I bought 8 videos in total from them that are no longer available on DMM, 6 of them were legitimate decrypted and remuxed (fortunately not re-encoded) copies of H.264 DMM originals, so the guys must know how to obtain AES decryption keys for unavailable videos, or they collected AES keys when these videos were still available for purchase. You must use QQ to contact them and then usually pay with AliPay.
Based on my experiences, the resellers mentioned appear to be legitimate. I'm not sure how they source the movies, but they do deliver the product after payment. As @dj-pajacex mentioned, most of them accept AliPay, and some accept cryptocurrencies like USDT.
As an avid collector, I first contacted a reseller to obtain a title that was unavailable elsewhere. The asking price was only $7, so I decided to give it a try. Since then, I've purchased many more titles due to the ease of the process compared to legitimate channels.
Given these circumstances, I personally see no reason to continue struggling with the obstacles set up by legitimate JAV webshops. When I can easily and hassle-free obtain these movies through a middle-man, it makes more sense to do so.
I would also be interested in knowing why you (@paparoach408) think one should not do that? I don't see a real threat vector, especially if you contact them with a "burner-mail" and use crypto for payments. The worst thing is that you get scammed out of $10. But if all of those posts were from scammers, this would spread like wildfire that those are not legit.
Since IdeNali has shared a positive review of them, I will as well, trying to summarize what led me to using their services. I have now purchased 5+ titles from them, and it was legit every time. The prices varied every time, but I guess the base price is somewhere between $7 and $10 as IdeNali mentions (I was mostly paying $8 or $10 per title, no matter what title, by the way, but maybe it would be lower for shorter ones or higher for rare ones, though I can only speculate). I won't say that all of these are legit, though: I've only tried one of them and have been buying via them exclusively ever since. Purely statistically, there might be some scammers, but I think that in this niche (where those involved are more likely to be digitally literate) if you scam people, the news will quickly spread via comments (e.g. on JAV Library), on forums etc.
I would follow some steps to try and ensure the legitimacy of the "middle man" (if legitimacy is the appropriate word to use here): first, if you want to be on the safe side, only use crypto, of course, and if you want to be even safer, use the kinds of crypto that are harder to track (I'm not that invested into it as I only use my "porn" e-mails and crypto wallets for all such purchases, but still, some cryptos are easier to track, and some are close to impossible, AFAIK). Also, I would only contact those that have sites with vast catalogs and that are long-running (e.g. they need to have a long-existing site and have a lot of comments going several years back — of course, you can fake all that, I guess, but then we have the Wayback Machine that you can use to actually check how long the site has been online and even compare its different versions, and even the versions of the same pages, so that's one way to check if the comments have been accumulating gradually and not just appeared all at once etc.). Then again, maybe it's actually better if the seller does not have a website or at least one that's easily found: in that case, why is it still online?.. I have no definite answer here, I'm just sharing my thoughts. I guess there is a certain leap of faith, or trust, here, as with any shady business
Finally, as to what led me to it: first, I've lost all of my R18 purchases when it went down. I didn't know you could go around the DRM at that time, so I didn't save any of them. That was a total dick move on their part, so that's one thing. One could say that hey, this does not mean that you can just go and pirate stuff. But even after that, I've tried several legal sites to purchase JAV legally even after that, and every time the experience repeated: you struggle through signing up, linking your card, and even if it works, some of the services have now started to only allow users from Japan to purchase most of the stuff. And even if you use VPN, it might work for purchase but once you try and watch the thing you bought (in most cases, it's DRM'd, so you'll have to have online connection to the site), there might be stricter security measures and your VPN might not work at that point
I've shared this story elsewhere on this forum, and I've also shared the bitter thought that hey, maybe if they don't want us buying so much, then f...k 'em. I'm not advocating piracy, but there just isn't any JAV platform that's good enough to rely on these days. Just as with Steam, you do not actually own the titles you've purchased, you can't comfortably watch the videos using your preferred players, etc. Also, I've heard multiple times that one should not support the porn industry by buying and even watching stuff on streaming sites since it still supports the interest towards the industry. But I guess buying amounts to much more support, and if we collectively, by not buying anything directly (and by taking most of their profits away from them since the "middle man" needs to only purchase once what is then resold tens, hundreds and more times), make most of the studios go bankrupt, I'm OK with that
(Also, yes, the fact that more and more titles are not legally available anymore, same as with games, means that piracy is the only way to access those, and I personally think that in such situations we cannot talk about "piracy" anymore: there should be an unspoken law that if there are no legal ways to purchase a digital product that is not illegal otherwise, i.e. it's not some dark-web type of content, it is then automatically OK to access it anyway you can as long as or until there appears a way to do it legally again)
I've recently re-watched several videos about how Atari almost destroyed the gaming industry at some point by being too greedy and inattentive, but then the industry got back again, even stronger and resilient. Torrents didn't kill it as well. Yes, there might be a lot of people and projects that didn't get the gains they deserved, many projects might have been cancelled etc. but hey, we live in a rough world, and there are more serious things than games, porn and all that. I would much rather pirate all the porn I watch and donate that money to some children hospice. It's not black and white, and the legal platforms are not paragons of service quality, user-friendliness etc. So, it's up to you, and I've just shared my experience as well
And when I say "f...k em", I actually mean it. I don't like how the overall funnel is working: the studios make more and more fake stuff (cum, tits, asses etc.), they make it harder and harder to buy if you're not in Japan, and the overall idol industry makes millions of men miserable. I say let's burn all of that down (figuratively) and maybe we'll see something better. For example, more indie content, more cases like with OF when you can actually get in touch with the girls (or guys, if that's your thing) and get into the movie even. Like, you contribute financially to the filming, and they make you one of the guys in the bukkake scene or something (for starters; I've read somewhere that it's how it goes, you start low and slowly climb the ladder; but in that case, it would be much easier to get into the business I guess). No BS like now where you have to wait in line at an event to just shake hands with the girl that you've seen f...d all over, covered in all kinds of fluids, slapped and choked hundreds of times... That's just absurd. I've never attended those, thank God, and I think what's really destroying the industry is guys like that. I won't believe even for a second that they can be satisfied with that even if they are similar to those obsessed with "regular" idols. So, the only way I see that will satisfy me is...
No Japan-only purchase/playback BS
Crypto as one of the possible payment means
No DRM
No fake cum etc.
No stupid events where the most you can hope for is shaking hands or taking a photo: if it's porn, I'll only be interested in meeting the girls if it can go further; otherwise, it's a waste of my time (it reminds me that even in the current industry, some of the girls also work in brothels etc., but only some)
And if it all burns down (which I doubt will ever happen since even the domestic market must be doing fine enough to support the way things are) and does not get reborn, hey, I personally have lots of other things I can spend my time and money on. There is enough other porn in the world. And you might know that there are some things to do besides porn
I still haven't read The Origin of Species, and it's really one of the books I want to read and just don't have time (I started a few years ago, but I don't have much time to allot to it, it needs to be like a month of mostly free time, and no distractions like big-titted Japanese girls)
(Also, if we're religious about it, hey, less porn is good, right? All the creeds I know either condemn it or at least recommend against it. It's a tongue-in-cheek point, but there must be something to it: if you spend less time on fighting with these sites that don't want your money and just tug a quick one over something on Pornhub, you might finally have enough time to take on the piano. That's another one of my lifelong dreams — to be able to not just play the piano but to improvise on it, something jazz
Some of these points are also applicable to the Western industry, of course, and maybe the JAV industry is actually quite diverse already, — I remember a mention of a Japanese analog of OF, — but I know much more about the Western porn industry, and I feel that it's miles ahead of the Japanese in terms of accessibility, players involved, variety of platforms etc.; then again, as we can all agree, JAV is just its own thing and thus has some unique points that make us continue to watch it, to fight the rigid systems etc.)
If I ran an indie JAV channel/studio, I would actually make all of my vids crowd-founded. So, the process would go something like...
I post the possible cast, scene outlines etc. for several potential titles
The patrons choose which one they would like to see in a poll and donate towards the goal
Once we have enough funds, we film and I just put it out into the patron feed
If possible, I would post several versions: one with the "classic JAV censorship", one uncensored, and one with even more censorship for weirdos like me where the cum is censored as well (on some days, I want my porn to be even more censored to tease me; there is a great German site that understands me very well, actually — it might not be censored depending on your location, but it basically censors stuff the way I would in that "extra censored" versions: not just the genitalia but the cum as well)
And if the crowd-funding doesn't work, hell, I would just go through the list of my favorite stars who are still filming, trying to get them in, one by one, from the personally most desirable to the least, and pay with my own money, and then just publish it to get something back, but I would be already satisfied. Maybe that's how it should be and would be in a world of universal basic income...
