Yui Kobayashi: Her extraordinary 'Happy 23rd Birthday' post, part one

 

 Whew, how about that top pic!!!! It's from her second photobook and will have more pics from it later on in this post. As you can see by the title this is part one of her birthday posts, did part two a few days ago which was a recap of an older 'Keyakitte' show and surprised how many views it's received. Before we get to the main things in this post and it will be a large one want to ramble a bit about the sales of her second photobook. Title of it is "Igaisei" and was released on October 4th, sales for the first two weeks were 31,000 copies sold. I was expecting the sales to be about 45-50,000 copies sold so that's a bit of a disappointment. The charts are complied by Oricon and they don't count all sales, mainly just from stores and major web sites. Have talked about this briefly in Hello Project posts as they sell so many books at their concerts, those don't count as chart sales nor do ones sold overseas.

 So in my (il)logical thinking that's what's happening with sales for this book. Keya's Autumn tour began just before this book was released so would think they're selling a decent amount at concerts. Was looking at their schedule, they play fourteen concerts and if they all sell out it'll mean 350,000 fans will have attended. Keya's singles don't sell as well as they once did but their concerts still sell out. So how's this for a scenario, could be too high but don't think so. Even if just one out of 25 fans(4%) buy a book that means an extra 14,000 books will be sold, think that sounds like a reasonable total. So sales by now could be around 40,000 copies sold and they still have four more concerts to go. There was a reprinting even before the PB was released so obviously management knew there would be many sales at concerts and it helps that the book is new.... hope all of that made sense but this book is so terrific it really deserves to sell 100,000+ copies!!!!

 But it's not just that book which has seen somewhat slowish sales, almost all photobooks from the last few months have. As a matter of fact the tenth best seller for last week only sold 410 copies(!), can't ever recall seeing a sales figure so low. Enough about sales and it's on to the main topic which of course is Yui! As mentioned before this has been such a nice comeback for her as a year ago she was on hiatus from Keya and I had been wondering will she return? Of course that happened though it wasn't until March that she began to become busy again and this has been her top year to date for activities. So much that unless something odd happens Yui will be my #1 fave of the year! Viewers have finally been warming up to her too as her last two posts have been immensely popular, hopefully this one will be too and this could be one of her hugest posts ever, perhaps her largest.

 This post could take a while to write up but I enjoy doing these kinds as there's going to be so many different things and as I've said so often Yui is the most likable woman I post about. So there's a little bit of everything with this first set being some recent pics from Keya's 'Diary' blog. As you can see the top two are very new as she began celebrating #23 a bit early, the next three pics are beyond perfect! She did open an IG page but it was just for the new photobook.

 As mentioned in the beginning Keya is on tour and that bottom pic was from three days ago. All six are the remaining first generation members which soon will be shrinking to five. Yui has done so much promoting for her second photobook so it has been surprising there weren't more sales at stores. She's done many interviews and have posted a few of them, have another today which I found to be very informative. Yui did mention the word 'graduation' is something she's thought about on occasion but for now she's content and doesn't plan on leaving Keya for a while. The interview was with the Crank site and here's the link to it: Crank interview

 Of course we're here to celebrate birthday #23, hope when a post is done for Yui's 24th she's still with Keya! You no longer see cards for the members unless they're for singles or albums so here's a few oldies from years past.

 Few more older birthday pics with the bottom four being from the With magazine site but don't have any new modeling pics for them today. The fourth pic down is from October 2018, at the time she was in London shooting the pics for her first photobook.

 Do have some brand new birthday pics which are from the 'Uni's on Air' web game. Those are the top four and they just came out last week, the others are 2021 'Uni's' b-day pics.

 Here's some pics I had never posted until yesterday so expect to see them in future posts for all '46' members or at least the one involved in the game. Which is called 'Otome Kagura: Requiem for Zambi' that was a web game that began in the Spring of 2019. It featured quite a few members from the three groups, more from Nogi who of course that year had a drama called "Zambi" and sadly no Keya members were in it. There's some really super duper promo pics for the game and will be having them in many posts, six Keya members voiced a character in the game and her name was Sai.

 Yui's second photobook was released on October 4th and these days members don't hold regular events for the fans. But she did hold a very interesting live interview to promote the book and have posted many of the pics from the event. But not all as there's plenty more here and one thing that hasn't taken place this year is a regular Keya event and I kind of miss those.

 Do have one new magazine spread which is from the October 21st issue of Flash that does have some pics from the photobook, hard to believe but this is her first spread in over a year!!!!

 But not her last as Yui will be the cover girl for the next issue of Weekly Shonen Champion. But won't have that spread until November 19th and there's a good reason for that. It's because on the day she'll be at the 'Tokyo Girls Collection' show being held in Kitakyushu and hopefully there will be many other new happenings between now and then. Not as many '46' members will be at the show, will have posts for the two Nogi members that are at the ends.

 Long post but as mentioned do enjoy doing these kinds for my massive faves. Took my time though as I was waiting for a new video to be uploaded to YT and it was while writing this up. It's of Yui hosting ''Showroom' once again, of course it's for her birthday but she also plugged her book too. Will end off with some pics from the photobook, some are from the actual book while others are outtakes. This is one ultra terrific book and hard to say whether I like Yui's first or second better, both are perfect so can't go wrong with choosing either!