Maria Makino: Hopefully the beginning of a slew of posts....

 

 Have to say I was shocked that Maria had fourteen posts last year as she's been a tad too quiet for so long. From early 2021 to April for 2022 there was no stopping her and seemed she had at least one fabulous magazine spread a month. But then something happened beginning in May or should I say nothing happened(!) as Maria only had five posts from mid April until now and one of those posts was for an older photobook.

 Almost every year Maria has released a photobook on her birthday which is February 2nd. That's only a month away but haven't heard any news of one yet so will her long streak be broken? Really hope not and so don't you viewers as Maria has so many fans here and was the sixth most popular women here for 2022 even though the posts dwindled the last seven months. Did do a post at the beginning of October for current happenings and guess I could have done this a few weeks ago but actually it worked out slightly better waiting a bit.

 Whew, even I can be at a loss for words on occasion, whew!!!! Morning Musume released their 72nd single "Happy Birthday To Me!" on December 21st, title refers to the fact they celebrated their 25th anniversary last year. The single was their first number one in over four years selling about 100,000 copies, most groups don't release singles that close to Christmas as sales are lower but why would that be, wouldn't they make for a nice present? Here are the covers and some promo pics for the single along with it's PV that's subbed in English. The B-side to the single is "Swing Swing Paradise" which I like better and may have that video at the bottom(didn't).

 

 Ten days late for the holiday but have some older Maria pics for Christmas which are mainly Morning Musume cards and they don't have nearly as many as they once did.

 That above pic is newish from the group blog, have more recent ones here. As many know Maria is a huge Baseball fan and does post so many pics of the sport but left those out.

 Maria is a model for two sites and this smallish batch is from the Bis site. Will hold back her pics for Sweet until her next post and also have a few magazine spread for them, will make these posts not too large for now as to have more of them.

 After April Maria had only two solo gravure spreads, that's after having at least a dozen the previous year and about five for the first four months of 2022. Don't know why that happened as Maria is popular and really thought there would be some new ones because of the new single but that wasn't to be. She did have two gravure spreads with a pair of other MM members, such as this set from the October 17th issue of Young Magazine but she did have her own terrific mini spread.

 Will leave you with some overly sweltering pics and will work on having another post by the end of the month. At the end of August Maria released her tenth photobook but it was kind of a 'greatest hits' collection which featured photos from her previous four books. But there were some new pics for the book along with outtake pics that had never been published. There was an overly breathtaking 32 minute DVD with the book, that's after the pics and highly recommend viewing it.