Hi everyone, yfooCollector here and I know I haven’t written any articles in a while but I’ve still kept up with JAV. This article is just me going over the things that stood out to me this January such as actresses changing their hairstyles, my thoughts on FANZA’s twitter campaign and my pick for the actress to watch out for this 2023.

New Year, New Hair Color

From L to R: Yuri Adachi, Minamo, Igarashi Kiyoka

In 2022, Alice Otsu had an amazing year. She had a surge in popularity in her 9th year as an AV actress. A factor in Alice's success was how her bright blonde hair color helped her stand out. Recently, I've noticed actresses changing their hair color as we head into 2023, could they be following in Alice's footsteps? Interestingly, some exclusive actresses that dyed their hair reverted back to a black color after a few days. Newcomer Yuri Adachi and SOD Star's Minamo both went blonde for a couple of days before reverting to their black hair color. Former MOODYZ exclusive Igarashi Kiyoka who used to have a light brown tint also decided to make her hair just black. I am quite curious if there is a stipulation in their contracts that they cannot dye their hair. 

From L to R: Ena Satsuki, Minase Akari, Noa Eikawa

As for actresses who dyed their hair, we have a personal favorite of mine, Ena Satsuki dyed her hair pink. I think it suits her pretty well and she straight up looks like an anime character. Newcomer Minase Akari is now rocking dark blond hair. It looks to me that this is a way for her to shed her innocent, cutesy image. Noa Eikawa changed her hair color a bunch before settling on a bleached blond. Noa changing her hair is interesting, similar to Alice, she is a veteran actress who drastically changed her look. It would take a few months before we see AVs of these girls with their new styles. It would be fascinating to see if these hairstyles changes would bring the same success to them as it did for Alice Otsu in 2022.

FANZA 10 Yen Sale Twitter campaign doomed to fail?

FANZA's tweet failed to reach 50k retweets to unlock all the titles in the 10 yen sale

FANZA has launched a new 10 yen sale for their titles and to spice things up they also had a twitter campaign for it. Based on the number of retweets on the 10 yen sale tweet, more and more titles would be discounted. The campaign had milestones with the final one at 50,000 retweets, however it ended with it only reaching 30,000. My theories as to why the campaign failed are not enough promotion from AV actresses and Twitter heavily disfavoring sexual content.

Kana Momonagi redirects followers to a less popular 2nd account for FANZA links to her films

The most popular AV actresses have massive twitter followings but they rarely post links to FANZA. Although there are some who tweet FANZA links on twitter, they usually do it on sub-accounts like Kana Momonagi. Kana has a million followers on twitter but she has a second account that mainly tweets about her AV releases. This second account only has a thousandth of the followers of her main account. Even with these sub-accounts I doubt the actresses would promote something that essentially puts their films in the bargain bin. It makes more financial sense to promote their newer films than the 10 yen sale.

Another reason why I think the retweet campaign failed is how twitter’s algorithm discourages sexual content. From twitter’s new feature of showing views on tweets, we can see that even with around 3 million views the campaign only converted around 1% of these views to retweets. I suspect that users don’t want to retweet the FANZA account because of fears of a shadowban. Even influencers who could help promote this, wouldn’t want to have sexual content on their timeline be the reason that they get booted off the platform. Hopefully the next 10 yen sale wouldn't have such a gimmicky promotion and just give it to us straight.

Actress I'm most excited for in 2023 - Kurumi Sakura

Kurumi Sakura

Last year I took a particular interest in Kurumi Sakura who debuted for SOD’s Mogitate label. I like girls with pale skin and Sakura is right up my alley. She has great boobs, a slender body and a very interesting face. Her face reminds me a lot of Aika Usagi and I think it can give her a lot of range in performances. She has a  She could easily play idol-like roles as well as both dominant and submissive roles with her face. I could see a lot of potential for Sakura, as long as her acting improves, but so far she is only given tsundere and generic idol debut roles.

SDMUA-010 - Kurumi Sakura's Idol Cosplay photoshoot turns into a gang bang

Kurumi Sakura has had a run of the mill career so far. She debuted and did the usual 3-4 films under SOD’s Mogitate label as well as a couple of VR works. Honestly I’m quite surprised SOD didn’t put her under their SOD Star label as she has the looks to be part of that roster. She hasn’t had a release since July 2022 but I still have the opinion that she will have a great 2023. She has tweeted that she has works slated to be released this year and I predict she’d do well if she decides to either go exclusive or freelance. She has the potential to excel in an exclusive studio or hopefully she goes freelance and does more daring performances. Honestly I'm just excited to see what she does next and hopefully her new releases come out soon.