" SAORI HARA "

Saori Hara (原紗央莉, Hara Saori) is a former Japanese AV idol, model and actress who has also used the name Mai Nanami (七海まい, Nanami Mai).

Life and career

Saori Hara was born in Hiroshima Prefecture to a Japanese mother and a father of mixed German-Japanese parentage.

Mai Nanami

Hara started her career as a junior idol under the name Mai Nanami. As a teenager, she sang the theme song Spicy Days (スパイシーデイズ, Supaishiideizu) for the animated TV show The Marshmallow Times on TV Osaka in 2004. She also had parts in two movies in 2005, the March TV drama The Dream of Delinquent Boys (不良少年の夢, Furyō Shōnen No Yume) for TBS, and the April theatrical release, horse-racing melodrama Haru Urara (Lovely Fields), which was later released as a DVD.

She had also made a bikini-model photobook, Mai Nanami First Photobook, in May 2005 and a non-nude (gravure) DVD titled Mai Nanami: Yamagishi Shin Digital Movie Museum which was released in August 2005. As Nanami, she also played the female lead in another mainstream movie that was due to be released in Japan in 2006 but had its debut at the American Film Market in Santa Monica, California in November 2005 as Deep Sea Monster Reigo. The film was eventually released in Japan as Reigo: The Deep Sea Monster vs the Battleship Yamato.

AV debut and 2009 activities

After a long hiatus, she re-emerged as Saori Hara in August 2008 and appeared in a non-nudegravure video titled Clear Water. The next month, in September, she posed nude for the first time in the Japanese men's magazine Sabra, and it was announced that she was contracted to the Soft On Demand (SOD) adult video studio. She became the face of the SOD group in its anti-STD campaign in November 2008, a role formerly played by long-time SOD AV actress Nana Natsume. Hara's first adult video (AV) was released by SOD in January 2009 with the title Real Celebrity Saori Hara: Miraculous AV Debut and was reported to have sold 100,000 copies.