Well... my angle is that (1) I'm pretty realistic, or you can say cynical about these things, like when I watch sports, all the drug testing and doping and enforcement in the world won't convince me that sports is "clean". I still watch sports knowing these biomechaniod wonders of technology with pea-size testicles and pickled livers are doing it for glory and mass entertainment. I see AV idols, celebs, TV anchor, politicians even insurance salespersons and real estate agents, I say these men and women get needles and knives at least once a few years. Minor procedures like needles probably 3 times a year.
Problem with memes and photos and GIFs is that one or two or three pix doesn't tell you the truth, any more than the DVD covers. Yes with make-up she looks more beautiful than "she is", just as a bad or even malicious pic can make someone look a lot uglier than "she is". The bias you guys have is that you see one bad pix and you assume she's a "monster". But the more correct bias is tilt towards the beautiful, because ugliness can be masked only a little bit by make-up. The average women, can gain (say) (randomly saying) 20 points by good make-up in a 100 point scale, but that bring them up to say 70-85 points. If you see a woman who's a 90 or 95, even taking off the make-up she would still be a 75. And if you find 75 not enough, that means not she's ugly, but you need to come out of your room at least once a week.
On the contrary, a bad picture can make someone who's a 75 or 95 looks like a 30. Meaning, a great photo prove a woman is at least pretty (if not as beautiful as the photo) but a bad photo doesn't prove she's ugly. She may be, she may be not. More photos would of course change the equation, but often these discussion are going off to deep space from just one or a few questionable pix.
(2) it's just experience. There are many pair-of-pix with or w/o make-up that shock you guys. Whereas I only need to look at the with-make-up picture and tell she's not beautiful. For purpose of fapping, with make-up many are good enough, but there are quite a few, even with make-up, isn't up to the fapping standard.
Often you guys look at a picture, especially DVD cover, and you get very impressed. I don't get impressed so much, I just look at them for the purpose of fapping, that's not a high standard, I can fap to any marginally pretty girl. Say a thought experiment, I can go to a local McDonald's, if by some magical arrangement I can pick the most attractive 10% of the women at that restaurant at any random time. All of these top 10% women at a random McDonalds, with make-up, with good lighting, good camera and skills, can make a photo more beautiful than a typical S1 or Moodyz cover.
That's just talking about my local district, if I travel 20 mins to some trendy location, the ratio can easily shot up to 40-50%.
Or flip it around, take 4 of my current favs in AV: Shoko, Rion, Yua and Julia. If I rank them against, 100 women at say... a trendy bar Friday night in my city. Shoko may place at top 10 or even top 5 (won't bet on no. 1). Rion would be top 20. Yua would be down below 50, Julia is more difficult to say, some angles she looks good (say at 30), some angles she look quite bad (below 75). (BTW this is just mainly focus on face)
i'm fine if av idols or regular girls in general if they have surgery as long as the before and after isn't a total trainwreck or unidentifable. Also, if they're still nice people, I don't see the problem except when you have kids. However, Genetics can't fool anyone if they don't come clean about their surgery past prior to committing a deeper relationship.
Yua Mikami went from a teen that failed at the morning musune audition to an ok idol at a B-rank idol group to one of the best selling av idol today thanks to surgery. Her popularity and salary rivals of the A-list av idols like Maria Ozawa and Sora Aoi in the past. She's quite a heavy spender and brag about buying an apartment before. It's easy to dig up works from anyone today because of social media. A lot of av idols have some work done. Some could be minor like Aino Kishi and Rio might have their nose and jaws fixed to look smaller and sharper respectively.
I assume you need to be at least 18 or with parent supervision to get surgery, but here's some link I favorited and posted on other forum detailing the change in Yua Mikami facial appearance. If she wants to make it big as an idol and be respected like a cute girl, she gotta undergo surgery in order to compete with other girls. She did a good job. She possess a very dark skin tone, but nothing compares to Aika, though hers is combine with regular tanning salon visit.
We don't know about her boobs, but Takasho/Shoko looked around the same when she was 18-19 according to the date and probably the time this bts video was filmed.
Gravure idol rio uchilda seems like a natural beauty. She's still very slim and flat today too comparing to 7 years ago when she was 18.