2023 was another busy year for us, publishing an article almost every weekday. We hope you enjoyed reading our content. With just a few days of 2023 left, let's look back on the year through some of the major developments in the gravure industry. In January, Ichika Miri announced her retirement (though since she's just 24 years old, we hope she might return under a different name and new management). One-time top gravure princess Anri Sugihara released her first photo book in over six years. She is now a charmingly mature 41 years old. In March, Memo Oba retired. Gravure is brutally ...

It sparked both hype and controversy, and then just as quickly vanished. When publisher Shueisha released a digital photo book featuring a fully AI-generated gravure model on May 29, it felt like the tipping point of something. But then netizens were quick to point out that the "model" Ai Satsuki was uncannily similar to a real-life gravure idol, Hikari Kabashima (previously known as Yui Asakura), suggesting the AI was simply recycling images of Kabashima/Asakura from the Weekly Playboy shoot she did (Shueisha publishes the magazine). Shueisha responded to the controversy by withdrawing ...

Back in 2011, AKB48 briefly seemed to be on the cusp of some sort of technological tipping point when it played with a fully digital member of the group. Sadly, or not, Aimi Eguchi was created just for an ad campaign and this "digital idol" trend didn't continue. Instead, we got dribs and drabs of sensational digitally created idols like Saya, the ultra-realistic schoolgirl who wasn't real, and were teased with an all-digital supergroup. The VR boom in the 2010s also seemed to be a major new chapter in the relationship between sex and technology (not least, its implications for watching ...