1. See 4.
2. Yea, managers also seem to act as a combination of babysitter and psychologist for these women. The incestuous relationship of AV companies like studios, agencies, ethics groups, and more can be a book onto itself. It's not all good, but it's also not all bad! Some of these girls don't have the brains and drive to do it all on their own and that's just the tip of the iceberg. I'm in Japan kind of near you guys so I'll pass on the Macau/Vegas invite.
3. My MOODYZ contact said a certain unnamed, but very famous actress that EVERYONE on here knows cost about 400,000 yen to shoot for a 2 hour starring title. I'm going by what he said so yes, I could be wrong and my apologies if I am.
4. I'm aware of this.
I try to keep my replies a bit simplified so all the forum readers can understand. DMM/CA/Outvision/etc. does a lot more than just AV. SOD Create is the studio for SOD unless they changed things recently. They also own a bunch of studios just like DMM on top of Create though I'll eat my shoes if you don't know that already.
5. True, but the pay is not very good (read: abysmal) for pretty much any salaried employee in Japan and you can't deny that. The pay at AV companies isn't much better than average so the cost to pay out employees for being on set, putting in mosaic, etc. is negligible.
6. Kind of true, but smaller studios will go out of their way to film scenes in ways that mosaic application isn't even necessary. A 2 hour movie may end up only having 30 minutes of material that needs mosaic this way. Larger companies like DMM (yes, the studios you own but for the sake of simplicity...) can go all out with huge orgy titles, but smaller companies can't afford that so they need to think differently.
I want R18 to be a good place for people to legally download their favorite AV. Anyone's reading can't deny that new titles may be pricey, but everything older than like 3-6 months is a really good deal. From the user's perspective, DRM aside, there isn't much in the minus column.
Sorry if I come off as brusque sometimes in my replies.