A conference room with a white table and one folding chair. The seating, the look-down, the choice of words, the slight tremor of the hands — everything in the subject’s behaviour is being captured by the camera. Whether the production goes on to the actual shoot is formally to be decided in the subject’s own words. The article treats the genre as a fictional adult-video sub-genre; the on-screen interview functions as a stylised re-enactment of the casting / pre-shoot interview rather than as a record of an actual one.

Overview

Mensetsu-mono (面接もの, “interview pieces”) is the situation-format sub-genre of Japanese adult video that re-enacts the pre-shoot interview of a prospective performer. The article covers the relationship with the new-performer debut work, the institutional changes introduced by the 2022 AV Law, the dramatic structure of the genre, and the reception logic of the format.

The genre runs on the basic configuration: (1) a candidate performer and an interview supervisor (one or more) sit across a table; (2) the supervisor confirms appearance conditions, physical characteristics, background, and runs a disrobing test; (3) the genre captures the prior-to-decision stage of the production pipeline. Both dramatic re-enactment and actual shoot of the real interview configurations have circulated.

The principal features of the genre are three: (1) the indeterminacy of keeping on screen the moment before it is decided that the shoot will go ahead; (2) the self-referential opening of the production-stage ritual to the viewer; (3) the documentary-leaning orientation toward the candidate’s unrehearsed expressions and answers.

Genre composition

The formal interview

The formal-interview type of interview-themed work depicts the procedural elements of the adult-video performance contract on screen. In the setting of a production studio office, a meeting room, or a control room on a shoot, the interview supervisor (producer, director, staff) asks the candidate about name, age, history, reason for the application, preferred genres, and avoided acts.

The intake-item set roughly tracks the actual industry contract-document items, with dramatic elaboration added for the shoot. Why have you decided to appear in adult video; does your family know; what does your boyfriend think: questions of this sort enter the screen as the principal material.

The disrobing test and shoot test

As the extension of the formal interview, many works embed a disrobing-test or shoot-test stage. Please remove the costume; let us see you on camera moving; may we touch you briefly: stage-by-stage directions assess the candidate’s reactions and suitability.

For viewers, this is the principal visual-pleasure segment of the genre. The pre-shoot unfamiliarity, tension, and confusion run in parallel with the staged disrobing, leaving the new-performer-specific physicality on screen.

Connection into the actual shoot

The final stage of the format typically connects the interview directly to an actual shoot. You have been engaged, so we will go on to the shoot now; as part of the test — phrasings of this kind keep the formal-procedural break out of the cut and let the work continue into the sexual scenes. This is the standard pattern of the genre.

Relation with new-performer debut work

A structurally adjacent sub-genre

AV debut works and interview-themed work are structurally adjacent. Many debut works place an interview segment at the opening, putting the performer’s unscripted self-introduction and history at the start of the screen. Because viewers consume the debut work as the record of the first time, the inclusion of the interview-stage process attached to it has a strong effect.

The dedicated debut-work and interview-work labels run interview-segment-containing work as principal product. SOD STAR, Marx Brothers, kawaii* and similar labels release work that packages the new-talent-discovery, interview, and debut sequence as a continuous arc.

Connection with casting discovery

Interview-themed work also functions as a dramatised visualisation of the industry’s casting and talent-discovery processes. Picked up on the street, introduced by a model agency, responded online: the application-route difference produces narrative differentiation.

In street-pickup, hamedori, and individual-shoot amateur sub-genres, the interview segment functions as one transit point in the larger arc of an amateur woman pulled into adult-video appearance.

Institutional change after the AV Law

Before and after

The June 2022 Act on Prevention of Damages from Appearing in Adult Videos substantially changed the procedural environment for adult-video appearance contracts. Documentation of the contract, the introduction of waiting periods between contract conclusion and shooting start, the introduction of a waiting period between shoot and release, and the clear codification of the performer’s cancellation right have together substantially strengthened the procedural elements of the pre-shoot stage that the interview sits inside.

The actual industry interview process before and after the AV Law differs substantially. The weight of contract-document confirmation, signed-copy delivery, recitation of the statutory disclosures, and Q&A response has risen, and the duration of the interview has expanded.

Effects on interview-themed work

The institutional tightening pushes the genre into representational change. Recording the actual interview directly carries the risk of personal information — real name, address, contact — remaining on screen, so the recent practice is to weight the configuration toward interview scenes re-staged for the shoot and roleplay-style interview drama.

The formal procedural elements are conducted under the AV Law separately, with a interview-styled recording produced for the screen independently. The viewer-side acceptance of the separation between the interview on screen and the actual procedural intake has settled as an implicit understanding of the genre.

Reception

The pleasure of the undetermined

The reception core of the genre is the retention on screen of the moment when it has not yet been decided what will happen. The candidate may or may not be engaged; the interview supervisor has not yet decided. The undetermined state functions as a device that amplifies the anticipation of the shoot that is about to begin.

The moment of engagement, the moment the disrobing instruction is issued, the moment the transition to the actual shoot is declared — these are the climaxes the format prepares. The viewer shares the decision moment from the candidate’s structural position.

Exposure of the production ritual

The opening of the production-stage ritual to the viewer is the second pleasure of the genre. The self-referential gesture of showing you the inside of the industry gives the viewer the feeling of having access to special information. The producer or director appears on screen; the contract document is photographed; an interview-staff aside is overheard. The backstage element is one of the genre’s principal differentiators.

Preservation of amateur quality

Interview-themed work strongly serves the function of retaining the amateur quality of the candidate on screen. The gap between the post-engagement performance mode of a candidate and the unrehearsed pre-shoot state is one of the principal visual pleasures of the genre. Stumbling pronunciation, eyes that do not meet the camera, ignorance of industry vocabulary: these details constitute the texture of new-performer work.

Related terms

• AV debut work
• AV (the parent industry)
• AV history
• AV Law (2022)
• Hamedori
• AV production company