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Yua Mikami and Formosa Sexy: How Uniforms Help Shift How She’s Seen
In November 2024, at a home game of the Taiwanese professional basketball team Formosa Dreamers (a Taiwan-based pro basketball team; ‘Formosa’ is an old name for Taiwan), Yua Mikami stood courtside as a one-day-only cheerleader. There, Yua Mikami spoke about the pleasure of wearing different uniforms and her gratitude to Taiwan. After that, her official addition to the team’s cheer squad—an on-court dance team tied to the club—Formosa Sexy, was announced.
Looking back at her work history up to this point, she can also be seen as having gradually reworked “from where and at what distance she is seen” through costumes and uniforms, from her debut work to VR works. Taiwanese cheerleading is the newest step along that line.
Taiwanese cheerleading and the debut work: the first “way of being seen”
In the 2015 debut work, the pitch of her being a former member of a nationally known idol group was put front and center. Looking at how it was actually received, it is sometimes discussed as a work that carried both newness and resolve at the same time, and there was also an aspect of it being taken not as scandal consumption, but as “a presence one wants to look at again from another angle.” In the same year, she also appeared on a Taiwanese TV program, and even if through a screen, she appeared in front of local viewers.
The flow from the one-day cheer role in 2024 to standing courtside as a member of Formosa Sexy can also be read as a process of shifting the place where she is seen from beyond the screen to a real audience.
As idol composure slips, deep kisses linger; each touch at the neckline lets three draw closer on breath.
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Signature works in the S1 period (S1, a major Japanese adult video label) and an update of “the first is important”
Yua Mikami has said that even before her debut, she believed the first was the most important, and that she went into filming after getting her body shape and skin condition in order. She has also repeatedly pointed to the importance of not letting fans get bored.
The signature works after she transferred to S1 (a major Japanese adult video label) in 2015 have also been evaluated as letting viewers take their time with her facial expressions and reactions, and there is an aspect of them being received as having greater “closeness” and intensity compared with the debut work. Based on such evaluations, this period can also be seen as a phase in which, while keeping the basic way of being seen built in the debut work, the viewing experience grew a notch more intense. That accumulation naturally connects to later cosplay projects and the control of distance in VR.
Breathless embraces hold tight; heat and mingled saliva shake restraint, rocking it like waves.
31 Cos and cheerleading, the idea of shifting the place sideways
In “National Idol Yua Mikami’s 31 Cos!” released in February 2017, while holding up “national idol” as the series catchphrase, Yua Mikami switches situations through a range of cosplays that cue different settings (school, cheerleading, etc.). In March to April of the same year, 31 consecutive days of cosplay posts were carried out on social media as a way of extending the same concept.
Within a lineup including school uniforms and cheerleaders, the same person shifts positions as if moving between a classroom and the stands. Among fans, there have also been voices saying this project made them recognize again the “range of characters,” and it has been discussed as an attempt to move sideways, through costumes, “in what kind of scene one meets her.” From that perspective, joining the cheer squad in Taiwan can also be read alongside as a case where the cheer role once performed on screen showed up in a real arena.
With every costume change, expressions edge closer, and a month of moments unfolds like turning pages.
The closeness of VR and the beauty-book event, a current position that overlaps with Formosa
In VR works after 2017, Yua Mikami’s “closeness” became a topic again. For VR works such as one where she ends up sharing a room with a new employee at a business-trip hotel (a familiar set-up in some Japanese adult video scenarios), there are voices that praise how clearly the details of the face and body can be seen and the structure with little extraneous information, and there is also a reception that viewers felt as if they were there. The way of showing that steps in to a position quite close to each individual viewer can also be thought of as having taken one clear form here.
Further, at a beauty-book promo event in January 2025, it was reported that about 90% (Source: ENCOUNT, 2025-01) of attendees were women, and not only the composition of video viewers but also the composition of visitors who come to the venue is changing. The Formosa Sexy uniform can also be read as the next move that reconnects, through the single axis of a uniform, three kinds of recipients: video viewers, event visitors, and arena spectators.
Up close, a tipsy press of bodies narrows the space; the line between boss and new hire thins like fog.
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From HOXES — original cut below. More on Instagram.
