Hot TV announcers losing appeal? Ryoko Mima, a case study
For all their rabid consumption of Japanese porn, a large amount of men in the country actually fantasize about marrying a different sort of girl.
The TV “announcer”.
These are the intelligent girls who graduated from such colleges as Sophie University, she kind of girl you can have a conversation with and not be bored, and who would cook you something that goes with wine.
Women like Christel Takigawa, the thinking man’s crumpet.
Ryoko Mima was born in 1984. For many years the weather presenter on a TBS morning show, she has been a been a middle-class favorite for a while — the kind of lady you would like to woo and be able to present to your parents as your bride-to-be.
Well, Ryoko has made a lot of guys’ dreams come true — or just made a lot of guys come — by stripping off for a full swimwear Gravure idol modeling debut in 2011. She released a photo book called, imaginatively, “Weathery”.
Quite a body, no?
The danger of this, of course, is that it ultimately reduces her appeal in the long run, by placing her in the Gravure idol category.
Ryoko Mima has not released any other photo books but then neither has her presenting career really taken off. She has become a classic case of chutohanpa, neither one thing nor the other.
She is the star who never became a star.
Takigawa has not stripped off, of course, but has now appeared in so many TV commercials that her ubiquity is rather unappealing. And she has almost become a parody of herself, exaggerating the way of tilting her head and then her silly performance at the Tokyo Olympics bid (“omotenashi”).
