Bikiniing 4 Stardom Visual Photobook Review

The Bikiniing Visual Book series is one of the most popular Stardom photobooks each year. Beginning in 2012, Stardom has released a Bikiniing Photobook every year, featuring the Stardom wrestlers wearing bikinis or other swimwear (as the name implies). Not all wrestlers participate if this type of photoshoot goes against their wrestling character or personal preferences, however the majority of the wrestlers in the promotion do take part. You can read reviews for more magazine and photobooks on the Joshi Photobook Reviews page.

Full Details

Title: Bikiniing 4 Stardom Visual Book
Release: July 26th, 2015
Pages: 60
Cost: ¥2,500
Where to Buy: Currently Unavailable

For the 4th edition of the photobook, the following wrestlers were featured:

• Io Shirai
• Mayu Iwatani
• Kairi Hojo
• Reo Hazuki
• Act Yasukawa
• Haruka Kato
• Chelsea
• Melissa

For Bikiniing 4, the promotion went back towards the direction we saw in the second edition, which means we get a smaller sample of wrestlers but all of which fully participated in the theme of the photobook. What makes this one different is some of the pictures are more… risqué than others as this is the Stardom photobook with the “famous” pictures of Mayu Iwatani and Io Shirai lying in bed with virtually no clothes on at all, with only title belts to cover themselves. This was also the first Bikiniing photobook with a wrestler under the age of 18, as Hazuki was only 17 years old when the photos were taken. For that reason I haven’t included any pictures of Hazuki below, just to make sure I don’t make anyone too uncomfortable reading the review.

Aside from Mayu and Io going a bit beyond what we have seen in the past editions of Bikiniing, the rest of the pictures are more in-line with what you’d expect. All the wrestlers appear in solo shots, with not just Io and Mayu but also Chelsea and Kairi appearing in dual shots as well since they were a tag team at the time. Haruka Kato and Melissa are the ‘surprise’ inclusions, as Kato wasn’t an official roster member and Melissa didn’t do a lot of tours for the promotion, but sometimes it is just a matter of timing. All in all, this is the most memorable Bikiniing photobook up to this point due to the pictures of Mayu and Io, but overall its the quality of pictures you’d expect from Stardom. Here is a sample of pictures from the photobook: