Conquering My PTW: By Watching Them All

Ever felt overwhelmed looking at your Plan To Watch list? Looking at the same titles and not sure which ones to pick as the description or picture or title is not speaking to you?  Well, that's where I was, with my list of close to 500 titles. Scrolling, hovering over titles, not making a decision. And then I got fed up.  If I kept adding new things, I would NEVER get to these. So I thought of this project for myself, and it worked out quite nicely.  I always rated the titles in my friends feed, and that let others know my thoughts about more obscure titles and the ones they knew they could comment on their thoughts.

First, let's talk about how this list got to be so big. When I first stumbled on to MDL a little over 4 years ago, I was in love with specific actors and wanted to watch their careers from earliest to most recent. 5 actors Xs 30 or so is about 100 titles right there. Then  I asked for recommendations on the feeds... And got flooded with romance suggestions. As I started to recognize more actors and fandoms, I added all their titles to my PTW. Sometimes I would type a word like "Geisha" or "Bride" and add those to my PTW. Not looking at availability, not looking at ratings... Just adding. As I was writing more articles, people would suggest more titles to me on the same subject.

Now I have this Monstrosity staring at me like:

"Bring it B****, you know you can't take me on!!!"

Who exactly do you think you are addressing Monster List? Do you know who I am? I am the COMPLETER, President of the Never Drop Club, I am OAL, and it is your time to die. てめえ! それは死ぬまでの時間です!

Now let's address how I went about Slaying the Monster. The first was to not add any more to PTW unless I have to (because of release dates) and add everything interesting to "On Hold" from the start of the project until finished. So, technically, I never stopped adding to my list. I just put it in a different location for the time being. I don't want to forget the new things I thought were interesting, just to finish what had already been there for years. Some people use private lists for this, but it was much easier for me when using the add option to just hit "On Hold" instead of "Plan to Watch".

I had to break the list up into smaller chunks and to be honest, sometimes I got bored and had to switch "chunks". First, I started by sorting by year and by random methods (asking someone to say a year between this and this or using a Random Year generator) and completed all the titles from that year. Because there is usually a cultural theme for certain years, sometimes it would get too samey (this is not a real word but is colloquial for similar). 

So then I would switch to the oldest titles on my list, some of which were movies from the 1940's.  It was nice to see values and artistic use with what was available at the time.  Some of the stories were timeless and could apply to people of any era.  That prompted this article about the 1940's and 1950's titles I had seen.  I love cinema, and years and film quality have never bothered me in foreign films. I cannot sit through a lot of stuff pre-1970 from my own country, which is weird, but we all have our faults : ).

At times, I switched about and used the friends feed, a random number generator (on the pc version there are numbers for each title on your list), clear all the movies ('cause they were faster), and alphabetical order (clear all with this letter).

Soon the list got less intimidating... Like the Chibi or Funko Pop version of the monster with about 100 or so titles left. 8 Titles got deleted from the list. Nope, not telling you what they were. I don't want to hear: "OH, but that drama was SOOOO Good". If it was, it will wind up back on my PTW eventually. They may be excellent, but I am not at a point where I even want to give them a chance. Those titles were stressing me cause I did not want to watch them, but they made it to my PTW, and my motto is to cut anything not needed and stressful in my life out with laser accuracy. So bye-bye titles, we may meet again, but not today. I felt so relieved when I did that. Crazy, I know, but true.

Now my PTW looks like this... For a few seconds. And then I will move everything from On Hold to PTW, but I haven't been staring at them for 4 years.

So why do this? What was the purpose of the purge? Many people would have simply deleted everything that no longer appealed or moved them to lists. If I had done that, I would have missed out on many Gems. The synopsis and the cover did not reveal a hint of what was inside the drama. I now feel free to watch what I want, when I want and feel more attuned to the community I have come to love as I get a lot of the inside comments and imagery hidden in new dramas. When they do callbacks, I am proud to recognize them. I fell in love with actors I would never have if I had not taken on this project.

And for those interested, these are the ones I found the most interesting:
Cold Case: Shinjitsu no Tobira and its following seasons
Tenno no Ryoriban 
Zeni Geba 
Kaidan Botan Doro: Beauty and Fear 
37 Seconds 
Iari: Mienai Kao 
Innocent Curse 
Mahoro Ekimae Bangaichi 
Memory 
Minshu no Teki 
Namida wo Fuite
Nankyoku Tairiku 
Virgin Road 

Thank you so much for reading this.  Don't forget to comment below and heart this article. Hearts make me smile.

^{Edited by: Cookie (1st editor)}