet for whatever pittance of JAV they can find doesn't compare to when you finally discover R18 and what an incredible site it was. Full length videos from the manufacturer? English translated names and titles? As a western fan of JAV I don't know if I would even be here without how incredibly useful R18 has been for me. Being able to actually navigate what was out there, discover new content, and simply being able to understand everything was such a blessing.

R18 not only had their own news but interviews as well. Hell, some people might remember that seven years ago R18 brought us an AMA on reddit when they flew a few names to AVN in America. They actually did it twice, flying over quite the crowd the first time and just a handful of the best the second time. If heaven exists that seat was literally it, being surrounded by four of my all-time favourite actresses.

I think the obvious unspoken bit is that a certain 3-letter Japanese conglomerate doesn't care about its western fans whatsoever; we're not even an afterthought, we're far less than that. There are plenty of readers who have collections on R18 that they're losing and it's a shame that the industry is going down that path. I've always considered it a bit of a positive feedback loop that the more the industry moves away from providing legitimate sources for international fans, the more those fans have to seek less than ideal ways to view things, and the more that happens the more the industry feels incentivized to disregard the market. It's maybe not as bad when you've got Faleno's site, SOD's site, mgstage, DMM (Fanza), etc. as a Japanese person because at least you understand what you're navigating through. Going through DMM and others as a foreigner is not really that fun, believe me. R18 was really such a blessing for us foreign fans and I doubt many people are interested in navigating abroad. DMM has already hinted at pushing further away from the international market by restricting content on their site if you've got a foreign IP. Thankfully getting a VPN can get you around this but it's certainly annoying to have to do and speaks more about how little they care for us.

So what do western fans have as options going forward? Well besides the obvious there are still a few places. SexLikeReal offers VR JAV and they've got far more than anyone would have guessed. There's also ZENRA itself, which believe it or not we sell DRM-free downloadable JAV, with English subtitles too! There's also various studios both censored and uncensored that are particularly kind to foreigners with English websites. It might not be the same stuff you're already used to but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Going forward with the sales report I'll be stopping the R18 side of it. It sucks but there's not really much that I can do about it. I do still have last year's yearly sales report, which is a bit ironic that it's going to come out after this announcement, but that and perhaps next month's sales report are all that I'll have before I call it quits on the R18 side.

I'm sure it hasn't hit me yet just how awful this is and we'll see how things go in six months time when R18 ceases to exist. It's like the Hitomi retirement where the impact is only felt after you start missing what you once had. Will R18 figure out their problems? Will another company rise up and take their place? All I can hope is that Japan doesn't shutter its JAV doors to the outside world as they have in other ways recently because I'm such a fan of the industry and I just want to enjoy this like everyone else. I'm definitely going to miss their site, that's for sure. Still, at least there's our blog to keep you up to date on everything. With that I bid you farewell, until next time!