So dearly miss the days when girls like Ai Uehara, AIKA, Matsumoto Mei, Aoi Tsukasa, etc would go IR.
You know, ladies actually worth getting excited over.
I feel like the last notable lady to take the plunge was Aimi Yoshikawa, and those titles were all dull, if I recall right. :/
The likes of Tsukasa prove it doesn't have to be a late career struggle move, you can go on to have a perfectly normal career.
Gorgeous ladies such as Aika Yumeno need to get on the boat!
But yeah the industry in general is giving IR the short stick.
As far as I can judge there seems to be a clear uptick in the number of IR releases the last couple of months. Also the quality is great with many IR debuts of actresses not at the end of their careers but in the beginning or at/close to their peak (e.g. Asuka Aida or Junguuji Nao in the past two months).
Studios that shunned IR in past years now started producing it again, e.g. IE who released their first IR title in like seven or nine years this month and have another release scheduled for March.
Theme wise it shifted somewhat from r*** themes to more cuckold/NTR/black supremacy type like you see in Western IR porn, i.e. "no r*** needed, black guy just shows his junk once and Japanese girls cannot contain themselves any longer, black guy then runs a train on them like noone ever has done before". Even if they start r***-ish like WANZ-817, they usually end in the girl submitting to allegedly superior African cock.
Also, Thomas/Max/Cpt. Sisco helps a lot. He's actually a great performer, big cock (for JAV giant), high endurance, and usually has GREAT chemistry with the girls he works with, in short he pipes them down. Watched Mihara Honoka's scene in DVDMS-219 yesterday and she orgasms/convulses like six or seven times on his dick. Probably best male porn actor in JAV atm and that helps the genre, too.
Future's bright for JAV IR scenes. Probably will see some stunning debuts this year.