Spotlight: Ai Hashimoto

Hallo! This is officially my second Spotlight post and it's about Ai Hashimoto! I'm super excited about this one because I adore Ai so much! She's grown from a young girl in supporting roles to a full-fledged actress that can tackle lead roles and get a good review. I'm just here to tell you a little bit about how I came to know her and why I love her. It's basically just a post to make you love her too.

Note: Credits to Mimurra for the GIF above! She's absolutely amazing at editing pictures!

Just to give you a little bit of an intro, Ai Hashimoto is a Japanese actress and model. She's mainly known as an actress now, but she still frequently appears in magazines. She's done mostly movies and only a few dramas. For more basic information, click here to view her Asianwiki page!

How We Met 

A long long time ago, maybe around a year, I watched the movie Confessions starring Matsu Takako. I decided to watch the movie because (1) I watched Love Generation and ended up loving Matsu Takako as a result, (2) The plot was very intriguing, and (3) I had nothing to watch with my friend one day and just decided to watch this. I watched the movie and ended up LOVING it. It's such a spectacular movie and Ai Hashimoto played the cute little girl who was kind of creepy/crazy. She had a minor role but she was so fricken cute that she caught my eye. I know I'm a shallow person, but you should know that there were quite a few threads on 2channel that were raving about her cute looks when the movie came out. I swear Japanese people can pick out cute girls from a pile of ash. But yeah, that was the first time I saw Ai and then I didn't really watch anything from her for a while after that.

One day, I saw news of a new drama coming out on Doramaworld here on blogspot (I LOVE HER BLOG ITS SO INFORMATIVE). It was called Hard Nuts! and I saw that Ai Hashimoto was in it along with Kengo Kora. I searched him up and saw how gorgeous he was so I bookmarked the drama down into my watchlist as "Hard Nuts (pretty people drama)." Lol. I know. I'm too shallow. But anyways, I started to watch the drama not expecting much but it just blew me away! And after that, I watched a bunch of her movies and just fell even more in love with her!

My Favourite Works 

Hard Nuts! is probably my favourite drama from Ai. It was only 8 episodes long which made me super sad :( They were the best 8 episodes of my life, though :D I am hoping so hard for a season two because of the kind of open ending it left me. The chances seem slim for a season two because it was aired on a premium channel and it wasn't super popular. Funny story: I had a dream where there was a season two and I was watching the episodes. When I woke up, I felt so so so depressed. Anyways, I already wrote a full review on this drama that you can read here! Ai Hashimoto was amazing in it and her character was so funny and loveable. This drama is kind of like a rare find and almost everyone who's watched it has liked it.

Next! My favourite movie from Ai is Kanseitou aka Control Tower. It's a very slow and peaceful movie that leaves you with a bittersweet feeling. It was directed by Takahiri Miki who has made a bunch of movies adapted from mangas/novels like Bokura Ga Ita and soon Ao Haru Ride. The movie takes place in the stunning winter time of Hokkaido. It's about a boy who feels lost and is trying to figure out where he belongs. He then meets a new transfer student (Ai's character) and starts a band with her. Ai plays a girl who often moves due to her father's debt. She doesn't bother trying to make friends because they all end up leaving her after finding out about her father. I fell in love with her character here because she's such a free spirit. You should definitely check it out because the whole movie is just beautiful to watch and gives off a very warm feeling despite the cold setting.

Links 

Official Website here
Personal Blog here