Oppaira's 2023 JAV Debut Review Roundup - 1 Year Later

Hey guys, Oppaira here. Have you guys been keeping up with last year's debuts? Keeping tabs on them? I'm sure those reading this have been following the debut previews I write, but I only write that now for the actresses in the current year. What happened to last year's debuts? I've written full debut posts for a whopping 38 of them now! As usual, it's time to go check in on how they are doing.

The first thing to get a sense of is to see where our debuts actually ended up. Let's go through a few quick highlights from this chart:

1. The number of retirements seems unusually low. I checked through all of my roundups and the number is usually double this, and this is strictly the lowest we've seen. I'm not actually sure if this is just a lucky year where I picked good actresses to review or what, but very interesting to see.
2. I'm actually still interested in watching a lot of actresses. It's hard to compare 1 year to 2 year results since I have a lot more time to see if they're worth dropping or not, but it's still a bit surprising to see.

All of this just goes to show that it seems like this is actually a pretty good year. Even just visually inspecting the original post I know there were more S rank debuts than usual at 5, and it felt like a really great year coming out of it. It is nice to see the results a year later show the same thing.

Erena is legitimately the one retirement that has me sad. She seemed great and although she wasn't quite the omega busty S1 debut tier she was someone I was hoping to watch again. It isn't exactly surprising that she's one of the few retirements. I say that not because I think she wanted to retire but more so because a non-Japanese doing porn in the Japanese market seems ripe for an early exit. She clearly was studying Japanese and seemed interested but I can just imagine the industry trying to make her fail, especially seeing how few non-Japanese are in the industry. Hell, even June Lovejoy isn't doing so well right now and it just feels like they'd rather not.

Nami Okimiya and Sayuri Hayama are two overperforming by a lot. Last time I talked about this being Aya Ueha and Aoi Ichino and these two are overperforming for the exact same reason. Turns out that Madonna's major flicks caused a few actresses to have unusually inflated results. Nami and Sayuri both strike me more as the type I would drop. Definitely in that "if the right thing comes around I'm open, otherwise no" type of actress. Even now I'd say the right thing is a relatively high barrier, it's just that the right thing did come around, and not once but twice.

Sayaka Nito is also doing surprisingly well. I feel like this is more a factor of how others at S1 are doing rather than her individual merits. She doesn't strike me as someone that should be performing this well relative to the others but it's been a weird year at S1. Haru Minato and Ren Gojo both disappeared for a while which meant Sayaka's consistency gave her more time to get to entertaining themes and plots. Even more than that, Sayaka being more mature seemed to push her into less generic videos than Haru and Ren. S1 is always so focused on letting the physically gifted actresses focus on that to the point it can be detracting. I do expect this to sort itself out by next year but for now it's interesting to see.

Reika Takeda (formerly known as Karen Yanagi) is someone I'm more or less over now. She just turned out to be pretty uninspiring in my opinion. I think she is a very underwhelming performer and her physical qualities don't stack up well enough to offset it. I mean sure, she has big tits, so do a surprising number of 2023 debuts. If I sort by cup size she's tied for 4th, if I sort by bust size she's tied for 8th. In a world where she was, say unanimously the second or third bustiest maybe there would be merit to her, but honestly I'm not even sure that's true. Misono Mizuhara is a great actress to compare to where she has the same sized boobs and I similarly dropped. Granted I do think Reika is more attractive than Misono but evidently not enough to offset the negative qualities. Anyone following my watchlist posts could see where I kind of gave up on her after the releases weren't so great, especially now that she's at Fitch's Nikuyoku label (which I hate with a passion).

Erika Ichigo is also someone I'm over. She's attractive but I think her stoicism deflects some of that. People look more attractive when they show emotion and she just doesn't. Even if she was mad, I could go around saying "you're cute when you're mad" as the saying goes, but she just doesn't do anything. If she's going to not distinguish herself in any meaningful way then I just won't be interested, simple as that. Again, with as many debuts as I watch each year the bar constantly goes up. Someone let me know if she starts taking acting lessons but until then I'm just not going to watch her anymore.

Rion Hiiragi has been way underperforming in my books considering I gave her an S. I expected a lot more interesting videos from someone at Dahlia just given they're sort of a cross between S1 and Madonna. Turns out you get this weird middle ground where they give you plot videos but don't pick good ones. I just haven't really been interested in much of her videos and I haven't been able to convince myself to watch her irrespective of the video being worthwhile to watch. That speaks I think less to Rion specifically but more to my general trend of changing my viewing habits. With as many actresses as I watch I don't really need to focus on whomever was an S tier simply because there are so many S tier to watch. To put that last part into perspective a bit, I have a dozen S rank debuts over the years still active and more than a dozen A ranks as well. I've basically just gotten to a point where there's so much on my radar that I don't go out of my way for underperformers anymore.

Yuri Manase has somewhat unsurprisingly underperformed. I say unsurprisingly because I think the writing was on the wall last year. When we got to the end of the year we could see top tier studios were already over her. Kawaii, Fitch, Honnaka, Oppai, hell even E-Body have all been off the table. It speaks volumes about the industry's perception of her, even if I don't necessarily agree. I thought she was good and worth watching but they evidently didn't agree with me. Perhaps similarly to Rion, she's in a boat where I don't want to just watch mediocre videos to satisfy some desire to watch her. I mean maybe to some degree I might be interested in it but by and large I just don't want to somewhat waste my time getting invested in an actress who won't have worthwhile videos, I don't need more Yuri Honmas in my life.

Momoka Kagura is unsurprisingly one of my favourites. Slim and stacked is a deadly combination and having an ass to boot goes a long way. I know she isn't quite the performer I was hoping she would be, plus I don't think her face is anything remarkable, but those tits are godly. Like I pointed out with Reika Takeda, if she had godlike tits we might be talking a bit more. 100J vs 108K when you drop a lot of the weight as well make Momoka's really incredible. Especially as Momoka is finally starting to get more themed/plot videos, I'm hoping there's more underneath that we can get to see, or at least some videos that aren't bland as hell as S1 does.

Haru Minato continues to be one of my favourites even if she's perhaps slightly behind where I would have expected her to be. It seems only natural given she spent half a year not working in JAV. I find myself just generally flocking to anything that seems reasonable and there just not being much that's actually reasonable. Either way I do expect her results to go up the next year if she manages to be consistent. There's just no denying 108K cup tits like Momoka Kagura has, what an incredible pair they both have.

Rei Kimura has turned out to fall exactly where I expected her to. She isn't the busty goddesses that Momoka or Haru are but it turns out that above average milfs are my thing. I know I find Rei very pretty, I also have enough awareness to realize not everyone is going to feel the same way; where I find a very likeable milf, others will likely not. I also find myself thinking that Rei is an actress that will only go up in value as she starts getting films that better suit my preferences. Madonna videos can be hit or miss which results in a lot of variance for an actress depending on which films they do. Considering the majority of things an actress does are in known series, it generally means that as long as you stick around long enough you normalize. Rei hasn't gotten the best stuff yet and I'm hoping 2025 brings those videos out.

2023 has been a pretty incredible year. To put some things in perspective, let me break it down by boob size in recent years:

You can see pretty clearly just how stacked (pun intended) 2023 was. Not everyone is going to care about huge boobs the way I do but you all know how much I do. This chart speaks for itself so I'll let it. Even if you want to ignore the chart (because I imagine some people don't like mixing charts and porn lol) there some pretty incredible actresses. You're left comparing the likes of Momona Koibuchi and Himeka Iori against Momoka Kagura and Haru Minato. Yeah maybe some areas each will be better or worse in but you can see how big of a deal 108K is. Does that mean I have to have a battle of Rei's for the remaining top slot...

I am very curious to see how things shape up over the next year, both with 2023 debuts and 2024 debuts. I touched on it at various points but to make it extremely clear: my viewing density is becoming more sparse. That is to say, the average amount of videos I watch per actress is increasing which means there are fewer actresses I watch a lot of videos of. It seems like an obvious natural conclusion over time as I watch more and more actresses, but it means it becomes harder to directly compare debuts across years. I'm not nearly as far along with these debuts as I would have expected to be, and I'm curious if it will continue to tank even further. Maybe it's also just a consequence of so many being at lame studios, because with 3/5 of the S rank debuts being at S1 I do expect a slower start. I'll try and remember to come back to this topic next time to see if a bit more experience changed anything for them.

Anyway I hope you've enjoyed and I hope you'll join me in a month when we do debut season. Until next time!