Part 1: Graduation from top studio: where to?

Let’s talk about top studios, how are their roaster put together?  I am talking about S1, Moodyz and Prestige (please don’t debate me about this list, ranking studios is a whole can of worms, which I may or may not open later).  Considering, for most JAV idols, their most profitable years are front-loaded.  That is, for a new girl or debutante, their honeymoon period is the first 6 to 12 months. Only a small minority of them acquired a solid fanbase and become a lifer, like a Yua Mikami, Shoko Takahashi or Asuna Kawai.  It is extremely rare that a girl began her career in a minor studios and work her way up to a top studios and top rank status (the famous exception Mio Kimijima 君島みお but I can’t think of another right now).  So you will understand top studios mostly develop their own talents right from the start.  Then after the initial honeymoon period, some of them will no longer stay with the top studio, we have something very Japanese called a Graduation 卒業, a very polite euphemism for “thanks and bye!”  So what do they do next?

First remember that not every debutante with a major studio are committed to a long career from the start.  Many of them treat a JAV as a temporary gig to make some fast money and then they could (and would) melt back into mainstream and boring (which is good!) society.  So remember that a majority of JAV performers, at least during early career, are not necessarily career-focused.  In reality short timers are an important part of JAV, so while fans tend to think of the worst when a hot newbie disappear after less than a year, many of them actually choose to quit JAV and avoid exposure in their civilian life. 

So if a hot newbie with a top studio graduates and assuming she is not quitting JAV altogether, she might take a few possible paths, in descending order of prestige: high profile transfer to another studio, low profile or silent transfer to another studio, one or more solo titles with a major studio but without the "exclusive" tag, one or more planning tiles with one or more studios, one or more planning titles without her name appearing on the cover. And the worst case as far as JAV career is concerned, is just disappearance into thin air, and possibly wait a period of time to recover some "freshness" with the fandom and come back later in a revival or as a new persona.  I emphasize it's only a career- or prestige-focus way to look at things.  From a personal standpoint, any of those paths might be her most preferred paths.

So that’s the generality, in part 2, I will talk about the interesting case of Mao Mashiro 真白真緒 . Her options and decisions after concluding her initial contract with S1 is a good story and shows that JAV is often just the more visible tip.