More, more, more
Episode 2 of The Naked Director Season 2 begins with Muranishi working harder than ever. He’s determined to make it big and get this satellite TV gig off the ground. When Kawada sells a handful of videos to Wada, he tells him he needs to come up with a hit. Muranishi hires a whole army of girls to start performing for him as this factory of adult videos continues to churn out more titles. This certainly puts a strain on the established talent, especially Rugby. Naoko, the “venus of sex”, finds herself on the receiving end of what will go on to be known as the facial. Specifically, the video is called “Naoko’s facial” and she’s paid 10 million yen for this. Out in the street, Kawada comes across a girl called Miyuki. He’s mesmerized by her beauty and encourages her to watch one of Toru’s films. He promises she could be bigger than Kaoru. On the back of this, Kawada thinks they should put more effort into developing new talent. Meanwhile, Toshi is forced to work with the yakuza – and specifically Furuya. He’s handed a gun but obviously he’s reluctant to get involved. It’s not like he has much of a choice though. As he walks home, he starts to grow closer to a girl called Sayaka. Hello, Ken-chan is the latest video to make the rounds but Kawada has serious concerns. Given this video is essentially a reenactment of one of the girls’ nights with a celeb, the TV studios are not happy. They don’t want to upset Kijo, who just so happens to show up at the studio later that day. In fact, Muranishi even tries to bring in Ken as one of the actors for his next video. Kawada is the one forced to pick up the pieces from this though. He pleads with Muranishi to try and get back to basics and make an erotic video. Although he promises he will, in reality Muranishi pushes boundaries further and starts cranking out more “Thank you” videos for celebrity scandals. Kawada continues to grow ever more distant while Kuroki questions when she’ll get to film another video. Muranishi continues to live the high life with a lavish party celebrating the group’s success. As he mentions putting 1 billion yen into satellite TV, Kawada snaps. He tells Muranishi he’s discontinued the Thank You series and recalled it. He also won’t be able to direct any more either. With Kawada as the president of this company he gives Muranishi an ultimatum – if he can’t produce a passionate video like Kuroki’s then he’ll fire him. Well, Muranishi decides on a coup and walks away, leaving Kawada on his own.
The Episode Review
It’s been bubbling up all episode long but now we see Kawada and Muranishi go their separate ways. This is going to undoubtedly cause a lot of problems for Muranishi going forward as he’ll undoubtedly surround himself with yes men. The trouble with this is you end up with an inferior product and will ruffle a lot of feathers. Kawada knows this and now that he’s gone, will Muranishi push things too far? It certainly seems that way, while Kaoru is sidelined in favour of this new ‘Thank You’ series of videos. The entire episode does a great job capturing the juxtaposing mood between the two characters and all of this hits breaking point late on. Quite what will happen next is left a mystery but there’s certainly a lot of enticing possibilities for the future. Whether Muranishi will continue to grow or see his empire come crashing down remains to be seen.
