Rena Moriya: Hopefully this marks her triumphant return!

 

 A 'Nao Year' runs from December 1st until November 30th. So for the 2022 year Rena had nine posts and that was so unexpected but such a pleasant surprise. She finished in the eighth position on my yearly faves list and she was the ninth most popular woman here with you viewers. However the posts really slowed down, she had one towards the end of October, her next wasn't until the first week of December and now this is her first in ten weeks!

 So am hoping this is the beginning of a slew of Rena posts but have to admit I wouldn't bet the mortgage on it. She is the center for Keya's new single that came out today but there still hasn't been enough recent activities for her or the group which is kind of baffling. Have been saying for so long that Keya needs much more exposure, they still are a very popular group and all of the members are so likable but they need to amp up their activities if they want to hit the next level.

 "Sakurazka" is the main song from Keya's 14th single, fifth since the name change to Sakura. As mentioned Rena is the center for that song and that was such a nice surprise when she was chosen. The single came out yesterday and first day sales were a little over 277,000 copies sold, their last two singles sold close to 400,000 copies in their first week so it appears this new one will be about the same. One of the coupling sings is titled "Cool" and I actually enjoy it much more than the main single. It reminds me so much of Keya's older songs and to me their coupling songs have always been better than the main song. You can't embed Keya videos so here's the link to the PV and in a rarity it is subbed in English: "Cool" video

 Though Keya did have a greatest hits album last August this is their first single in over ten months, hope we see at least one more this year. Rena has been a member who usually never posted many photos at the Keya 'Diary' blog but she's been improving. The third to last pic is from January 2nd and on that date she hit the age of 23.... hard to top the last two photos!!!!

 Rena hadn't been at one of those large fashion shows for almost four months but on Saturday she was at the 'Tokyo Girls Collection' show that was held in Wakayama. To me she looks so terrific at those shows and she took her stroll on the Wego stage.

 Have some recent promo pics for the 'Uni's on Air' web game. Top four are for February while there's eight for January, four were for Rena's 23rd birthday, while the others were for December. 

 This was not a large post as we're already at the end, thought if I 'broke the ice' then perhaps a few more would be on the horizon. Last up is this spread from the March 1st issue of Weekly Shonen, Rena's the cover girl and it's a shame it wasn't much larger. Will be having a Keya group spread in a few days and after the pics is a very short video of her at the TGC show. Models travel so many hundreds of miles for these shows yet most strolls on their stages last only 30-40 seconds.