Sauna Ladies Sexual Massage Special
Timing and Translation by ZENRA


Once upon a time when the author of this review may or may have lived in a big Japanese city, he recalls sometimes riding by something of a Showa Era relic.  It was a spa!  And when I say 'spa, I'm not referring to an onsen that may have massage services on premises, but something more out of that cool scene in Rush Hour 2.  Until then, I had no idea these places existed.  Places that weren't explicitly brothels and certainly not your average onsens either.  I didn't go in, but from the outside at least, it definitely looked like Heaven on Earth and you know what?  What the Sauna Ladies--a soon-to-be-certified Japanese national treasure--via SOFT ON DEMAND offer in their upscale facility truly is a heaven on earth.

What we deliver today is almost, but not quite a spin-off from the original series.  While one scene is shot in the famous location, the others make use of a much brighter location for even higher scale individualized services.  Normally as a jaded JAV fan, when I hear that description of how SAUNA LADIES SEXUAL MASSAGE SPECIAL differs from previous entries, I'd be bummed.  "Oh great, less ladies, less crows, less realism".  In reality, this is fortunately NOT the case.  This is not a 'porn-y' spin-off where the fourth wall is broken for cheap one-on-one encounters, but an actual evolution of the SAUNA LADIES motif in a way that really does work.

It's going to be difficult to write a review that does not fall back on scene-by-scene summaries nor is it one where I try to conclude with nitpicking.  The latter due to this movie nailing what it sets out to deliver and the former because the six scenes are all really diverse.  While most feature penetration, it never gets tired.  In fact, two things that if shot differently would have resulted in failing marks but here works flawlessly due to the theme and a skilled production crew:  all the actual sex ONLY is cowgirl style and while all Sauna Ladies are packing up top, aside from a few random accidental partial nipple slips, we don't see any breasts!  Rest easy though because the proper uniform they all wear features either the tiniest of things or in most scenes, nothing but an equally tiny towel wrapped around their midsection making for near constant peeks at their very well-manicured bushes.  That the pixels in this release are so tiny and form-fitting and the pubic hair on all Ladies so well sculpted makes one feel as if we're observing living art and not a JAV movie.

SAUNA LADIES SEXUAL MASSAGE SPECIAL nails it.  Perfect?  No.  The audio in the one scene shot in the original location was a bit rough around the edges leading to a few instances of interpretive subtitling (not to mention that scene being the only one featuring a recognizable JAV actor instead of the amateurs we got in all the other scenes).  Otherwise, this is excellent.  Visually top-notch.  Casting superb.  The plot and its focus on 'sexual non-sexual' "whoops, it looks like I massaged your penis a bit too much, my apologies!" type reactions make this a glory to behold.