The former Morning Musume idol Ai Kago has collaborated with Young Magazine for a cosplay shoot where she became the title character from the "sexy manga" Heisei Haizanhei Sumire-chan. It is part of a series of winter shoots recreating alluring female characters from six manga with different models. The striking images have attracted both media headlines and social media buzz because of the seemingly superhuman ability of a woman who is almost 40 to transform into a schoolgirl. While makeup and Photoshop no doubt help a lot, mother-of-two Ai Kago has apparently drunk from the elixir of youth ...

The travails of former music idol Ai Kago continue. Once a member of long-running female idol group Morning Musume -- she was part of the same generation as Rika Ishikawa and Nozomi Tsuji -- she departed the group in 2004, joining other groups like Hello! Project. Such young female idols are forced to maintain a wholesome image but this was hard for Kago, who clearly has a rebellious streak. She was suspended from her agency for underage smoking (oh, the horror!) in 2006 and dismissed the next year. In 2009, she had an affair with an actor and his wife sued them both. In the early 2010s, ...