2017 Watch Challenge Discussion

 Hessa:

I'm planning to do one for 2018, but I need your suggestions. What categories should we add? Any ways to make this interesting or game-like to influence users to participate?

I'm stumped when it comes to game-influenced suggestions haha but for categories, I think it would be nice to encourage people to watch some classic dramas/films so I'd like to suggest:

- Watch a drama/movie which began airing/premiered between the 1940s and 1990s
and/or
- Watch a drama which began airing between 1970 and 1999

Maybe my suggestions are better to include as bonus entries, since I'm not sure everyone will be interested in watching classics and older productions lol! But I was planning to add a similar personal restriction for myself within the next watch challenge (i.e. I might challenge myself to watch at least 1 drama/movie from each decade between the 1940s to the 1990s) ...so maybe a few other people would be interested in one of my above suggestions, as a bonus or something~ ;D

@zeamays
Awesome, I'm glad you agree! True, it's much easier to go back further with films than dramas. I chose the 1970s - 90s range for dramas because there are a few 70s Jdramas I have in mind to try haha~ (I lucked out with finding sources for them, too!) But it can be tough to find dramas that old--even many 90s and 00s dramas are rare to find--and Hessa might want to keep the more difficult tasks in the bonus section... if she's into the idea of adding a classic drama category at all haha. 

I'm of two minds about the random aspect because with this year's challenge it was great to discover and watch a few things I might not have normally seen, but I was also using the challenge to help me get through my mammoth PTW list hahahaha~ XD;;;

 Hessa:

I was hoping to make 2 challenges. One for movies and one for dramas to make things harder.

Yeah, that makes sense.  Although then I would probably do both, badly.  Ha.

 Hessa:

I was hoping to make 2 challenges. One for movies and one for dramas to make things harder.

That would be nice as it feels like most of us just automatically look for dramas and forget all about the movies. Being able to find lots of new movies would definitely be fun! :)

 Dani:

@zeamays
Awesome, I'm glad you agree! True, it's much easier to go back further with films than dramas. I chose the 1970s - 90s range for dramas because there are a few 70s Jdramas I have in mind to try haha~ (I lucked out with finding sources for them, too!) But it can be tough to find dramas that old--even many 90s and 00s dramas are rare to find--and Hessa might want to keep the more difficult tasks in the bonus section... if she's into the idea of adding a classic drama category at all haha. 

I'm of two minds about the random aspect because with this year's challenge it was great to discover and watch a few things I might not have normally seen, but I was also using the challenge to help me get through my mammoth PTW list hahahaha~ XD;;;

I'm almost finished with another drama challenges where one of the tasks is to watch a drama from the 20th century which I think would be better, instead of a specific decade. That way you will be able to watch a j-drama from the 70s while others might want to watch something newer (as I think some already don't like the thought of watching something from before 2000, even if it's from the late 90s).

 Hessa:

I was hoping to make 2 challenges. One for movies and one for dramas to make things harder.

Having 2 lists would make the Drama Challenge so much harder. 

I completed the 2017 Challenge using both criteria, movie and drama. By September my backlog of unwatched 2017 dramas became so high that I started wanting to watch them instead of completing the challenge  It wasn't difficult finding 50 dramas and 50 movies that met the criteria, but the pace of having to finish one drama a week left very little room for watching other things.

The only category that I disliked was using the discussion forums. Movies are hardly ever mentioned there. I mostly saw movie queries with no discussion, or people asking about some unreleased film. There were lots of discussions about currently airing programs though. 

There are lots of great places to find movie and drama suggestions on MDL, especially with the new layout of the home page. Watching something from an article, or a show starting or ending this week. Watching something off the Top Airing Shows would be easy, and there are a few shows from the Most Popular list that I haven't seen.  Perhaps choosing a celebrity from the birthday list and watching something by them. I'm not sure if it's possible to search celebrities by their birthday, but perhaps watching something by someone who shares yours or at least your birth month.

I am looking forward to the 2018 Watch Challenge.

How about just like the "watching a title from an article article" do the same for the feeds, I know a lot of people log on for suggestions from feeds.

I like the Older movie Suggestions since I wanted to rewatch all my "not Japanese" Dvds -Ong Bak 1-3, Dragon Inn and its sequels, etc) and my Kurosawa collection so I can review them here. Having them in the challenge would give me more incentive

Since MDL added them what about variety shows..maybe as a bonus points?   Or watch a show raw (I know some of us do that when we are tired of waiting).  

These may be in previous version, I came late to the game and decided to hold off until 2018.

Yes. I will post it tomorrow.

 Hessa:

Yes. I will post it tomorrow.

Glad to know .. excited for it <3