Maria Makino: Sigh, approaching the end of her long Morning Musume tenure....

 

 Two days after Maria's 😍 last post is when she announced her graduation from Morning Musume, then went in and edited that post with the info so all MM fans should know the sad news by now. As far as the post title goes it means six weeks until her graduation which will take place on June 24th at Budokan, things moved quite rapidly with this graduation. Which really did come out of nowhere and did make many fans angry but then again for many it's a happy occasion! For it appears Maria has lost a lot of fans over the last 2-3 years and this graduation was kind of like the straw that broke the Camel's back! I read a few comments at some sites and forums where many MM fans had nothing good to say about Maria and a few even used the term good riddance and that does bum me out to an extent. I'm not always happy with the decisions or acts of some of my favorite women but I'm never negative towards them and the worst I say is usually constructive criticism. If I have nothing good to say about someone then tend not to post about them as I try to remain positive and look for a silver lining but that can be hard when it comes to Hello Project graduations.

 Above are the two announcements about Maria's graduation and those messages never give many concrete answers on why someone is leaving. Did just say that when a Hello Project member leaves way too often it seems they enter a Black Hole and are rarely heard from again. So that's something which does worry me as far as Maria goes but she does have some positives that many other H!P gals didn't in the past and hopefully will let her remain in the spotlight for a while. Such as gravure modeling, most J-Pop Idols do that activity but that kind of modeling is why Maria has become very popular and hope she continues on with that. Plus she's a huge Baseball fan and has been the co-host of a few shows about the sport. Maria has also been a radio show host for ten years and was also a reporter for a TV variety show so hopefully those things will make her transition into being a civilian a smooth one! What's drawn the ire of so many MM fans is that Maria leapfrogged another member with her graduation news and that she's done so few group activities over the last few years. Can understand that thinking and this graduation does seem a bit rushed to me, Maria has been with the group for for 11 1/2 years so couldn't she have waited two more months and let her fellow MM mate graduate first?

 That's it for my graduation thoughts and news, none of us know exactly the reasons for the quickish departure and let's try to enjoy her final six weeks. These last four months have been Maria's best to date here in quite a few years, this makes it six posts in those four months and she should finish high on this year's faves list. Maria is up to eleven photobooks and don't know what the Hello Project record is but she was coming to close to whatever it is but now Maria won't be setting a new standard for books. Her last one came out on February 2nd which was her 25th birthday and that wasn't too long ago so guess we won't be seeing a graduation book right away but perhaps there could be one a couple of months after her final Morning Musume concert.

 There was something I've recently noticed about Maria's posts which to me are a positive. For some women their posts seem to have mostly digital books and magazine spreads but not much else. For others there's many regular modeling pictures, photos from events and group cards if they're an Idol but not many gravure photos. In the case of Maria her posts feature more screenshots than any other woman I post about and that's a huge positive as her videos are truly second to none! I have the DVD's for Maria's last six photobooks which total about seven hours, she also has many videos with her MM mates and often Maria's segments are solo ones plus are much longer than other members. She also must have 25 or more gravure videos from her magazine photo shoots so all in all Maria might have at least fifteen hours of gravure videos and I have them all on disc which I have viewed too many hours to count! So that's why you tend to see so many screenshots in her posts and to me those are much better than any of her sizzling magazine spreads. There are some screenshots right above and below, will be having 35 more new ones for this post.

 Since that graduation announcement Maria has been a bit quiet and there really hasn't been many new photos over the last four weeks. But do have plenty of things today that have never been posted before so think this will end up being a super duper post for her fans and Maria does have many here. First off are these recent pics from her IG page and MM blog, the second to last photo is with the ex-captain of Juice=Juice and the bottom one is when Maria made her graduation announcement. 

 We used to see Maria post many pics from her magazine photo shoots at her IG page or the group blog but those have become a rarity. Perhaps because she doesn't appear in as many magazines so here's a few outtake pics from 2021 photo shoots and think most are new for here.

 For ten years Maria has hosted a weekly radio show called "Maria's LOVErin desu" or something close to that. It airs on the CBC and HBC stations, to date she's hosted 520 shows and just celebrated her tenth anniversary with her May 11th show. That's quite impressive to me and until now I had never posted one photo from a show, have some for today and hopefully can have many more in the future.

 Even though it appears Maria has lost some fans over the years she'll never lose me 😍 and I like her more than ever! She's still the most popular or perhaps known H!P member for she's the cover girl for almost any release whether it's for a magazine or DVD. Such as the "Best Shot" series which comes out yearly and it features all of the Hello Project groups, Maria was the cover girl for edition #27 that came out in the Spring of 2025.

 Maria is also the cover girl for edition #28 of "Best Shot" that came out at the beginning of April. A DVD is also included with the magazine and below are some screenshotsfrom this latest one but did notice the video was for Maria's eleventh photobook. Sure the segment was to promote the book and the video featured footage that wasn't on the photobook DVD.

 Whew times a few trillion(!), aren't the screenshots from Maria videos out of this world and perhaps they're the best kinds of photos I post!!!! Maria has graced so many magazine covers over the past eight years so hope she goes out with a bang and we see a deluge of mag spreads to celebrate her long career as a Morning Musume member. No new solo spreads for today so let's go back to this set from February 8, 2022 issue of Young Champion, that date was six days after her 21st birthday.

 Will end off the post here with many more dazzling screenshots from the DVD for Maria's "Blooming" photobook, this DVD is her longest one and also perhaps her best! Did say that June 24th is the date for Maria's graduation, will have one post before that though will work extra hard to make that two and with this post Maria ties the record for having the most of any Morning Musume member. Haven't posted any MM songs for a long while so after these tremendous pics have a live video featuring the group's "One-Two-Three" and the original version came out way back in 2012, I've been a MM fans since about that time. This show was when Maria announced her graduation and the group will be introducing many members soon for once Maria and other member depart Morning Musume will be down to seven members, usually they have 10-12.