Toru Muranishi is back: The adult-video auteur with the outsized underpants and monstrous ego on a mission to liberate the world from prudishness.
Netflix’s “The Naked Director,” a fictionalized biopic of Japan’s most outrageous porn provocateur, caused a minor sensation with local audiences when it debuted in 2019. Scabrous and outrageously explicit, the show also boasted production values that left most homegrown network TV offerings looking amateurish in comparison.
It was the first time the streaming giant’s original Japanese content had felt like a genuine alternative, yet it proved to be a cheap thrill. Once the initial frisson had worn off, “The Naked Director” played mostly like an inferior retread of earlier paeans to the American porn industry. It was “Boogie Nights” without the pathos, “The People vs. Larry Flynt” without the higher sense of purpose, and enough of a hit for Netflix to commission a second season.