Jul 01, 2021 (Japan Times) - Toru Muranishi is back: The adult-video auteur with the outsized underpants and monstrous ego on a mission to liberate the world from prudishness.
Netflix’s “The Naked Director,” a fictionalized biopic of Japan’s most outrageous porn provocateur, caused a minor sensation with local audiences when it debuted in 2019. Scabrous and outrageously explicit, the show also boasted production values that left most homegrown network TV offerings looking amateurish in comparison.
It was the first time the streaming giant’s original Japanese content had felt like a genuine alternative, yet it proved to be a cheap thrill. Once the initial frisson had worn off, “The Naked Director” played mostly like an inferior retread of earlier paeans to the American porn industry. It was “Boogie Nights” without the pathos, “The People vs. Larry Flynt” without the higher sense of purpose, and enough of a hit for Netflix to commission a second season.
The story picks up in 1990, just as Japan’s economic bubble is about to pop. Toru (Takayuki Yamada) and his Sapphire Pictures production company have risen to the top of the adult entertainment world, while star actress Kaoru Kuroki (Misato Morita) — she of the aristocratic diction and unshaven armpits — has made an unlikely transition to mainstream celebrity. Meanwhile, former right-hand man Toshi (Shinnosuke Mitsushima) is trying to adjust to his new life in the criminal underworld, after being coerced into joining the yakuza.
Following an unsuccessful run for political office, Toru sets his sights on something grander: satellite TV, a new technology that promises a future in which “sex will rain down from the sky.” But as he ramps up his already prodigious output while making increasingly reckless investment gambles, he starts to alienate those around him, including business partner Kawada (Tetsuji Tamayama).
