Yui Kobayashi: Who better to open August with?!

 

 Would have to say to that question that these days there's no one!!!! July ended up being the best month for posts since March and think August will be even better, don't know if it's true but always thought the Autumn is the busiest period of the year for my faves. Will even have some group posts for Keya and Hina coming up soon after taking a break from them. What's happened is that I have accumulated a lot of pics and guess I should get to the ones from July first.

 Did say if that Yui wants to repeat as my #1 fave of the year she'll need to increase the amount of posts. So she did have two in both June and July, am fairly confident that August will also have two. For today won't have any new promo game pics nor any new modeling ones which is why there should be a second post in about two weeks. Within the week will also begin recapping the "Actress" drama that ended in June and am looking forward to it. Yui reprised her role of Kotone from the "Borderless" drama and her role in this newer series is much larger. So all in all this has been a busy last year for her as she's been in that drama, is currently in a stage play, had a second photobook plus some other activities so am not too worried right now that a graduation will be coming up any time soon.

 Yui does post some superb pics at her IG page but the problem is there's never enough of them as this is it from the past two weeks.

 No new group Keya cards have some out in the past month which is okay. For it means can post some real golden oldies that had never been seen before here and this batch is from the Spring of 2016! The name of this card series is BLT, Nogi also had a series of these cards which are so terrific and think a few '48' groups also had cards with the name.

 Am going to have a lot of photos for Yui's first stage play which is titled "Three Villains of the Hidden Fortress". It was originally a 1958 movie and she has the lead female role as the Snow Princess, this is a big time play as it has many actors who I've seen in dramas. She's done a few interviews to promote the play, here's one batch of pics from the Noriem site and also have the link to it: Noriem interview

 More Yui interview pics which are from the Theater Girl site, you can tell the interview was done on the same day as the above one as the pics are almost the same. Have the link to the site and thought this interview was a bit better: Theater Girl site

 The play opened on July 28th at the Meijiza Theater in Tokyo and then will be moving on to Osaka. On the day before the play opened Yui and the other main cast held a press conference for it, at 160 cm she isn't that short but some other actors tower towered her. Have two batches of pics from the July 27th event, the first are from the press conference and after that they did two scenes from the play.

 Will admit a guilty pleasure of mine was the "VS Arashi" variety show as that really was so fun but it sadly ended after the group broke up. It's semi continued as one member has a show called "VS Damashii" which is close to fifty minutes long. On July 27th Yui and more castmates from the "Three Villains of the Hidden Fortress" appeared on the show to promote the play but there wasn't much of that. Of course it wasn't subbed and wish she had more screen time but all in all it was worth viewing. The large group visited two places, the first was a huge Daiso! store and if you've watched Keya's 'Soko' variety show you know Yui's a fan of the cheaper/100 yen stores. There was a mini shopping challenge at the store and after the second challenge took place at the nearby Sunshine Aquarium where the contest was to name fish and other things about them. On the original "VS Arashi" show the group almost never lost any challenge but the group this time around did!

 Though it wasn't subbed it was a fun show and let me see if there isn't a video of it on YT. No new mag spreads for Yui and that's become way too common this year. But a real oldie spread that had never been posted before and just wish it was a bit larger, in the set is her good Keya mate Mizuho and the spread is from the September 19, 2018 issue of Anan.

 Will end off with another semi oldie that's from the November 9, 2022 issue of Weekly Shonen and think it's been her last solo cover to date. Didn't notice a video for that above show but didn't look too hard for instead after the pics have one for the stage play event as it's so rare to see a video of Yui or any other Keya member at an event. Oooops, the site won't allow you to embed videos so have a link to it here which is recommended if you're a fan: Stage play event video