Cooking Idol Ai! Mai! Main! was a beloved weekday children’s program that combined anime and live action to entertain and educate children about cooking and nutrition. Its star, Haruka Fukuhara, played the lead role of Main-chan and for the show’s four-year run stood as a paragon of kawaii (cute) on Japanese TV.

However, as of 29 March Cooking Idol Ai! Mai! Main! was taken off the air much to the dismay of thousands of fans. One fan responded to this by uploading a pseudo time-lapse 30-second video to YouTube showing Ms. Fukuhara age from 10 years old in 2009 to the 14-year-old she is now.

Normally such a video of a child star would be hard to pull off except for the fact that Main-chan would make nearly the exact same gesture and pose framed nearly the same way in every episode over the past four years.

Here is the uploader’s description from YouTube:

“Cooking Idol Ai! Mai! Main! The whole series: from the beginning running through Friday. Except for specials I compiled 243 episodes into 16 seconds. I didn’t have to do any image adjustments or resizing.“

Now that’s continuity for you! Take a look at the video and see for yourself!

The video was well received by fans of the program who enjoyed the unique retrospective, with comments such as “hilarious” and “well made.” One viewer observed that the video was amazing “but (the person who made it) seems scary!”

I remember trying to do the same thing with Emmanuel Lewis over the six-year run of Webster, but it didn’t work out as well.

Video: YouTube – capo0161
Original Article by Tashiro Daiichiro
[ Read in Japanese ]