Yonetani Nanami -- quick mind, honest smile

Yone-san has long been one of my favorite members of Keyakizaka46. Her brilliant smile seems to break out in such an honest way. She seems a genuinely nice person. And her dancing there in the back row pleases me, even if she does show the occasional uncertainty.

Yonemin (middle), along with Moriya Akane (left) and Shida Manaka are featured on the cover of a new magazine, Honcierge. The magazine interviews idols about the manga they like, and gives them a chance to talk about manga with mangaka. The first edition came out Monday:

She says in her blog that when she heard that she was going to be featured on the cover, she wept with joy. Reading that story, I almost did myself.

She seems an example of someone who has thought of herself as plain, but in whom the pros recognized the potential beauty. I suppose that her prominent incisors mean she can't be a classic beauty, but to me they hardly detract from her attractiveness at all. Quite the opposite, perhaps.

In fact, her fans on 2channel often talk of her as a girl they would like to marry -- not the unattainable idol, but the comfortable beauty next door.

One of her skills is to be able to recite the Heart Sutra in perfect liturgical form, sitting properly like a nun. Fukagawa Mai was known as the "Holy Mother" of Nogizaka46. It has been suggested that Yone-san may be the "Bodhisattva Kannon" of Keyakizaka46.

She's one of the academically smartest members of K46. She came second to Neru in the "intelligence" contest that was really a general knowledge quiz, and which was in a format Neru was more used to. You can just see the intelligence in her eyes -- as well as the uncertainty.

To the Keyakitte, Kakenai? TV show, she brings great good humor and a brilliant smile. The best-known sequence was her laughter when Oda Nana pulled her trick of a sudden stop in episode 33:

But this infectious smile is often to be seen, such as when she was confronted with her grade six graduation photo:

I can't vouch for her singing yet. In fact, the one time we really heard it directly was in the footage of a recording session shown in the Countdown Live show in mid-March. And there it was not so good.

Anyway, here are some photos. First, a behind-the-scenes look at the photo-session for the Honcierge cover. She says the session was a lot of fun and, although it was actually long, seemed to just zip by:

Here are two shots from her Hustle Press photo session:

 Here she is at the head of the line doing Silent Majority on the Utacon TV show:

And here are a couple of recent shots from her blog:

She's one of my favorite members, as a person. And she's only 16 and in her second year of high school. Let's see where she is in a year or two: in skill, in prominence, in popularity, and in appearance.