Dear...
Before getting on to the DVD proper: what the hell happened to Takizawa Nonami's voice?!? Somehow, she went from having a nice, if somewhat stereotypical, Japanese girl's voice to something you'd hear in a typical 'magical girl' anime: a shrill, almost piercing, parody of a feminine vocalizations. I'm going to blame this on the director – let's face it: the gravure idol genre is based on the idea of hyper-femininity which don't exist in reality – this might just be the next step.
With that gripe out of the way, Nonami's Dear... is a generally enjoyable although somewhat schizophrenic release: the tracks bound from style to style with varying quality of camera work and production values – its almost as if each section had their own production team. Still, Nonami herself is as beautiful as always, so that's at least one thing worth watching throughout the disc.
The DVD begins without an opening montage, but directly starts in on the first scene, which is a bizarrely melancholy affair considering that Nonami is wearing a bikini which is quite tight and revealing in all the right places. At the beach, a somewhat depressed-looking Nonami walks along the shore and in the surf in a white bikini as a slow moving piano piece plays. Its a weird sensation – on one hand you've got perhaps the most beautiful woman on the face of the planet in a bikini which is definitely a cause for good feelings. On the other, the long, zoomed out static camera shots and music make this somewhat of a downer. Nonami doesn't really do much here – just strolls around the beach. The next track has her at poolside wearing a blue bathing suit and a pair of those huge, Hamasaki Ayumi-style sunglasses. A brief period of lounging on the sun deck is followed by Nonami posing in the pool. A few nice shots of the goddess, including a very brief scene at the end where she looks like she's topless due to the way she's submerged in the water, but nothing which is overly memorable.
The third scene is one of the more traditional glamour scenes – Nonami welcomes you into her hotel room wearing a very revealing off-white bra-and-panty set, places a sweet kiss on the camera and sets about to frolicking about the room. With the upbeat music, Nonami's playful demeanour and lots of her huge boobs bouncing from various angles makes this one a winner. It is a little surprising that the director tries the now cliched “virtual sex” shot near the end of the scene, with Nonami lying on the bed as the camera hovers over her as the bed is jiggled to-and-fro by the off screen staff. However, this isn't really that convincing in the least, as you can see Nonami laughing and giggling, but it's still not an unpleasent effect by any means.
The following track has us following Nonami on some kind of virtual date in a very picturesque park with a waterfall. Nonami starts out fully dressed (relatively speaking) in a tight halter top and some Daisy Dukes. As you follow her up the stone steps, she removes her top to reveal a multicoloured bikini top. Once you get to the top, off come the shorts as well revealing the matching bikini bottoms. Although the track is a little long, overall its very well put together with lots of cheesecake shots of Nonami. There's no music in this one, just the ambient sounds of the water and Nonami playing the cute card for all its worth. This would normally be a good thing, but as mentioned at the top, she's putting on a really grating voice for the DVD, so it does kind of take away from things. Next up, Nonami is back indoors in a kitchen and the director appears to be going for the more dramatic feeling like the first track. Wearing a bluish set of lingerie with a mesh top, Nonami does a lot of slow posing around the area. The track isn't necessarily bad, but forgettable – there are times when the director focuses on some bizarre things like water running over Nonami's hands or the camera pans off to various corners of the room. Still, there is some very aesthetically pleasing shots of Nonami contrasted against the light and shadow of the room, and once she takes off the mesh top, to reveal her far too small bra I must admit, things got a lot more interesting.
Next up is the bath tub scene. No music here again – just the water splashing and Nonami chatting to the camera. If you've at all familiar with the gravure idol genre, there's nothing really new to see here – Nonami plays around a little in the tub, then it's filled with bubble bath and she removes her top while under the copious amount of bubbles then sits up with her back to the camera. The entire scene was shot through a soft light filter which was a little distracting. After her bath, we join Nonami in a garden, wearing the same bikini as seen in track four. This an old school gravure scene with catchy upbeat music, Nonami frolicking and bouncing around and copious amounts of boobs. Some truly awe-inspiring shots of Nonami's unmatched body and perfect face are marred by the really bad compression on this track – artifacts are everywhere. The next track is also a traditional, almost stereotypical gravure scene with one exception – no background music. Its a jarring experience – Nonami does all the playful things one expects to see in a scene like this, including gratuitous amounts of jiggling, but without the music, it somehow seems incomplete. Still, background music or not, she's undeniably cute and sexy throughout.
Getting away from the beach, we find Nonami in a train-yard, posing and vamping in front of a passenger car and mesh fence. Wearing a black bikini along with a see-through babydoll, Nonami has lost all of the cute aspects present in the previous scenes and goes right for the crotch with pure sexiness. Some of camera work was a little problematic and tended to get “stuck” behind objects, but overall was quite nice. Speaking of sexy, the next scene starts off with an oiled up Nonami wearing a black bra and panty set, fishnets and a garter belt entering a dimly lit room. She saunters slowly over to a bed and does one of the most erotic performances I've ever seen from her – she moves gracefully around the bed, gyrating and moving her hands over her body, giving the camera these incredible come-hither looks. Her wardrobe is teasingly small and the camera work is sublime, capturing her femininity in all its glory – absolutely killer track. Although not as suggestive as, say Matsugane Yôko's recent releases, Nonami proves once again you don't have to necessarily push the envelope to be erotic.
Next up we have the spiritual sequel to the opening track – Nonami poses on a balcony while looking quite forelorn as a mournful piano melody plays in the background. She starts of wearing a somewhat unflattering white wrap, but it is eventually discarded to reveal yet another bikini underneath. There's nothing remarkable about the track aside from Nonami herself, and its kind of a downer after the last few scenes. The final track of the disc gave me the unsettling impression that a D&D nerd though this one up: starting off at dusk with a lit up castle-like structure Nonami descends a staircase wearing an extremely impressive green, wrap bathing suit which does an impressive job of revealing her incredible tits. She's also wearing a wreath of flowers. The vaguely elf-esque costuming aside, Nonami looks great but unfortunately is given absolutely nothing to do except stand around. Further, given the very minimal lighting, its often difficult to see Nonami in the darkness. Maybe she should cast Light, it's only a level one spell. Er... forget I said that.
The extras on the disc include a series of static pictures, behind-the-scenes track which includes Nonami going souvenir shopping in the world's shortest skirt (seriously) and doing some bungie jumping. She's got more guts than I do – I hate heights. The final extra track is a odd, very short scene where Nonami spells out “love” with her ass. Yeah.
Running at roughly an hour, excluding the extras, Dear... is a solid entry into Nonami's library of DVDs. Nonami looks uniformly gorgeous throughout, but the direction from scene-to-scene is a little hit-or-miss. And as great as Nonami looks in a bikini, it would have been nice to see a little more variety from the wardrobe department. Despite that, Nonami fans will enjoy the majority of Dear... with few reservations, but if you're just starting out with Nonami, she does have much better releases in her catalogue.
Click image to enlarge
