Is a "studio" the same thing as a label?

Usually not. In everyday use "studio" means the label printed on the cover, but several labels are often owned and distributed by one parent company. The label decides the style and the code prefix; the parent company handles sales and rights.

Why does the same performer show up under so many different codes?

Because codes belong to labels, not to people. A performer under an exclusive contract works with one label at a time, so her catalogue changes prefix whenever she changes label or the label retires a prefix.

Can I tell the quality or genre of a title from the studio name alone?

To a useful degree, yes. Labels are deliberately differentiated by house style — casting, budget, framing and series structure — so the prefix is a reliable signal of what kind of production it is, though never of an individual title's merit.

The Major Japanese Adult Video Studios, Explained

Japan's adult video business is organised around production companies that each run several separate labels. The label, not the parent company, sets the house style, the series structure and the letter prefix that opens every product code, which is why one performer appears under many different codes.

The Japanese adult video industry is not a long list of independent studios. It is a small number of production groups, each operating a portfolio of labels that are kept deliberately distinct from one another. The name on the cover — S1, MOODYZ, Madonna, PRESTIGE — is almost always a label, and that label is what determines the house style, the series structure, and the letters at the front of the product code.

This matters for anyone trying to identify a title or trace a performer's work, because codes are attached to labels, not to people. Learn the labels and the code system stops looking arbitrary.

What is the difference between a studio, a label and a distributor?

Three separate jobs get collapsed into the word "studio":

Role	What it actually does	What you see
Production company (メーカー, meekaa)	Plans, casts, finances and shoots the work; owns the master	The label logo on the cover
Label	A branded editorial line within a production group, with its own style and code prefix	The letter prefix in the code
Talent agency (プロダクション)	Represents the performer, negotiates her contracts and bookings	Nothing on the cover, usually
Distributor / platform	Sells and streams the finished title	The site you buy it on

A single group can own a dozen labels that compete with each other on the shelf. That is intentional: it lets one company cover glossy flagship work, gritty amateur-styled work, married-woman drama and bust-focused casting without any one brand losing its identity. For how the production and agency sides split responsibilities, see how studios and talent agencies actually relate.

Which labels should I know first?

These nine cover the majority of codes you will run into. Each links to a dedicated breakdown of its code families.

Label	Positioning in one line	Prefixes commonly seen
S1 NO.1 STYLE	Glossy, high-budget flagship productions built around headline performers	SNOS, SONE, SSIS, SSNI
IdeaPocket	Polished, star-led work with a strong dramatic and cinematic finish	IPZZ, IPX, IPZ
MOODYZ	The broadest genre catalogue of the majors, organised into long-running series	MIDA, MIDV, MIAB, MIAA
PRESTIGE	Concept- and series-driven, with its own recognisable visual grammar	ABF, ABW, ABP
SOD Create	Experimental and variety-flavoured; documentary and format-show framing	START, STARS, STAR
Madonna	The married-woman (人妻) drama specialist	JUR, JUQ, JUL
Attackers	Serious scripted drama, suspense and revenge narratives	ADN, ATID, RBK, SHKD
kawaii*	Youthful, brightly lit, idol-adjacent presentation	CAWB, CAWD, KAWD
E-BODY	Casting organised explicitly around bust size	EBWH, EBOD

Prefixes checked 2026-08-03; the first in each list is the one currently receiving numbers. The current prefix changes far more often than the label does — six of the nine rows above rotated their main line between 2023 and 2026.

Something you can check for yourself: the official sites of S1, MOODYZ, IdeaPocket, Madonna, Attackers, kawaii* and E-BODY all carry the same links page, listing around thirty labels including one another. Whatever the corporate arrangement behind it, they present themselves as a single affiliated network. PRESTIGE and SOD Create do not appear on that list and each publishes its own separate catalogue.

Why does one company run so many labels instead of one brand?

Because the labels are how the catalogue is navigated. A buyer browsing a storefront is not choosing a company, they are choosing a mood — and a label is a promise about that mood.

The practical consequences:

Casting tiers. Flagship labels concentrate on performers under exclusive contract; other labels are built around formats and concepts where casting rotates. See what it means to be an exclusive performer.
Series, not one-offs. Most labels run numbered series that continue for years. The series is often more recognisable than any individual title.
Prefix hygiene. When a label refreshes its line-up or its numbering runs out of room, it retires the old prefix and starts a new one rather than reusing numbers.

That last point is the single most common source of confusion. A label with four historical prefixes is not four studios; it is one studio with four numbering eras.

How does a code tell you which label made it?

The letters carry the label, the digits carry the sequence. A code shaped like ABC-123 splits into a prefix that identifies the label or the series, and a number that increments with each release in that line.

Two habits will get you most of the way:

Read the prefix as a label-era pair. SNIS, SSNI, SSIS, SONE and SNOS are the same label at different points in time, so a performer with titles in two of them did not change studios.
Expect sub-lines. Big labels run parallel prefixes for compilations, themed sub-brands and adaptations. These share the label's identity but not its main numbering.

Suffixes you may see appended — regional, high-definition or uncensored-leak markers — are added by distributors and re-uploaders, not by the label, and they are not part of the official code.

Why can't we tell you how many titles each studio has released?

Because our index is built from faces, not from studio catalogues, and it does not attempt to be a complete release database.

What we actually hold, as of our 2026-08 snapshot: 241,792 indexed faces across 106 sites, resolving to 2,333 named performers. That is a face index, and the sampling is uneven by design — 2,246 of the 2,333 performers have their representative image drawn from a single source site. Coverage of biographical fields is partial as well: birth date 56%, bust size 59%, debut date 59%, height 57%, measurements 56%, birthplace 31%.

So any claim of the form "this studio has released N titles" would be an invention on our part. What we can say honestly is which performers we have indexed and how confidently a face matches — never how large a label's back catalogue is. Treat any site that quotes precise per-studio release totals without naming its source with the same suspicion.