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The story
It’s been six months since Maria Makino graduated from Morning Musume. On 5ch’s Hello! Project board, a thread caught fire over the observation that only two active members — Juice=Juice’s Runo Yofu and Tsubaki Factory’s Mifuu Kawashima — still ‘like’ Maria’s Instagram posts. There are also reports that Maria herself no longer likes everyone’s posts the way she did as an active idol, now reserving her likes for a handful of select OGs (graduated members), such as Yuko Nakazawa, Maki Goto, and Riho Sayashi. Opinions in the thread were split: some praised the two members’ loyalty as ‘too angelic,’ while others read Maria’s distance from the active roster as a sign of friction with her agency.
What people said
Maria used to talk about Yofu a lot on her radio show, calling her 'Yofu-chan' right up until the very end.
Who would've guessed these two would be the ones who never gave up on Maria.
Makes you wonder, right — there's zero interaction at all.
Mifuu Kawashima just seems like a genuinely trustworthy person.
She only likes posts from a select few OGs now.
And of course, she doesn't like anything from current members.
Against that backdrop, Runo Yofu and Mifuu Kawashima are just too angelic.
Those two are the ones who never abandoned Maria Makino.
So it really was a falling-out with the agency, huh lol
There's her true colors showing.
How do you even keep track of who's liking what? I don't scour every member's Instagram, so I have no idea what my oshi's [favorite member's] likes are up to.
Maybe Runo Yofu and Mifuu Kawashima, who also grinded through the Kenshuusei program, can relate to her on that level.
And that ended up as drum-beating and flag-waving duty… (a nod to the grueling street-performance training Hello! Project trainees do)
That's just how it is, I guess.
These days she mainly likes posts from Yuko Nakazawa, Maki Goto, and Riho Sayashi.
would end up being Maria Makino's emotional support.
but I don't know any stories at all about Maria Makino and Mifuu Kawashima.
Apparently it's not that Diamond☆Yukai is obsessively staring at it —
it's just that when he looks at Instagram, that detail jumps out at him whether he likes it or not.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DcltblrTQiR/
https://www.instagram.com/p/DcbrHzPzXCf/
https://www.instagram.com/p/DcRYRmCky_f/
https://www.instagram.com/p/DcG8zlEEyuN/
https://www.instagram.com/p/Db5uijHE1HK/
Looking at the past month, the other Hello! Project members who occasionally like her posts
are Mifuu Kawashima and Runo Yofu.
Natsukihi Nakayama has always been a sweet kid who respects Maria Makino.
Calling it 'stalking' just shows you're not really seeing anything.
People like that can only see things through the narrow lens of photos and text.
Whether it's the photo first or the text first, I don't know, but
it's not stalking at all — it just jumps out at you along with the photo and text.
Well, I don't expect someone with such a comfortably narrow view to understand anyway.
Then don't look at it.
Want me to turn it into an ID-tracking thread? [a 5ch thread type that reveals whether posts share an IP, to prove more than one person here agrees]
This isn't your board.
There are a handful of people who've related to this for years.
If you've got complaints, go make your own thread.
And don't be jealous.
More than 'true colors,' I just thought,
wow, she really was pushing herself hard while she was active.
These days, Maria properly curates who she likes, even among the Morning Musume OGs.
Guess it really shows she was isolated within Hello! Project.
They're just tossing out likes randomly.
Yeah, that does seem about right lol
Background and Talking Points
Within Hello! Project, multiple groups — Morning Musume, Juice=Juice, Tsubaki Factory, and others — belong to the same talent agency, so it’s not unusual to see OGs (graduates) and active members interacting on Instagram. That said, it’s hard to judge the state of a relationship from likes alone: there are reported customs of active members holding back from liking graduates’ posts, as well as cases of graduates curating their likes as a reaction to how they behaved while still active. In this thread too, opinions were split between reading the fact that only Runo Yofu and Mifuu Kawashima keep liking Maria’s posts as ‘proof of a trusting relationship,’ and dismissing it as ‘they’re just tapping like at random.’ No conclusion was reached. As for the circumstances behind Maria’s graduation, nothing in the thread offers solid grounds for concluding it reflects friction with her agency.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project board) thread “It’s been six months since Maria Makino graduated from Morning Musume… the only two people still liking her Instagram posts are Mifuu Kawashima and Runo Yofu.”
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