Gay porn stardom should, in theory, follow a well-established formula: discovery by an eagle-eyed photographer, an auspicious debut with a coveted “introducing” credit, the coy implication that your sexual repertoire could expand for the right price, a spread in Playgirl or Torso, above-the-title billing in your own high-gloss starring vehicles, lucrative dancing gigs and a slick personal web page, winning a Grabby for best three-way, amassing a list of twelve to fifteen top-tier credits, headlining a lavish swan song production, and finally retiring out into venerated relic hood.

Billy Herrington never planned on becoming a beloved figure in that state of grace normally ascribed to sell-out or fail-forward western demi-celebs: Big In Japan.

Mainstream stars go east on the sly to shill luxury cars or record cheesy dance albums without losing stateside cred. Herrington didn’t just go to Japan. He was summoned by an adoring populace.

International stardom has been thrust upon his broad shoulders thanks to a frenetic, eye-openingly strange parody-paean of the grappling antics in his early eroto-wrestling entry Workout: Muscle Fantasies 3 (left) that appeared on the Japanese video sharing web site Nico Nico Douga, soon going viral and spawning at least three thousand imitators and propelling Herrington to god-like meme status in the Land of the Rising Sun.

No one was more bemused by the attention than Herrington himself, lumbering and knuckle-dragging when on-camera, eloquent and philosophical when off-. He’d been one of the highest-paid and most-recognizable male stars at the top of his game in the late ‘90s while flexing through Playing With Fire 2, Flesh Trap, and Billy Herrington’s Body Shop.

2001’s Conquered (right) had him ditching strict Top Man-only status and going face-down, ass-up just shortly before he opted to bow out gracefully from the industry. In retrospect, his 2000 Danish curio Hot Men Cool Boyz — produced by Lars von Trier’s Zentropa and lensed in its Dogma 95 discipline — augured the boundary-crossing and outre path that lay ahead for him.

Cut to nearly a decade later when his unexpected rise to pop idol status in the East found him affectionately branded as “Aniki” (translating to “Big Brother”), “Philosophy,” and “The Forest Fairy” (!). Even would-be idiomatic elements of his dialogue (“You got me mad now!,” “Like embarrassing me, huh?,” and “Yeah! Ya like that?!”) that don’t transpose especially well into Japanese have taken on catch-phrase significance in Japanese youth culture.

Aniki tributes have a range of unifying elements: Herrington’s rippling form bathed in sun bursts, his dick and ass orbited satellite-like by beaming babies’ heads grinning like Cheshire Cats (a visual oddity that’s taken on it’s own popularized trajectory, unofficially tagged as Baby Head Porn by Westerners), frothy Japanese pop music soundtracks, rainbows curving across the sky, shooting stars, spliced-in anime casts, inexplicabke product placements, and plenty of skip-happy man-grappling, trash-talking, bitch-slapping, ass-smacking, and sack-wrangling. Most approximate the feel of the final blissful and/or mind-bending nanoseconds of an aneurysm.

In a nation where homosexuality is regarded not as an aberration condemned by religion, but a human caprice that one can indulge in at will without it marking you as a pariah or enemy of the state, there’s a pleasing openness to the youth of Japan — not just young women, but young men in particular — adopting an American gay porn king as a cult hero.

While Japan seems inwardly conflicted about what it finds obscene (nudity is not essentially taboo there, but displays of pubic hair were censored with notorious black boxes as late as the early ‘90s), its tolerance, consumption, and sheer diversity of porn niches — everything from Schoolgirl and Elder Porn to Hentai and Tentacle Erotica — are booming.

American fundamentalists might want to take note that an intense devotion to the family unit’s restrictive traditions, an unflagging work ethic, and emphases on marital duty and procreation have not produced much in the way of contentment for the Japanese; resulting trends of filial abuse, a plummeting birth rate, widespread career burnout, divorce, infidelity, unsatisfying or barren sex lives, and an ever-expanding, horned-out elderly population have only fueled the nation’s massive sex and porn industries.

That a square-cut, musclebound, bisexual, and mythically American-looking porn god from our own “decadent” porn arena is being adopted into a culture that appears to be reconsidering many of its failing cultural mores is a caveat that our own value-fixated Conservatives and anti-smut Feminists should try to wrap their heads around.

Recently feted in Tokyo and decked out in black leather chaps (above left) to be ogled and felt up by his many admirers, Herrington’s profile in Japan has hit its apotheosis with the announcement that he’ll be immortalized by Max Factory and Good Smile Company with his own action figure — “figma” to the in-the-know.

The tres gay ad copy alone — “The first figma to bare his naked body, allowing for even more thriving poses!” — says it all.

Little Billy (right) is sculpted complete with removable white briefs, tattoo, weight set, shower booth (“allowing you to produce even more situations!”), and two interchangeable heads, one smiling, the other cum shot-ready. This beats out even Ken, Big Jim, Jem’s purple-haired boyfriend Rio, the Billy Doll, and Jeff Stryker’s 12-incher as the most gay-friendly action figure on record.

For gay, lilliputian-inclined Japanophiles, this is a triple play worthy of that coveted space between your Racer X and Unico figures.

For your viewing pleasure, our personal favorite of the countless Aniki tributes, a mini-epic of magic and machismo not soon forgotten: