A Brief History of JAV: Moodyz, Part 1 from Nasty to Royalty

Published : July 22nd, 2020 Written by WoodOfTheRisingSun

Early Years

(NOTE: that some of the early titles and/or covers mentioned in this article have been delisted and no longer available for legal, commercial transactions)

In the beginning, that is, 1996, a studio named "Mr. President" was established as a subsidary of HOKUTO Corporation (now known as CA co. ltd, aka WILL Corporation).  Initially they specialized in creampie, black dick, anal etc, the more hardcore types of porn, employing relative unknown idols.  In 1998, Mr. President took on a new vision (literally): mosaic reduction, challenging the morality red line of censors such as NEVA.  Reducing the total censored area of each frame and also reducing the block size of the mosaic, making the details less obscured. NEVA took a tolerant stand on it, allowing Mr. President to gain a reputation of "thinnest mosaic".  In 2000, as HOKUTO Corporation (the umbella corporation that also owns DMM.com) concentrated their business focus, and divested their production units, Mr. President was splited off as an independent business.  The new company took its name from the production team's name Moodys, changing a letter.

The first title released by Moodyz was planned from the outside to be a blockbuster. Spending 3/4 of their initial capitals to sign two of the biggest stars of the time: Bunko Kanazawa 金沢文子, and Manami Suzuki 鈴木麻奈美, adding to the pair of heavy weights Aika Miura 三浦あいか, Junko Asamiya 成合淳 made for a epic three hours twenty minutes production KMZT-001 Chaos ~Porno Sister Quartet~.  Of the four I think Bunko and Aika Miura were stars for an age.  I remember many JAVs starring either of them in those days.  The title was a huge success and instantly propelled the new company to attention in both the industry and fandom. A month later, Bunko and Manami Suzuki joined again in MDQD-002 P-Teachers.

With the triple punch of thin mosaic, top rank idols and a orgiastic launch title, Moodyz quickly establish itself as an industry leader.  And with fame and sales came capital investment for signing top idols and hot new girls to exclusive contracts.  In those early years, Moodyz lured Madoka Ozawa 小沢まどか out of retirement; discovered and signed An Nanba 南波杏 (promoted as Number One, a pun on her name Nanba An), using recruitment methods that would not be acceptable now (post-2016 scandals), this is only a tiny sample of the highlights.  Later on, Moodyz signed contemporary top idols including Miku Ohashi 大橋未久, Momoka Nishina 仁科百華, JULIA and Anri Okita 沖田杏梨:

Hyping Digital Mosaic

In 2002, taking their signature thin mosaic to the next level, Moodyz named their upgraded mosaic method "Digital Mosaic" and launch a whole series with the same name.  Now it's not just a sneaky probing the boundary of acceptance, it's a bombastic declaration of war, which in Japanese values, is perhaps more shocking than war itself. The morality police reacted rather passively, luckily for fans.  And so Moodyz were emboldened to pursue ever more revealing mosaic playing footsies with the censor.  "Digital Mosaic" became so successful that other studios also use it as a genre tag. 

The strategy was repeated again in 2005, in the new series Hyper Digital Mosaic, promising even more reavealing mosaic. 

Spinning off

In 2003, director Goro Tameike 溜池ゴロー, a maestro of mature ladies theme, was given a whole series to pry his art, with the launch title starring Reona Azabu 麻布レオナ.  After maturing for 3 years, as part of Moodyz's plan  to spin-off the more specialized genres, Goro Tameike split off as an indepedent studio with the same name.  Another studio that spun off at this was was "style art"  スタイルアート ,

Style Art went off and made JAV for 12 years before closing shop.  Goro Tameike turned out to be even more successful, becoming a major studio with a large following of mature lady fans. As the spin-offs took away some fetish genres, other more hardcore genres were de-emphasized as the studio's main attraction.  For example the series Bukkake Creampie Anal FUCK, after at least 71 titles over 14 years, was suspended with MIGD-759 in January 2017. Gradually the range of content become more mainstream and up-scale, and Moodyz become established on top rank idols and thin mosaic as its brand image, . 

Coming up in Part 2:

We will go over some of the most popular and famous series in Moodyz's past, and present a viewer's guide of the current on-going series of Moodyz. 

 

Comments


kurojava 4 years ago
Huge fan of this article, thanks for the writeup. Always wondered where the "Digital Mosaic" tag came from. Lots of little rabbit holes in JAV-english terminology to fall into.
ZENRA 4 years ago
'Digital Mosaic' is just one of the many marketing phrases studios use to imply that their mosaic is 'better' than others. Mosaic since the late 90's has all been done on computers so it's all digital.
Censorship Sucks 4 years ago
Looking forward to reading the next parts! Can you tell us why the entire industry doesn't make "digital mosaic" the standard and keep pushing the boundaries? And more fundamentally, why do the Japanese still give a shit in 2020 about whether a vagina is pixelated in blatant pornography? You often hear of stars moving on from the less "respectable" studios like Caribbeancom to bigger ones that employ censorship, as if blurring a penis entering their holes makes any difference. I still miss uncensored Yuu Shinoda.
ZENRA 4 years ago
I wrote about why mosaic sometimes is thicker and thinner at SankakuComplex a few months ago. The short: studios hate mosaic as much as you do--probably more, really. However, there are various industry bodies that regulate thickness which seems to vary based on social norms. Olympics? Gotta tidy things up. Mosaic currently is thinning out again though we shall see what happens next year if the games actually occur. Link to my editorial: https://www.sankakucomplex.com/2020/03/18/mosaic-jav-why-is-it-there-why-does-it-vary-will-it-ever-get-thin-again/

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