Michishige Sayumi: Sayuminglandoll

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Gone are the days of boring swimsuit shots by the pool, say toodle pip to the mundane roadside pictures, and au revoir to the bicycles and landscape, and say hello to magnificence!

Michishige Sayumi needs to be appointed as the creative director of all Morning Musume’s up-coming PV’s, because if this photo book is anything to go by, then she needs to add her creative flare to her own groups video’s and show us all that MM aren’t as boring as people believe them to be.

Sayuminglandoll is probably the best photo book made for Sayumi so far, actually all of H!P for that matter, as Sayumi herself apparently took some control and decided to break away from the usual formula of beach and bikinis, the outdoors and cute costumes, to replace them with colour, fun and a bit of classic beauty to show off the quirkier sides of this narcissistic character.

I’ve had the blessing to view this photo book in real life, too – my sister has a copy herself, and we took great pleasure in looking at all of these beautiful images of Sayumi. It just makes us like her more, and appreciate how beautiful she is, because by god, this girl is stunning. I have a feeling that I may be developing a girl crush!

Sayuminglandoll is a quite literally a burst of colour, and really takes a new direction from all of the other Hello! Project photo books. Here, we see different sides of Sayumi ranging from raunchy to cute, to innocent and classy. She’s really a true beauty in all of her pictures, and adds her own sexy twist to certain images, whilst still being cute in others.

There are definitely some winning images in this glorious photo book, such as a rather crude photo of Sayu humping a large teddy bear (a bear which many wota are jealous of, I’m sure). Whilst that goes on, I do admire her really cute, though rather plastic, bikini. The brightness seems rather childish and glaring, but even when she wears a Barbie wig, Sayumi still manages to look like one sexy, human-sized doll that you wouldn’t mind on top of you.

Those boxing gloves just seem to make the scene all the more kinky to me…

The photo book continues to be rather colourful and charming with more classy, playful images of Sayumi wearing cute, old-fashioned outfits. Whilst this isn’t one of my favourite parts of the photo book, I absolutely adore how cute and ditzy Sayumi is in some of these images. The telephone on the head is a particularly cute scene, which I think really captures how sweet and innocent this girl can be.

She seems to do both classy and cute well, and in the image above, slightly sexy as well with a retro twist. I think that this girl has a great talent for modelling, especially when she puts a sweet and mature image together, and whilst she may not be everyone’s cup of tea, she certainly matches my tastes.

The Alice in Wonderland section is rather surprising, showing a grown up Alice with a more mature image. Though seeing her do the splits whilst dressed as Alice really makes me wonder how I should view this story now…

… And then Sayu takes things one step further with her Alice in Wonderland skit, though, and turns into a Whip-wielding, S&M bunny girl. Now that’s risky.

Some of my favourite images are going to be the simplest, I guess. I absolutely love how bright and calming this image is, it definitely creates a nice contrast to the other images in the photobook that we saw beforehand, and it has a really nice atmosphere.

And despite how many sexy and over-the-top images there are in this photo book, we are brought crashing back down to earth with a little bit of normality and realism, such as this photo – whilst these photos are few, they are still just as beautiful and complacent as any other idol’s images from a photobook, and make a nice break from all the colour and brightness that the other images have. These photographs serve us with a great dose of a porcelain doll-like figure of Sayumi, which is greatly appreciated.

Keeping with the porcelain doll approach, this image is really elegant and one of the most beautiful shots of Sayumi that shows off her womanly charm, whilst still making her look as delicate as a porcelain doll.

These photos are absolutely beautiful and creative, setting Sayu in a bath of pink balloons to show off her cute and sexy side whilst a flamingo peeps in on here…

First she humps a bear, and now she has two flamingos on each side! What won’t this girl do?

I enjoyed how this photo book was a blend of naughty and nice, cute and mature with an overall doll-like finish, where we get to see Sayumi act out different roles that show off different sides of her personality, such as how, as an idol, she is somewhat like a doll as well as her rather dominating side which is shown in her dominatrix-styled Alice in Wonderland bunny photos.

The creativity that is shown here is amazing, and I love how there is so much colour and childishness thrown into the entire book, with a few elegant and mature scenes added in there. Whilst the photos themselves are rather risky, and show a totally different side to this beautiful idol, I really enjoyed looking at the pictures and seeing so many personalities pop up and tell different stories. Sayumi took a step forward and helped to produce something magnificent, something that would stand out from every other photobook that is hitting the stands – and she has taken that risk to create a land of Dolls that are all her, each depicting a different side of her personality.

This is the only photo book I have seen up close, however it probably won’t be beaten any time soon.