Maria Makino: Few more recent tidbits....

 

 It's not Maria's fault but have to say I'm quite disappointed with the promoting of her latest photobook "Dear Maria" that came out on June 10th. To date there's only been one interview and zero magazine spreads(!) to promote it plus there were only ten advance pics for it that came out last month. Least there was a recent event but how does management expect the sales to be good if they don't promote it? Who knows what their logic is but in it's first week out the book didn't even make the top ten for sales so those are some reasons me and many fans are very disappointed in way things were handled.

 Seems like I do a lot of posts for Maria yet this is only her fifth one since December 1st, that's when the 'Nao Year' begins. So she still needs one more post to qualify for the yearly faves list but even when she does don't think her position will be that high on the list. Maria is like a few others who I like immensely but will never finish high on most lists, you wonder if someone like her would have done better being in a '46' group instead of Morning Musume? There wouldn't have been nearly as many photobooks but least they would have been promoted better plus she would have had many more opportunities to appear in magazines, at events and would have had much more exposure though it's too late to wonder about that.

 Had been hoping to have a super duper post with a few new magazine spreads and more pics for her book. But that's not the case for today though of course any post that features Maria will be overly superb, do have forty new pics plus a few oldies that have never been seen before. Such as this batch which are Morning Musume New Year's cards for 2021.

 This next set are new pics from the group's Abema blog. Back in February 2022 Maria released her last regular photobook that was titled "M 21" which referred to her hitting the age of 21. On the blog she posted many outtake pics from the book's photo shoot but this time around she's posted... ZERO?!

 There is one mini new mag spread that's from the July issue of Sweet, think Maria may be the cover girl for a magazine coming out next month. 

 Let's have an encore viewing of a terrific set that's from the October 17, 2022 issue of Young Magazine. As you can see by the cover Maria was joined by two other MM members but did have her own solo spread, she's only had two covers to date this year.

 As mentioned "Dear Maria" was released on June 10th and it's her ninth regular photobook. The photo shoot took place on the island of Guam and it was the first time in five years Maria had gone outside of Japan for a book. This is the only batch of promo pics for the book, most were in her last post but at least one photo is new.

 Think there's also a DVD of the photo shoot but there's no promo video for it on YT. On June 19th Maria was at an event for the photobook at the Tsutaya bookstore in Shibuya and have plenty of fabulous pics here from it. One thing I've noticed over the years is how terrific Maria looks at events and it's a shame she never appears at those large fashion shows, wonder why for she is a model for two sites. After this set of pics is a video of the event.