A late-night electronics store, a corner of the AV section. Scan the new-release shelf and the upper rows carry packages bearing the names of actresses labelled “exclusive” and “debut”; on the shelf beside it, several times the area, are concept-first packages stuffed with “pickup,” “amateur,” “100 big-breast shots,” “street interview.” The mass-produced latter is the main arena of kikaku AV, the line that has quantitatively supported the industry.

Overview

Kikaku AV (企画 AV, kikaku ēbui) is the umbrella term for the AV line mass-produced on short cycles, in which not the individual actress but the “planning concept” is the lead, casting many actresses and amateur performers. Against it stands “single-actress” work (the brand-type product of an exclusively contracted actress), with “kikaku-single” (kikatan) between them, forming a three-tier structure.

The three tiers

Industry work classification has traditionally split into three tiers by the actress’s contract form and production budget. The first tier, single-actress, places a “single actress” under exclusive maker contract as lead; released about one title a month with large-scale shooting days, budget, and promotion, the package bears the actress’s name prominently. The flagship titles of major makers (S1, MOODYZ, kawaii, Prestige) take this form, with attention concentrated on event-worthy milestones such as debut, graduation, and label transfer. The second tier, kikaku-single (kikatan), uses an actress with some recognition who can carry the lead but holds no exclusive contract; she works across several makers, with fees calculated by the day, in a middle position more carefully shot than a kikaku actress but without the budget of an exclusive. The third tier, kikaku, casts many unknown newcomers and amateur-AV performers in low-budget mass production: a schedule shooting several titles in a day, continuous series releases, and a concept-led format in which actresses are interchangeable. Genre names such as “pickup,” “magic mirror van,” “chijo 100 shots,” or “cuckolding” carry the lead of the package title.

The production mode of kikaku AV

Representative makers of kikaku AV include Soft On Demand (SOD Create), k.M.Produce, Natural High, the SOD STAR kikaku line, Prestige’s “ecstasy series,” and the married-woman kikaku lines of the Madonna group. The per-title budget runs from several hundred thousand to a few million yen, with 2-4 hour running times, and makers releasing more than ten titles a month are not unusual. Shooting completes one title in a day or half-day, the scenario only a skeleton, the director improvising direction on set, “the on-set feel of kikaku work” being where the producer’s skill shows. To raise cost efficiency, the “series” method of shooting several titles consecutively on the same set with the same crew is much used. Fees vary widely by actress rank and content, the going rate for a kikaku-rank actress having been from tens of thousands to over a hundred thousand yen a title; the content demanded tends to run harsher than single work, and a body of “hard kikaku” work is mass-produced.

Genre subdivision and demand

The chief feature of kikaku AV is the extreme subdivision of genres by demand. The search tags of FANZA alone run to several hundred kikaku genres, securing searchability by fetish, situation, and physical feature: “big breasts,” “married woman,” “chijo,” “pickup,” “cuckolding,” “uniform,” “cosplay,” “ekiben.” Users split broadly into a single orientation chasing a particular actress and a kikaku orientation chasing a particular genre or situation; kikaku AV is the centre of genre consumption, and for viewers with a specific fetish the kikaku format often gives higher satisfaction than a single actress. The FANZA monthly sales rankings show many kikaku series among the top genre entries.

The career path of kikaku actresses

A pattern exists in which an actress starting at the kikaku rank accumulates appearances, gains recognition, and steps up to kikaku-single and single. Conversely, after a single debut, contract expiry or weak sales can drop an actress to the kikaku rank, so the in-industry class is fluid. Recently, with the spread of social media and streaming platforms, kikaku actresses commonly earn supplementary income through personal streaming (myfans, FANZA live chat), shaking the very structure of treating kikaku AV as a “main job.” Since the AV Law (in force 2022) tightened appearance contracts, the mass-production regime of kikaku work has also felt practical effects.

Related terms

• AV
• Single / kikaku distinction
• Amateur AV
• Kikaku actress
• SOD
• AV Law