Bikiniing 7 Stardom Visual Photobook Review


To say this photobook was hard to track down would be an understatement. Stardom made the decision not to sell them online for unknown reasons (I assume due to it being a limited print run but also possibly due to some goofy Western fans getting hysterical about teenagers in bikinis), so to get it required either going to a live show last August or getting lucky and finding it for sale from a third party. Since I live in the US, I went for Option B, and was able to get a copy last week. The Bikiniing series began soon after the promotion launched in 2011 and appears every summer. Here are the details for Bikiniing 7:

Full Details

Title: Bikiniing 7 Stardom Visual Book
Release: August 12th, 2018
Pages: 57
Cost: ¥2,000
Where to Buy: Currently Unavailable

As is the tradition, this photobook features the Stardom wrestlers in bikinis or something similar. Nothing this year is overly scandalous (unlike Bikiniing 4 which had Io Shirai and Mayu Iwatani naked in bed together) and the photos aren’t actually taken on a beach but rather in a professional studio. Not all the outfits are revealing, as AZM and Starlight Kid wore more ‘regular’ tops instead of bikinis, so their attire likely just depended on what they felt comfortable posing in and their ages. Here is how many pictures are included for each wrestler:

  • Mayu Iwatani – 5
  • Saki Kashima – 5
  • Tam Nakano – 6
  • Starlight Kid – 4 (both with and without her mask, with her hands mostly covering her face)
  • Shiki Shibusawa – 6
  • Hanan – 2
  • Hazuki – 5
  • Momo Watanabe – 5
  • Konami – 4
  • AZM – 3
  • Jungle Kyona – 4
  • Natsuko Tora – 4
  • Utami Hayashishita – 5
  • Group Shot – 1

Overall, this is one of the better photobooks Stardom has produced as it focuses on their own roster instead of mixing in Gaijin, which allowed them to have more pictures per wrestler. The only downside is they did not include the outside native talent they use so Kagetsu, Hana Kimura, and Natsu Sumire are not part of the photo spread. Here are some lower res pictures from the photobook to give a better idea of what the book has to offer: