End of the year report / New Year plan

Again I've been putting off posting here. First let's take a look back at the previous year, and then look ahead to what I plan to do in 2015.

All data on Pink films in World Filmography 1967, submitted to IMDb this year

IMDb work in 2014 was been more diverse than the previous two, and that kept my interest going. Besides continuing work on the main, long-term project I started a couple years ago of starting an entry for every Pink film released from 1990-present, I added as much info as I could on every Pink film released in 1967 & 1968, based on entries in Cowie's World Filmography 1967 and World Filmography 1968. I finished 1967, but am only about a quarter of the way through 1968.

Pink Film Award, now at IMDb

IMDb announced they had re-opened submissions for awards ceremonies this year, and this enabled me to start up a long-desired project there. The Pink Film Award page was accepted, and proved to be a lot of work. These pages are still difficult to contribute to, and I haven't yet figured out how to add data on the event itself-- location, date and time of the ceremonies-- which I see in some other award pages. Still it's nice to see the major award of the Pink film world represented at IMDb, even if it's going to take a long time to get it all posted. In December I started adding the Pink films released in 2014-- there were only 38 of them-- and I've almost got them finished now.

Miyabi Hayama's latest: ICD-259, now at IMDb

As planned at the beginning of the year, I took some time off straight Pink film work at IMDb to submit some BBW/busty AVs. I was surprised at how quickly and painlessly these were accepted. Earlier in the year I added entries for the ICD, JAMS, and MAGURO, labels, and in late December I brought them up to date. In the process of adding those DVD, many of our favorite BBW models got their own IMDb entries. When I had them, I linked IMDb to my blog reviews of those videos.

Hana Uehara in GAS-198, both now at IMDb

In November I undertook the largest sub-project of the AV project: The 342 GAS DVDs. This brought me in communication with none other than Akira Takatsuki  himself, and he emailed me release dates on some of the earlier DVDs in the series. In order to fill out their filmographies a little, I also added a few miscellaneous video releases starring busty/BBW icons like Kimiko Matsuzaka and Mariko Morikawa, who already had entries at IMDb due to one or two Pink films they'd appeared in. Though IMDb is pretty stingy about accepting it, I was able to add a little basic biographical data to the actress' entries when I could: Birthplace, height, and links to official and miscellaneous sites. With all the above work, I wound up with the highest ranking of my IMDb career: #48 on the list of top contributors for the year.

Sara Aikawa (L) & LUU (R) new Twitter acquaintances of mine

The biggest new event relevant to the blog would be my discovery, in early October, of the mighty resource that is Twitter. I'd heard about it, but thought it was just for teenaged girls sending each other giggly messages. Little did I realize what a valuable source it is for keeping up on the latest activities of my favorite personnel.

Mika Hoshima (L) & Masaki Amamiya (R) two more of my favorite ladies on Twitter

Surprisingly, the response from these people has been generally very positive and fun. Akira Takatsuki helped me with info on the Cinema Unit GAS releases, Sara Aikawa gave me an explanation of her nickname ("Batty"), and Miyabi Hayama, Mika Hoshima, and Masaki Amamiya have all been fun to chat with, in my broken Japanese...

Among the bad news of the year was the latest in my long-running series of computer disasters, which resulted in the (hopefully) temporary loss of all the data on my 4-terrabyte external hard drive. Videos, stills, screencaps, reviews, research, etc. are all unavailable to me now... I'm still in the process of trying to recover as much as I can before re-formatting it, and then wondering how much I can trust it, or WHAT is trust-worthy in digital formats... The loss of access to this material, which I've collected online for the past two decades, was a major set-back to posting at this blog, and dealt a major blow to my enthusiasm in working with computers at all.

My enthusiasm for this hobby waned considerably in the last couple months of last year. I'm not sure why-- It's not due to any battles with censors, drama-mongers, opinionated idiots, or other bureaucratic bone-headedness, which caused my departures from Wikipedia and Wikia. Maybe it was because of the computer/Internet disasters which strike so regularly, and result in so much lost/repeated work. Also, as I'm getting older, the desire to do something of my own-- rather than cataloguing the work of others-- becomes strong now and then... but it passes. Whether this work of my own will be writing, composing, or something else I've dabbled in in the past, I'm not sure. Maybe I just needed a temporary down-time before diving back into IMDb/Japanese/Korean stuff. I spent those months browsing around on the Internet, reading a lot (Steinbeck, Thomas Hardy, and now Haruki Murakami), watching a lot of movies (westerns, Pink, sci-fi, film noir), listening to a lot (Bach, Russian opera, Khachaturian, Sibelius...) in limbo between major projects.

Yûki Manaka & Tamaki Yasuoka in JUC-206... Coming to IMDb this year?

Anyway, last week I got back on track. It turns out I was just hungry for a new direction. A project I've had in the back of my mind for a long time now has been to start a BBW AV database similar to my two Pink film databases (Pre-1990 Pink Film Archive and Pink Film Archive). I've got both Pink Film archives full and stable enough that I'm just adding things when I come across them now. Every month when the new Pink releases are announced, I identify, translate and upload them within half an hour. My goal for the new BBW AV database will be the same: Upload all the old ones I already know, get a good, solid representation of the Busty/BBW genre throughout in JAV history, then get the system honed so that whenever I come across a new VHS or DVD cover, I can upload it and identifying information, in proper chronological order, within a couple minutes.

Tamaki Yasuoka in SND-25, now at IMDb & in my JAV Archive

Like with the other databases, they would function as informational displays of images on their own (though, unfortunately, they get very little traffic), but they would also serve their IMDb pages by linking to the corresponding Picasaweb image (my Picasaweb Pink film folders do get a lot of traffic). A complete Pink film database project is impossible enough. Attempting a complete AV one would be insane. Instead I'll just focus on the busty/BBW genre (even that will be impossible enough), linking the cover images to the videos/DVDs I've added to IMDb, and creating IMDb listings for the significant ones that aren't already there.

Early Japanese BBW favorite, Yôko Koizumi in FDS-17, both now at IMDb!

To get my feet wet, figure out what would work well, and set up a format, I started on a smaller series: the 62 JAMS SND- DVDs. Once I was able to get adding these DVDs down to a quick and efficient process, I took up a more challenging series, the early BBW VHS "Horny Fat Woman" tapes, FDS-. These were more difficult because they often don't name their models, and the exact release dates aren't known. I worked out some ways of compensating for this. I don't think a series like this-- all unknown/amateurs-- needs to be at IMDb (though unlike Wikipedia, I would not stand in the way of anyone who wanted to do the work to add them), but I did submit the two tapes which had major early BBW stars. This means that the incredible BBW pioneers Yôko Koizumi and Anna Watarai are now listed at IMDb! This has inspired me to spend the year in deep research into BBW/busty JAV, making entries for as many as I can at this archive, and starting entries for most of them at IMDb.

Usagi Minagi (& Tamaki Yasuoka) in KBKD-534 - coming to IMDb this year!

So, in a nutshell, 2015 is going to be The Year of the BBW JAV!: The new database will keep me busy, and I'll be spreading the joy of Japanese BBW-dom by adding the data and linking the images to IMDb. I'll also continue maintaining Pink film blog/IMDb entries at a slower pace than previous years, and posts at this blog will probably continue to be skimpy throughout the year... certainly until I'm able to recover my external hard disk data. With this long-contemplated JAV database started, the only other future project I am thinking about is a Personnel database, giving images and biographical data on Actresses, Directors, and anyone else I can track down who works in the Pink and/or JAV fields... In my silence here, you can follow me at Twitter where I will continue quick tweets on my favorite subjects: JAV, Pink films, cult films, music, my viewing & listening activities, new discoveries, etc. as well as to see me flirt with some of our favorite Japanese BBW models in my poor Japanese.