Akatsuki Chisei: this year's Hatsumoude Poster Model

This is Akatsuki Chisei (暁千星) and she's this year's Hatsumoude Poster Model.
Wondering what that is?

Every year the Hankyu corporation picks a couple of people who will go to the first visit to the shrine on behalf of the company and feature in a series of posters.
One of these people is always a Takarasienne who has debuted during the past year, usually the one who has graduated at the top of her class. The 'siennes who are chosen to be Hatsumoude Poster Model usually go on to have a brilliant career, e.g. Hanafusa Mari, Yuzuki Reon, Misaki Rion...
You can find a full list here.

These past weeks the Hankyu Railway stations walls are covered in these posters, and this picture also features on the front page of TOKK (a free information paper published by the Hankyu Hanshin Toho group).

Akatsuki Chisei debuted in Brilliant Days / Climax (Cosmos troupe) and was also featured in JIN / Gold Spark (Snow troupe).
She has not been assigned to a troupe yet (like all other Takarasiennes who graduated in 2012).
It's completely unrelated to Takarazuka, but it might be interesting: she is the daughter of a former pro baseball player (Yamauchi Kazuhiro).

I am looking forward to see how she improves and grows, and I wish her all the best for her Zuka career!

In TOKK was also featured an interview. I hope to get time to translate it soon :)

"I want to become a Takarasienne!"

No matter how much I would love to become a Takarasienne, I am perfectly aware that it's impossible to me, so obviously this entry  is not about my dreams and aspirations.

While aimlessly browsing through youtube, I have found a very interesting documentary called "I want to become a Takarasienne!".

As you might imagine, this documentary is about some girls who train for the entrance exam of the Takarazuka Music School and follows their story until after the results are announced.

Only girls who are 15 to 18 years old can enter the school. Each year about 1000 people apply, but only 40 to 50 are actually accepted.

It is really interesting to see how hard these girls work in order to pass the exam. You can really tell how passionate they are.

Unfortunately, there are no English subtitles, but if you know at least some Japanese it's not difficult to understand.

Even if you don't understand Japanese at all, I think that it can still be interesting to watch it - I'm sure you can grasp quite a few things with images alone.

If you need some help to understand parts of it, I would be glad to help, you just need to ask! :D

The documentary has been uploaded in six parts, you can find the first one here.

Enjoy!

Picture taken from the Asahi Shinbun, article announcing the results of the admission exam for this year.