Marie Iitoyo: Few recent happenings....

 Nice beginning to June as there's been six posts in two days, no way that pace will keep up but it should be a better month than May. And what's fabulous about the posts is that they all feature a huge fave of mine with five of them in line to make this year's top twenty list. If there's going to be rash of posts than there's no way you can leave Marie out who is my current #1 and has held that honor every day this year. This is already her 20th post of the year though eight were drama recaps.
 Hadn't been thinking about the top twenty faves list for a few weeks but did for a few moments before I began this post. As mentioned Marie is currently number one and it seems the top five are so far ahead of the next five, also seems as though the top ten is set save of positioning but there's a long ways to go in 2020. After that top ten is where there's a huge drop off or at least it appears that way to me. At the end of July will be doing the first official preliminary list and while there may be so many gals eligible for the top twenty list that doesn't mean they would make it.

 This is Marie's 75th post and while a few other gals have a few more she'll no doubt be the next person to hit the milestone of 100 posts which these days is a rarity. Still can't believe none of her posts have ever hit the top ten for views, perhaps I should take two weeks off from posting, leave this one at the top and see if it accumulates enough views to hit the top ten!
 Don't think that one hundred post milestone will be hit this year, thirty weeks are left and 25 posts are needed. In a normal year it may not have been impossible but with this slowdown on activities that one hundred mark probably won't be hit until next March. Marie's posts are never huge ones though at fifty pics or so hard to call them small. There's been a ban on events for the past three months which has really affected Marie as she attended so many of them, have no clue how long the ban may last and  maybe a viewer can give me any news they may know of. But there was a mini event held on May 27th at the Saitama police station.
 There Marie and a few other actors were promoting a campaign called 'Stop Oleore Scam 47 Family Bond Operation' or SOS47. There's scammers everywhere and what they had been doing was scamming people into giving $$ to some bogus virus charity organizations, probably happening in every country. Not the most dazzling of pics but good to see her 'live' for the first time in months. Sigh, it wasn't me she was conversing with in that top pic, sigh....

 The next 'Tokyo Girls Collection' show was scheduled for July 4th but have a feeling it'll be cancelled, their April 25th show was. Marie always makes an appearance at them and these pics are from their April 20, 2019 show held in Kumamoto that was a benefit for their earthquake. Too few pics from the show as she looked absolutely amazing....

 Marie had been starring in the "Kaseifu no Mitazono" drama that began on April 24th but think that's been put on hold after four episodes as they weren't allowed to film. These are some odd new pics from the 'Cast' site which is a fashion brand in Japan, perhaps elsewhere too? You may recall last July she was in a mini YT movie from the company that lasted a little over twenty minutes. Plus she had many fashion pics back then which looked so much better.

 Marie is an exclusive model for the More magazine, she usually has many new pics at their site but there were only two recent ones so skipped them for now. However she does have a superb spread from their June issue.

 Am back, not that you knew that a long break was taken but had been interrupted by someone....

 Don't think that break was long enough, gulp.....

 One place as usual that does have many new fabulous Marie pics is the Oggi site.

 Shame no events can be held as this Saturday Marie's film "Stare" is coming out on DVD. It originally came out on January 10th, she had the lead role in it and it was her first horror flick. Will end off with this set of pics from the July edition of Oggi. No recent videos so after the pics have the trailer for the "Stare" movie and I can't wait to view it.

Nogizaka Cinemas: 'Story of 46', episode seven recap starring Yuki Yoda

 Fuji-TV/FOD homepage link for the show:  https://www.fujitv.co.jp/nogizakacinemas/

This drama began on January 21st, it had ten episodes featuring one Nogi member who are in the above pic and here's the list of who will be in each show plus it's rating:

 Episode one- Asuka      7.5/10

 Episode two- Manatsu  7.1/10 

 Episode three- Sayuri   8.0/10

 Episode four- Mizuki    6.5/10

 Episode five- Hinako     7.4/10

 Episode six- Miona        7.7/10

 Episode seven- Yuki      8.5/10

 Episode eight- Erika

 Episode nine- Shiori

 Episode ten- Mai

 The series aired on Tuesday nights until the end of March. The first five shows were subbed quite quickly and those recaps were done by the end of February. There was a long gap between the fifth and sixth episodes due to no translators. Beam Subs is doing them and it appears they''re cranking them out quickly again as episode eight has just been done. These episodes last 22-24 minutes which are long enough, through seven shows none have been a huge winner though all have been enjoyable enough. Let's got on with the brief recap.

 Episode title.... 'A Magnificent Rosy Colored Life'

 With a grade of 8.5/10 it's the highest rated show of the seven to me and will say I did enjoy this episode quite a bit, perhaps I could have made that rating a tad higher. As you can see Yuki was the Nogi member to star in this show and it seemed to me it could have been based on her real life to an extent. Yuki at 152 cm is Nogi's shortest member and this show did focus on her height. Sure it's not a problem these days as Yuki is just so immensely popular but wonder if before that happened her height caused her some problems in life. Wouldn't think so but then again can't say that for sure, let's get to the action and her character's name was also Yuki. Of course her last name is Yoda but in this show it was Toda.

 In many screenshots you'll see the word *-ing plus when they said it it was bleeped out so we didn't know what they were referring to until the final scene. Yuki is an eighteen year old senior who had her sights set on majoring in *-ing and at first I kind of thought they may have been referring to something smutty which wasn't the case. Yuki's goal was to study *-ing in America but that was also the aim of her best friend Arisa and Yuki had been so jealous of her over the years as Arisa is much taller with a fabulous figure, as we all know Yuki's is too!
 At the national *-ing competition Arisa took first place and with that she can study *-ing in America. That left Yuki so furious as she broke off her friendship with Arisa and went about how to make herself more popular. During most of the show her short height of 152 cm was mentioned often and it's what drove Yuki to work hard at becoming more popular than Arisa. To achieve that goal Yuki turned to her social media site and began doing many stunts to increase her followers. Yuki had also had a crush on a classmate named Harou who wasn't much taller than she was. She did confess her love to the young man but Haruo rejected Yuki(!) as he just wanted to date a taller woman.

 Above is one of the stunts Yuki did to increase her popularity and followers, she sang a tune about being too short and rejected by someone also not tall. Yuki kept at the videos and very quickly her amount of followers increased from 700 to over 10,000, however being a follower doesn't mean you are a fan or do actually follow that person. Yuki's family is also short and her parents constantly apologized to her for being such 'shorties'. It wasn't the whole family though as Yuki's brother was rather tall and she wondered why, could it have been because of the gallons of milk he consumed every day?
 Once again there was a possible hookup with Haruo but this time it was he who asked Yuki to start dating. But he did reveal to Yuki the reason for his change in attitude was because Arisa had rejected him for being too short. Once again Yuki was irate at her ex-friend as she said NO to Haruo as she didn't want to take Arisa's rejects. Because of that Yuki began a campaign to make her look bad as Arisa is not in the same league Yuki is on social media, to Yuki having followers and such is the true measure of popularity but was soon to learn that's far from reality.

 With over 10,000 followers Yuki said it's time for them to unite and she scheduled a 'shortie's rally' the following day at Hanera park. But to her dismay not one person showed up, this may have been the moment when Yuki realized there's a big difference between friends and followers. While feeling sorry for herself Yuki heard her friend Arisa talking in the nearby walkway and rushed out to somehow embarrass her ex-friend live on her media site. That failed horribly as Arisa wasn't a person consumed with what people at social sites think or do and that was good for her. She told Yuki in no uncertain terms to stop feeling sorry for herself as it wasn't the fact that she lost at the *-ing competition for being too short, it was because Arisa was just a bit more talented.
 Shortly after this confrontation a group of people slithered out of the nearby park including her family. These were all people who weren't all that tall either and didn't have the perfect body that everyone craved. They pressed Yuki to no end about what her true goal in life was, Yuki kept saying *-ing but they couldn't understand it as that word had been bleeped out all along, not just for us but it appeared to everyone else in the show.
 Finally that *-ing word was revealed and as you can see above Yuki's dream was to become a jazz dancer, she also revealed modeling was also something she wanted to do. But at 152 cm she'd be too short as how many models at those massive fashion shows are so short plus that's also the case for dancers. But that crowd of people talked to Yuki about how being short didn't mean she was shut out from her dreams, it took a while but their words finally made an impact to Yuki who began jazz dancing with the crowd joining her. Including Arisa who in the final seconds wished her friend a farewell as she was off to America to study jazz dancing, it wasn't said with words but the pair were reunited as friends as this enjoyable show came to it's conclusion.

 I did really enjoy this show and did increase the rating a bit. Yuki has a spunkiness about her which is so refreshing and also thought she did a decent job of acting in the "Zambi" drama. Plenty more screenshots below to help you follow the story better. Tomorrow will have the recap for episode eight which stars Erika and am looking forward to that show. She's done so much acting in plays over the years but we rarely see her on one of these Nogi dramas.