Minami Hamabe: A slightly massive 'a little bit of this and that'....

 Bit too early for Christmas but bet Minami may make for a fine elf(ette?)! There's three faves who I post about often who won't be eligible for this year's faves list. Two are because they've been previous winners which makes them ineligible for any more yearly lists. The third is Minami and her reason is because she won't be 21 when the list is done during December. Would like to include her but once you start making exceptions then they don't stop. But to me Minami is a bigger fave than many who will make the list and she's been around for so long seems she should be 25+. She's also one of the top actresses these days and one of the busiest too as I'll explain as we go along.

 Busy as Minami has a drama starting in October along with a film coming out that month and also had one released today, she was already in one series earlier this year. But she had another one begin two days ago titled "Watashitachi wa Douka Shiteiru" aka Cursed in Love. No clue if the drama will be subbed but really am hoping so, one reason for that mini vacation starting in a week is to get through my huge backlog of dramas and there's been many lately which have been quite good. Off the track for a sentence but the next two dramas to be recapped will be 'Where Stars Land" from 2018 but first it'll probably be "Furo Girl" which is currently airing.
 In this series Minami plays the character of Nao Hanaoka and doubt if she's honoring me! Nao is a pastry chef who gets hooked up with a wealthy family and befriends their daughter who is about to be married. But Nao has a dark past as it seems her father was murdered when she was five and the killer may have been Nao's mother. There was also a young lad at the time who was her friend and after all of these years they've reconnected as he too is a chef. Would have helped if there were subs and hope it happens as this could be a decent series, she does much better in darker roles.

 Minami also played a pastry chef in the 2018 drama 'Gakeppuchi Hotel". Lot of the things for this post will be for her film "Love Me, Love Me Not" that had it's premiere today. There's actually so many things am holding some pics back for another post but there's still well over eighty pics for today. She's been making the rounds doing many interviews, this batch here are from Mantan Web.

 This set of interview pics are from the Walker Plus site.

 What's a bit refreshing about Minami is that she's not too active on social media but would like to have seen her with a blog, these are some recent Instagram pics and it's rare she has so many(five!).

 Minami has been a part-time host for the radio show 'Girls Locks' and a few of my other faves have been full time hosts for the show. She appeared on Tuesdays's show to promote the new drama and will also be making an appearance on August 20th for the new film.

 Never enough mag spreads featuring her, four pics each from the June and July Voce magazine.

 More from Voce, Minami was the cover girl for their August issue so why only three pages?!

 The "Kakeguiri" movie was a fun watch but keep forgetting to do a review for it, may do those posts during the mini break. "Love Me, Love Me Not" had it's premiere today at the TOHO Cinemas in Roppingi, there wasn't an audience but was streamed to 111 other cinemas. As you can see Minami became a bit emotional during the event but she also looked better than ever, I truly prefer her conservative style over most skimpy clad gravure models or Idols. Plenty of pics here from the event which is followed by a video of it.