Timing and Translation by ZENRA

(Second Half online January 15th)

One of the 'benefits'--if you can call it that when spending over two weeks on-and-off subtitling a gargantuan almost four hour almost 3,000 lines of dialog movie is it gives you a lot of time to think. Believe it or not, translation itself is not the most time-consuming aspect of subtitling; nine out of ten times the first time dialog is uttered, an appropriate translation already is in mind. The time-sink is correctly timing the dialog--something "AI" solutions may do OK jobs with for especially simple movies, but fall flat (and quickly at that!) when complexity begins to rise. That thinking leads down interesting paths and for the sake of this review, one in particular comes to mind: going all out or taking the easy route. In other words, is SADISTIC VILLAGE a studio that 'manually times their moves' like we do or do they try to push out a higher amount of potentially inferior AI-assisted quality material akin to the number of studios owned by a certain three letter conglomerate?

MAGIC MIRROR IZAKAYA AMATEURS VS MACHINE VIBRATOR GAME SHOW 11 is a story of quality over quantity. Big names may be absent, but in place we get a top-notch combination of realism, originality, and the kitchen sink. This particularly holds true in today and Monday's fat double update filmed not on a stale dime-a-dozen JAV set akin to that three letter conglomerate's massive output, but in an actual izakaya. This ain't no set! One scene towards the middle even has the camera go from entrance all the way to the back. Somehow SADISTIC VILLAGE yet again did indeed prove their location-hunting chops by finding the owner of one such restaurant who let them film a JAV oddity like no other.

A little over a year ago we showed another movie shot at the same place (in the same series no less!) and going by how well it did, it's more than obvious that foreign fans prefer these kinds of releases that combine game show antics with just the right amount of sexy reality. And gosh do they work well! Abe-chan along with recently interviewed KIKKA ARASHIRO helm each of the three encounters and the combination cannot be any better. Are cute patrons really down with filming a New Years message for fledgling izakaya Furu-chan? How will they react when they see the 'Messiah', an industrial-strength machine vibrator like no other? Is the temptation not to sit on it too much to ignore? Are boyfriends and in the third scene, coworkers, none the wiser given how long their partners are missing for? Lots of questions, lots of talking, and yes, lots of fun with great audacious restaurant group sex to round it all out.

While each of the three scenes has great moments, this time at least, it's the first and not later ones that wins my heart due to the excellent casting of both MIU AKEMI and MISA SUZUMI. Both are JAV stars boasting proportions beyond dangerous yet somehow never really achieved the type of S-tier fame they so deserved. This does not discount the three women who appear after, but if one is struggling where to start, why not at the beginning?