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| The Guest Judges Sharpen their claws as they prepare to scrutinize Ohno's "Ocean Theme" outfit. Oooh, look at the lovely legs on those ladies!! Mesmerizing! |
As I sit here and lament the boring-ass direction that Himitsu No Arashi-Chan has gone down in recent weeks, I find myself cherishing the older episodes more and more, back when it was fresh and FUN! Man, this show was so GOOD! And none of the corners was a better example of this than the glorious MANNEQUIN FIVE corner.
The idea of the “Mannequin Five” segment is(was) that boys are given a certain theme (such as date night, goukon, valentines, etc) and are then instructed to create an ensemble of their own for said theme. Then, wearing the outfits (pretending to be showroom dummies) they'll invite guests on to judge their clothes and "purchase" them one by one, til there's only one outfit left, which is deemed the loser, or "unsold" item!
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| Matsujun under the microscope for his "Autumn Jacket" Theme. |
Beside the hilarious hijinx of the sometimes far-out and gaudy outfits the Arashi Boys come up with, one of the main allures for this corner is checking out the HOT and SMOKING as HELL Fashion Models or CUTE and ADORABLE Gravure Idols that they’ve invited to guest judge them! Seriously, every time I watch the show, I can’t WAIT to see what beauties are going to walk through the door next!
Sure, they’re not ALL gorgeous models or idols, and in fact a lot of the time the ladies are mostly genoukai you see on all the usual variety shows (women like comedienne Chiaki or wacky Tomoe Shinohara), but it really makes sense that if you’re gonna have a challenge involving fashion sense, who better than people who are familiar with clothing and “dressing up”? OK, you COULD invite real designers, but c’mon, Arashi aren’t really there to be judged so seriously. It’s all for fun and entertainment, after all.
Anyway, since DAY ONE of Mannequin Five, I’ve been drooling over at least ONE Fashion Model or Gravure Idol each episode (not counting those special episodes where artists like SPEED or MAX came on to guest-judge, though they’re mighty fine looking as well) and naturally what would come to my mind is, “I should blog about these beauties”. But then I thought, what is there to say? It’s not like I can simply slap up a screen-cap of the model and type “The latest Mannequin Five guest Fashion Model I drooled over”, can I? Oh WAIT…I CAN!!!
So here we are, and I’m going to start this thing up proper by posting up the very first Mannequin Five guest who floored me with her luscious looks, Ms. Nishiyama Maki! And stay tuned…this is gonna be a recurring theme!