EMBLEM: Saki Kashima MyStar Stardom Photobook Review

Starting in late 2018, Stardom began a new photobook series called MyStar with their top wrestlers getting their own smaller photobook all to themselves. Saki Kashima was the eighth wrestler to be featured in the series, following Mayu Iwatani, Starlight Kid, Hazuki, Jungle Kyona, Momo Watanabe, Utami Hayashishita, and Arisa Hoshiki. EMBLEM: Saki Kashima was released in May 2019. You can read reviews for all the MyStar Series photobooks released so far on the Joshi Photobook Reviews page.

Full Photobook Details

Title: EMBLEM: Saki Kashima from the Stardom MyStar Series
Release: May 2019
Pages: 30
Cost: ¥2,000 (or for $20.00)
Where to Buy: Third Party Vendors

As mentioned above, these are smaller (and cheaper) photobooks than Stardom usually puts out, however that does not mean the quality of the photobook is negatively impacted. Stardom at this point has become almost as good at producing photobooks as they are at producing wrestling shows, and the effort put into this photobook shows this. Even though the photobook features a single wrestler, there are still multiple scenes/scenarios presented that fit the personality of the wrestler so its not just random scenes chosen at the whim of the photographer.

I can say with confidence that this is the most pink photobook I have ever seen. I know of course that pink is Kashima’s chosen color but none of the other photobooks had one overwhelming color like this one has, it dominated the first half of the book. If you like the color pink, you’ll enjoy it, but it doesn’t feel as diverse or creative as the other photobooks in the series. The second half of the photobook did get better with more of a variety, but it still has less outfit/scenery changes than the others. My favorite photos from the book were the sunset pictures, which were beautifully shot. I figured going in this would be a tougher sell for Stardom as of the wrestlers featured so far I think Kashima has the smallest fan base, and with so many books released already some of the excitement may be wearing off unless its a crazy popular wrestler like Hana Kimura. For hardcore Saki Kashima fans this is a no brainer, but for general Stardom fans this is probably one that can be skipped with little chance of regret later.