Part 9: DMM, 3-Breaking it down
OK, now we're going to go through a specific page on the DMM site and get a good look at what all the different text means. As I alluded to at the end of Part 7, a lot of what you find here will apply to many other sites. Eventually, you'll probably be able to get a good idea of what info is on a page without even having to translate it.
So, let's bring up the page for one of the videos we were just dealing with: BLK-088. I'll give you a screen-cap here, but you might try practicing the new techniques from Part 8 and then follow along on a 'live' version - especially since the screen-cap doesn't have the whole page.
This is the page in its original, untranslated version:
Everything seems straight forward, albeit (likely) somewhat incomprehensible.
Now let's look at the same page after Google has worked its magic:
Alright, as you look this over, it will probably make sense for the most part (aside from the title of the video). The title, however, demonstrates something you should always be aware of when dealing with JAV: the English and Japanese languages are NOT related in ANY way.
Well, duh! But I point it out because there's a certain amount of getting in a different mindset when trying to decipher JAV content in Japanese. Learning to alter your perspective in that way will also help you appreciate the actual content more. The more you watch JAV and try to get into a Japanese 'state-of-mind', the more things that once seemed odd will start to make sense.
From a more academic perspective, literal word-for-word translations of Japanese will often be misleading, confusing or just flat-out nonsensical. This mostly applies to phrases or full sentences as you can see on this particular page.
Most of the translated text seems to be what you might expect in a catalog entry but the title, "[Exclusive New] [top] Hibiki Ohtsuki ☆ FUCK ON THE BEACH massive squirting cum black girls kira ☆ kira BLACK GAL BEACH"... WTF?!
For what's it's worth, the word order in a Japanese sentence is different. For instance, verbs always come at the end (or close to it). Unfortunately, this can make the translation process very difficult (especially with a language that has so many intricate subtleties).
Of course, the details of all this are beyond the scope of what we're trying to do here; but learning to recognize some of the words in Japanese will help you get a better idea of what is really being conveyed as opposed to relying entirely on an automated translation.
Using the title as an example, Google is having trouble breaking the grammar down – mainly because it's not a real sentence. I'll break it down for you, not because you need to know exactly what it says, but more so you can understand what is happening between the original Japanese and Google's translation. You can then apply that knowledge, as necessary, to future situations.
The first part in red, [独占], is
dokusen which just means "exclusive". You'll see it quite a bit on DMM's site because, well, they're the 800 lb. gorilla of the JAV retail market. The next one, [最新作], is also easy enough. It basically just means "latest (or newest) performance".
In this case, it's a reference to Hibiki Ōtsuki 大槻ひびき. This is her most recent video (for the studio in question); presumably, they'll remove this from the title when her next kira☆kira video comes out.
As an aside, some performers are 'Contract Girls' – they only shoot for one studio. Nana Ogura 小倉奈々 is a prime example – she only works for Max-A. In these cases, 最新作 would be the absolute most recent release from said performer.
Since Hibiki works for many different studios (woohoo!), BLK-088 is just her most recent release from them. In fact, as of this writing, it's not even her most recent release overall; that would be QEDZ-025 for JANES/QUEENDOM (ジャネス / クイーンダム).
Back to BLK-088... since the next part of the title is in
rōmaji, it's obvious: kira☆kira BLACK GAL BEACH. Keep in mind however, BLACK GAL is a specific JAV genre. It doesn't generically mean African Girl; in fact it specifically DOESN'T mean that at all. We'll get into some genres later but for now, (if you don't know already) BLACK means the girl is extremely tan.
The next bit, 黒ギャル (
kuroi gyaru), means oddly enough... Black Gal. Go figure. After that is 大量潮吹き (
tairyō shiofuki) which means 'massive' (as in quantity) 'squirting' (as in female ejaculation). The last part before more
rōmaji, 中出し (
nakadashi), should be familiar by now; it means 'creampie'.
'FUCK ON THE BEACH ' is self-explanatory but it does illustrate a common theme with JAV titles: they LOVE to include 'dirty' English words and phrases. And finally, we have Hibiki's name, 大槻ひびき.
Two things about her name at the end are worth pointing out. First, it's not really part of the title. It's normal for DMM to include the performer's name (if there's only one or two of them) at the end. But if you go
HERE, to the kira☆kira website, you can see it's not included.
Second, you may have noticed that Google transliterated 大槻 as Ohtsuki as opposed to Ōtsuki. It's just a different way of writing the long 'o' in
rōmaji. Since there's no ABSOLUTE standard for transliteration (not even Hepburn), be aware that you'll see a variety of options.
OK, now that we've gone through it phrase by phrase, let's put it all back together as a title that makes (some) sense in English:
[Exclusive] [Latest Release] kira☆kira BLACK GAL BEACH – BLACK GAL squirting massively and getting creampied ☆ FUCK ON THE BEACH
There! That's much better. Now you can also see how Google moved words around trying to compensate for the different word order of Japanese. Again, it failed miserably because it was trying to translate several separate (yet related) phrases as ONE sentence.
Alright, now that we've covered that, the mantra REALLY applies here. You may never – and I mean ever – care what the title of a video translates to. However, if you are trying to find something and all you have is the title... well, being able to decipher it might actually help track it down.
Besides, wasn't that at least kind of fun?
Now, back to the entry. Let's just go down the line. As you saw from the Google translation most of these are fairly self-explanatory but there's a little bit of extra info that might be pertinent with some of them.
Directly below the cover you have イメージを拡大 “See larger image” which obviously just gives a pop-up of the cover (in this case, it's the full cover: front & back). Then you have a button you can click (無料サンプル動画を見る “Watch Video Free Sample”) which will take you to a short (lo-fi) trailer of the video. Below that is something called 9エロいね!which I believe relates to Japanese language social media stuff.
Honestly, I don't know what the exact translation is. エロ means
ero which is 'Japlish' (English words that have been adopted and modified) for "erotic" but いね could mean many things here. The most common usage of it is "rice" and while I don't think that's what it refers to here, colloquialisms are hard to predict. Suffice it to say, if you can't read Japanese already, trying to communicate in it with native speakers would probably be a bit overwhelming.
Back to the main column, you have お気に入り登録数 “Favorited” followed by 対応デバイス “Enabled Device” which just shows you what devices you can view the digital download/stream on. Next are 配信開始日 and 商品発売日. These are the “First Delivery Date” and “Product Release Date”. There are two dates because (as seen here) videos are often available for download before their official release dates.
The next several lines are fairly straight forward: 収録時間 “Duration”, 出演者 “Cast” and 監督 “Director”. It is helpful to become familiar with the
kanji 出演者; you'll see it a lot while searching for JAV. If you learn to recognize it, you'll be able to quickly get an idea of who's in a video – assuming you recognize the name in Japanese as well...
The next three lines are all related: シリーズ “Series”, メーカー “Manufactured by” (literally “Maker”) and レーベル “Label”. These are common concepts in JAV and getting a feel for them is very beneficial. To help give you an idea of what their relationship is to each other, I'm going to 'nerd-out' a little. Forgive me, but I think it will really clarify the concept.
We're going to use the Star Wars movies (pre-Disney) to break this down (since they're SUPER popular in Japan, I think it's kind of appropriate). If they were JAV videos (oh my!), the Maker/Manufacturer (also commonly referred to as the Studio) would be Twentieth Century Fox. The Label would be Lucasfilms and the Series would be, naturally, Star Wars.
Now, not every video will have a Series listed but they will ALL have both a Maker and a Label. Those two may be the same (like most Max-A releases are on the Max-A label) but DMM will always have something for both entries.
In our example, the Series is kira☆kira BLACK GAL (the same as the Label). Logically, BLACK GAL BEACH would make more sense (see the title); but kira☆kira didn't see it that way (they don't usually specify a Series for their videos), so it's not 'official'.
The next entry is ジャンル which does, in fact, literally mean “Genre”; but it's really where you'll find the keywords. In this case you have ギャル “Gal”, 潮吹き “squirting”, スレンダー “slender”, 中出し “creampie”, 野外・露出 “outdoor exposure”, 独占配信 “Exclusive”, ハイビジョン “high-definition” and DVDトースター “DVD Toaster”.
These are all self-explanatory with the exception of the last one, DVD Toaster. It's an option that's not available outside of Japan (at least not in the US) so I don't worry about it. For what it's worth, I believe it has something to do with downloading and burning to a disc...
The next line, 品番 “Part Number”, is basically DMM's version of the Studio's SKU. I'm guessing that it's that long and convoluted because it's related to their database entries.
This one (blk00088 compared to BLK-088) isn't as bad as some (ONEM-021 is actually 118onem00021). Anyway, this is what I was referring to back in Part 8 about adding '00' into your SKU to try to find it.
After the Part Number, you have 平均評価 “Average rating” with レビューを見る “See reviews” which links you to a lower part of the page. This is followed by a description of the video.
As tedious as our attempt at properly translating the title was, can you imagine trying to turn a whole paragraph into comprehensible English?! Honestly, it's rarely necessary to know what it really says; but I have to admit the crazy translations (from Google) can be very amusing.
There's a brief section with 特集 “Special Features”. The first link, DVDトースターサービス would theoretically take you to the DVD Toaster option if it was available.
The next link ハイビジョン作品 “HDTV work” takes you to a page that just focuses on HD videos. And finally エロ★カワ ギャル特集 “Ero ★ Kawa Gal Special” takes you to a page that seems to focus on the ギャル “Gal” genre from various perspectives.
BTW, カワ “Kawa” is likely a shortened form of カワイイ (
kawaii) which means “cute”. It's a very popular word/concept when dealing with Japanese girls – JAV or otherwise.
OK, after the Special Features we get サンプル画像 “Shot”; more accurately, it's
sempuru gazō or “sample image”. Anyway, it's obviously screen-caps (which you can click on and enlarge). In this case you can see that the title we translated earlier appears to be pretty accurate – Hibiki squirts like a fountain in this one.
And finally, the last bit of text before the customer reviews (which we won't get into because it's way too comprehensive), is just stuff about registering and understanding that the cost of this download is in addition to any subscriptions you may have.
So there you have it. We've now 'de-coded' an entire entry to a JAV video on DMM! As I'm sure you can see, a lot of the info will be useful when applied to other sites as well.
In the next Part, we'll take a look at
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/メインペジ or Wikipedia (Japan). Among other things, you'll get a chance to see how much differently adult performers are viewed by Japanese society than they are in the West.
And, as always, remember the mantra, “You don't need to memorize all the details, you only really need to understand the concepts”. Also, feedback is encouraged! Feel free to ask questions!
-Nick