EXCLUSIVE: Ai Uehara is attempting to covertly take down her massive JAV catalog
JAV news found nowhere else. Ai Uehara appears to be delisting her entire 1000+ movie catalog.
The legendary Ai Uehara. Is there any more that can be said about her?
People who were around the JAV scene in and around the 2010s will be familiar with her. Not only with her prolific rate of releases which at her peak had her pushing out one new title every few days or so, to my estimate. And how almost nothing is off boundaries to her. International interracial gangbang, checked. Hundred people gangbang with creampie, done. Transexual anal sex, here you go. The only thing that she had not done in her career is to my knowledge fisting, bestiality, and scat. There's nobody like her before her debut in 2011 or since her retirement in 2016.
And in mid-2019, she reemerged on Twitter and Instagram before launching a YouTube channel shortly after. Spotting a new streamlined physique but retaining her old identity and making no effort to hide that she is still the same person within. Only that she is taking on a new role as an influencer and Youtuber now without any connection to the JAV industry.
While a lot of retired JAV personalities who are still operating on their social media accounts prefer not to talk about their active days, Uehara is quite open and had candidly talked about them and offer to act as a sex counselor based upon her experiences on her YouTube channel while gathering any queries her followers might have using her Twitter and Instagram accounts.
Looking at the facts of how she had acted since her reemergence, it is the opinion of this author that it might not be too much to say that Uehara is trying to use her old fame as a launchpad to catapult her new career. Now, a year on, this has become double-edged sword as proven in one of her YouTube videos from April.
She had toed the publishing guidelines of YouTube and had paid the price of demonetization when one too many of her followers had cracked dirty jokes in the comment sections. They still believe that nothing about her had changed and now she is pleading with them to stop as it had hit her current bottom line.
This might be the turning point and the wake up call for her as she is now silently delisting her past releases from Fanza/R18 as demonstrated in the header image of this article. Once there were perhaps about more than a thousand titles to her name, now only a fraction remains. The biggest casualty thus far was where over 300 titles being taken offline over 3 days. Why had she did not even mention any of this decision of her's over her social media platforms to her followers is anyone's guess.
There's no denying that society at large still frowns upon anything that isn't family-friendly. And it is tough for somebody like Uehara when compared to Asuka Kirara and Yua Mikami. The main difference between Kirara/Mikami and Uehara is that Kirara/Mikami had chosen to cultivate their image as divas by choosing their roles carefully under exclusive studio signings and established their dedicated brandings. Kirara has her Whip Bunny Mikami has Your's. I do not believe there's a need to mention the various endorsement Kirara and Mikami are enjoying because of their image despite both still having AV titles in circulation.
Ai Uehara had earned herself as the wild, untamed nymphette in being the unrestrained freelancer. It remains to be seen if people would choose to patronize her own exclusive branding if she had one. As it stands, she doesn't and so she depends on endorsing clean living products and services for a living like Kirara and Mikami. As mentioned, society at large frowns upon anything that isn't family-friendly, and she was a girl-gone-wild.
At the writing of this article, based on social media standings, Uehara has only a fraction of the popularity that Kirara and Mikami enjoyed in the mainstream. Only time will time if the former wild child will surpass the prima donnas.
Now, here at ZENRA, we have managed to preserve a bit of Uehara's history. This could be the last of the legal bastion where you can still take a look at the legend when she was in her prime. Though it's unknown if things will last.....
Comments
She want start clean and she have right to do that.
Respect her privacy.
This is incorrect. The new law only covers contracts made AFTER it was passed; it is not retroactive. Furthermore, she retired around/before the '5 year rule' for mainstream JAV contracts even went into effect. Her contracts are thus most likely all perpetual. Studios delist mostly because the movies are old and don't sell as much plus they already have so many. This is why DMM studios may not care as much but you would see smaller studios fighting back against delisting requests that go against contractual terms the performer agreed to (notably Radix vs Kaoru Oshima).
She retired some time ago. "New" releases now are compilations and the like. If she ever returned to JAV, we'd have a breaking article released within hours because that'd be monumental news.
This helps reduce competition with past products and makes room for new talent. Still a shame though.
I bought Uehara's Moodyz compilation when it was on sale from Fanza about 2 months back. It still is linked to my account, still able to be streamed and be downloaded for offline viewing.
Delisting is what the word meant. Taken away from the online storefront where people can't access its page and buy new copies of it. But the file is still on the server and accessible by people who have previously bought the rights to watch it.
There should be a law to prevent something like from this happening in the future.
She's making more money from YouTube/adsense than her AV days & is not Pivoting 100% of career BUT, It's not moral to takedown the videos that she's not even the owner of. She is suing DMM & FAnza behind the curtains to take down her content.
I still think that Japanese AV industry is much cleaner than other countries porn industries... doesn't deserve the hate that it sometime gets.