Mana Sakura (紗倉まな): AV Actress Age, Debut, Novels and News Career

Two things make Mana Sakura’s career worth profiling, and the first is not the one everyone knows.

The famous version is the crossover: the AV exclusive who became a novelist and a news anchor. That is real, and this profile covers it. But the fact that makes the crossover worth taking seriously is the other half: she never left the industry to do it. She has been exclusive to Soft On Demand since 2012, ranking at the top of FANZA sales charts in 2026, fourteen years in. The writing and the anchoring run alongside the AV career, not after it.

The short version

2011–2012: from a technical college to #1

Sakura studied civil engineering at a technical college in Chiba Prefecture — the College of Technology system, not a university. She debuted as a gravure model in November 2011.

In February 2012 she entered the AV industry with Soft On Demand. The debut became a story of its own: Twitter users identified her as a student at the technical college, and the resulting publicity pushed her debut video to #1 in DMM sales for its month. The “ordinary student who crossed over” narrative was baked into her career from day one.

2013–2015: the awards

• 2013 — Best New Actress and the FLASH Award at the Adult Broadcasting Awards
• 2015 — Best Actress and a second FLASH Award at the same ceremony

The 2015 Best Actress win completed a set — New Actress, FLASH, then the top honour — that was unprecedented at the time. She also appeared in the Goddotan film in 2013, was voted second place in the 2014 Yakuza 0 popularity vote (becoming a character in the game), and had a regular role in the TV drama Ushijima the Loan Shark in early 2014.

In 2014, Toyota’s automotive portal Gazoo.com gave her a column — an appointment that got international attention precisely because of who she was. A company spokesman told the press they found her background “suitable for their needs.”

2016: The Lowlife, the novel

In February 2016 she published her first novel, The Lowlife (最低。), a heavily autobiographical work depicting the daily lives of adult film actresses. It was praised for its prose and its raw honesty about the industry.

In 2017 the novel was adapted into a film directed by Takahisa Zeze and screened at the Tokyo International Film Festival, in the competition section. An AV exclusive’s novel, adapted by a festival director and shown in competition — that is not a novelty item, that is a book that held up.

She has since published five more novels, and two — Haru, Shinan (2020) and Utsusemi (2024) — have been nominated for the Noma Literary Newcomer Prize. No active AV performer has been nominated twice for a major literary prize before.

2017–present: the news anchor

Since October 2017 she has appeared regularly on ABEMA Prime, and in 2018 she was promoted to news anchor — not a guest or commentator, but one of the people running the show. She has held that role continuously since.

She also has a regular radio slot, has lectured at Tsukuba University, and remains an exclusive SOD performer releasing monthly work. In 2026 she still ranks at the top of FANZA’s sales charts, with a #1 weekly title in July 2026.

What this career means

Two things.

First, the crossover runs alongside, not after. Most post-industry careers on this site — Mikami’s brands, Yoshizawa’s novel after retirement — happen after leaving. Sakura wrote the novels, anchored the news show, and lectured at a university while still releasing monthly AV work as an exclusive. The two halves of the career were never sequential.

Second, the writing was taken seriously on its own terms. Two Noma Prize nominations is not “good for an AV actress.” It is simply good writing, judged in the mainstream literary field. The novel adapted by Takahisa Zeze and screened in competition at a major festival is the same point made in a different medium.

Related reading

• JAV actresses: how the career actually works — the exclusive tier and the crossover
• How Japan’s adult video industry works — SOD and the studio structure
• Akiho Yoshizawa — the other novelist, who wrote after retiring
• Yua Mikami — the crossover into consumer brands

Sources: English Wikipedia — Mana Sakura; Variety — Tokyo Film Review: “The Lowlife”. Career facts only; nothing here is sourced from fan wikis or aggregator biographies.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons「File:Mana Sakura, 2017 (cropped).jpg」 (CC BY 2.0, photo by Dick Thomas Johnson). Used on the cover and in the article.