Lol true

She wrote the songs on nothing from nothing too?

^only LIMIT, the rest was written by Dohzi–T

Lol not surprised, LIMIT is the only song I like from that album.

shame masa's site with the translations of interviews is offline now http://homepage2.nifty.com/morimasa/e-ayu.html

^Here: http://morimasa.art.coocan.jp/e-ayu.html

amazing!

let's all save a copy to preserve for future generations

Thank you! I was wondering where this went!

Also the way Ayu is portrayed in this show is really annoying..I remember Ayu saying she listened to what felt like 100 demos in order to put ASFXX together but the drama would leave you to believe that it was Max handpicking everything for dummy Ayu.

This part is interesting from Masa's analysis of ASFXX in hindsight of the book's release
On January 1 1999, she released her first album "A Song for XX" with expectation and uneasiness, which ranked first for five consecutive weeks in Oricon Chart and recorded sales of more than one million copies. Quite a remarkable starting that she herself never had expected. I wrote "for once" a little time ago, but if her life had not changed a lot after that, her next album would have been the continuation of "A Song for XX". (I call it the second album not created.) But things went differently. The single song "WHATEVER" released in February that year was filled with suffering, as had never been before, and the second album released in November became much different from the first album in feature. Did something happened? -- I suppose that she lost love around this time, just before or after the release of her first album, and that the experience ended her adolescence unexpectedly and made her impossible to write such lyrics as she had written before.

I honestly don't think Kalen has the ability to be ayu as she really was. She may have slightly improved but her baseline is as expressive as a corpse, so....

This.

I seriously dislike max character. It’s annoying af, always with that feeling of superiority, always screaming, always angry. Eew.

Not saying Ayu was the queen of creativity all by herself, but this whole history is making her look like a puppet. A talented puppet, but still. No, I won’t stop complaining. Lol

I approach this drama at a distance, pick up on things that sound familiar and just enjoy the narration they build. It's fiction based on reality, ayu's story serves as the ground for the story but there obviously are changes. Having such a mindset, I enjoyed episode 3 with a few teary moments here and there. The chemistry between ayu and masa feels nice to me. In this drama, she is a complete newbie and as such needs a guidance which he provides very well. Of course, in reality ayu was more independent/stronger than one might think based on the drama. However, I don't think it's that bad. It's still very clear that ayu does have talent, e.g. when Max praises her lyrics. I only found her bullying moment a bit too much. I think the real ayu would've stood up for herself. Then the running and crying piece also wasn't great. So this plus Reika... oh gosh this (yurusanaaaaaaaai) should become a popular meme. I'll keep pretending this character is not there haha. And the grandma moment was so sad 😥 Kalen has been improving from one episode to another so I am looking forward to seeing more... but now we don't know when it continues airing :/ I really hope it's rather sooner than later.

Is the president character based on Tom Yoda?

yup I think she said before she wrote and recorded FRIEND before all of the other songs from ASFXX

Honestly, when Ayu debuted, she did indeed sound stupid. It was part of her persona. Her pattern of speech was so slow and nasally. I always thought it was a bit of an act though; Kalen plays it as though Ayu was like that both on and off camera.

I am really enjoying the drama because it makes me remember the Ayu that I became a fan of. I'm looking forward to the next episodes. I wonder how much of what we see is based on reality and what is fiction?

I vaguely remember she saying/sugesting it was indeed an act on that Time Magazine special... But I read that over 10 years ago and may be remembering that totally wrong.

Obviously she was acting that way on purpose if we look to old footage she didn’t sound dumb at all ... she was taking the time to choose her words but it’s nothing like in her Avex debut and she quickly stopped speaking like that when people began to say she was dumb and slow in mind. She kept the nasally tones while speaking as an Ayu trading mark but that’s it. Her debuts were really formatted if you asked me.

I'm falling in love with Max character, also the couple is lovely

Is he an actor or idol?

Definitely an actor and I agree with your every word :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shohei_Miura

^Thank youu!

You can access "ayu's phone" by clicking this link on your phone
https://a-victory.jp/

I'm the 65,622nd visitor!
Wait a seconds to get a call from Masa :)

There is also a mail box with "private mails" I can't read!