Oh for sure. I haven't been checking it daily but right now, for the Tokyo area shows only, there are 588 and that is with not all dates on sale yet. Also, any previous dates that have already passed are not counted anymore. So I would estimate that the total is at least somewhere around 2,000 tickets through the resale shops so far. The only way to know an accurate number though is if you watch the number every day and then adjust for the shows that have already gone past. Man do I wish I was living in Tokyo already. :( (I'm moving there next spring.)

It's ok and acceptable to say that a song from the live is thought to be lip-synced for the live (and I also mentioned it earlier) I just don't think we should overly go through it like it's a serious "life or death" matter and keep posting about how that song is/thought to be lip-synced hehe.

I see, thank you :)

After the tour when a magazine or some sort of reporter thing (I don't remember where we get it from) that write about the tour and give the attendance number give the round number to the amount of people who went to see the tour? Or they write the overall number of the venues sits (even if they weren't filled)?

(for example like AT 08 had 250,000 attendancies and such).

I initially thought she would never lip-sync in this segment cos there's AUDIENCE. I mean AUDIENCE is like sort-of the song that I think would be kind of unforgivable if she lip-synced... ah whatever, my weird thoughts.

Anyway, I forgot to mention... the stage looks so awesome. So colorful and like shiny~

I would guess that they would only count the number of tickets sold for the tour, not number of people actually in the seats. I don't think they would be able to factor in the resale market accurately. Also, I'm sure many of the resale tickets are re-selling (mainly because the price is going so low) - its just an oddity that so many tickets are showing up there in the first place. So, even though we know that a relatively large chunk of people decided not to use their tickets, it might still get reported as 250,000+ anyways, because technically the tickets did sell in the first place. I wonder, if in addition to all the factors already mentioned for this, if the Angel's Song incident at PCDL might also play somewhat of a factor. Although its becoming more widely used, lip synching is still a bigger no-no in Japan than in most countries.

The Japanese report said this about Audience: "this song was sung - it felt like she was out of breath and unlike the previous song (energize), you could hear her breathing."

Probably not, since the CDL05-06 one was also really evident, and no one really paid any attention to it it seems (in Japan).

I still think the relatively close proximity that the album release date had to the start of the tour has something to do with it. I mean, people probably haven't absorbed the songs yet!

Though NEXT LEVEL tour is longer (so the tickets might be around the 300,000-350,000 this time) so even if the re-sale tickets number reaches the number for example of 10,000 by the end of the tour it's like 340,000 (or 290,000 the least) attendancies and it's still more than every other tour she had.

I remember though that there were bigger discussions of other lip-synced songs (even before 2008) so was the ANGEL'S SONG such a big "first"?

You're right, its probably not. Although, I think the Angel's Song one was a lot more blatant than Theme of A-Nation. Even I didn't notice Theme of A-Nation until someone else here posted about it.

Not the first, but by far the most obvious.

The first 'big' one was theme of a-nation '03, because it was so blatant and obvious that people just couldn't help pointing it out. Ugh. It was pretty much the exactly same thing that happened.. motsu -> mita vs. yasashii sugite vs. sugiru. I still think she sings for portions of the song leaving the chorus to be ipsynched or something.

I still don't think that the number of tickets that are available really matter that much, since it seems that the majority of the ones that aren't sold are in HUGE venues.

They are the same venues that she has always performed at (all between 9-16,000 seats; most are 9-10,000) - but yet other tours haven't had this same number of tickets (or anywhere even close to the number). So while I think that adding more dates has something to do with it, I think there are probably other more prominent factors. Also, since the website only covers Tokyo area tickets, we don't know how many are on the resale markets in other cities. We need to find like, Nagoya Ticket Company web site or something. :)

The stage gives me that futuristic space vibe with all the bright colors and white undertone. If I am her costume desginer, I'll give her lots of neon colors costumes.. Solid colors don't really match, especially that red cheerld. outift. Imagine the same outift in shiny neon yellow, or neon orange, that would be awesome. The worst costume is still the ballad one, even the redesign looks bad. She needs a shiny silver dress in this section, and I'll go even further with chains wrap all around her to fit the hope & pain song...

I love that stage!!! :D So bright and colorful! Really fits the theme of the album I think.

I absolutely love the stage!!! So colorful *_*

And sorry for butting in into this lip-syncing thing but when I watched the video... I did felt like she was lipsyncing... maybe I'll be wrong but who knows :shrug

Me too. It might be possible that they simply use the backtrack which often contains a bit more than back vocals. I really find it amusing that people got the idea that she lip synced EnergizE by watching a LQ video recorded with the cell phone where you can't even hear the music properly not to mention her voice and breathing lol.
And it also seems that many would do everything just to prove that Ayu is constantly lip syncing something. I mean there is still absolutely no reason to suspect anything based on these 2 clips we saw. There are many other artists who use headsets and there are those great things called filters that make wonders. All the lip syncing talk is getting really old and annoying, it's ok at the times when it's obvious, but it seems to me that many people think she is doing it with almost every song.

I love the stage, the best one in years!!

edit: Plus even if someone actually went to see the show, without a SOLID proof, it all comes down to someone's word against someone else's. The only two performances that we have solid proof they were lip synced were the theme of a-nation '03 and Angel's Song (and perhaps Over) from CDLs. I don't think that "I can't hear her breathe" is a valid argument at all.

Exactly!!!

Dont judge things based on low quality videos.

And I dont really understand how Audience vocals have anything to do with EnergizE vocals.
Audience is not composed for her vocal ability right now, Energize is.
So yeah.. why do we always have to bring up the lipsync topic?!
You didn't even see the concert yourself or have no clear proof visually.
And if those messages are from two channel, then I will laugh.
Why does the same people always bring it up? It's damn annoying all the time.
And when someone who went said that they thought it was live, you still cannot drop the issue??!
Like how many people does it take for them to say stop it until you finally do?

Anyways.

I think this tour became attractive when I could see all the stage in motion..
All the colours, and the vocals are good so far~~ from Rule and EnergizE.
I just wish she could change the dress for the ballads... T T

oh, i didnt want my opinion to come off as being the proof or anything... I mean there's definitely a chance that my excitement could have "interfered" with my judgement towards ayu's singing or what have you. I mean if tons of people are saying on blogs and such that she lip synced it, i'm not going to be the sole person to say she didn't haha.

From what I remember, I don't remember it being lip synced, but then again, if multiple people are saying that it was that attended the tour as well, who am I to say otherwise, right? ^_^

I'm going to the tour in October as well, so I can re-evaluate the situation haha :P

The engerizE video sounds live to me(it's definitely different from CD), i can hear her almost being off key at the line "~koto ga ". And I dont think anyone will ever use playback like this(off key).

I really dont understand why people keeping talking the same topic over and over again. It's completely absurd to say that a singer was lipsyncing because she sang the song in tune or whatever.

And if you really know how to sing, you must know that audience is a much difficult song than EngerizE because of the high notes. And I have to say ayu is now no more good at hitting high note .

EnergizE would be different from CD even if she sang playback because she uses pre-recorded tracks, she's not Britney Spears after all xD
In her prerecorded tracks, only major flaws are corrected, there sometimes actually are off notes in them, because they ARE live recordings, just recorded in the studio and editing them as much as a studio recording would be really expensive and take the illusion of it being live.

The main reason people call EnergizE probably-playback is, that you do NOT hear any mic-noises, mic-noises are heard with low-quality recording devices such as mobile phone cameras, they are heard better than the singing most times and if you DO NOT hear them, it's most likely to be lipped(though there are songs without micsounds which are live, for example Trauma CDL0405, where she forgot her lyrics, but you use a different microphone for that and if 1 song with a mic has mic-sounds and another one not, one IS playback, we just have to wait for videos of AUDIENCE where we might hear mic-sounds) also, people said you don't hear her breath, but she IS moving quite much, the dance is harder then AUDIENCE(if she performed AUDIENCE as usual), so you should her her breathing, try dancing the dance and singing it without breathing loudly, you see? impossible if youre only walking around you won't hear much breathing, but it doesnt look like shes just walking around, its choreographed
and the last thing would be...bad mouth movements, I don't know if anyone mentioned her mouth being off and you can't see her mouth good from the video we saw, but that's usually showing if something is lipped quite easily

I think we CAN'T possibly say if it's live or not with just the video, we have to see what the majority of reports say and for better videos to say so

^ recording songs is awfully expensive as you said. How do you expect to hear noises from THAT CLIP when it's ALL NOISE!? Plus we can barely see Ayu there not to mention her mouth.

Actually it's possible to take deep breaths without like making noises.

^IMO, flaws means everything except being off key.