(i m a fan of the early hour been fallowing ayu since her debut... and i am still a fan of ayu)

+1 no one can know for sure and what is said in the media is for the media and general public, you will rarely find the TRUE and VERY INTIMATE reasons of things . they are artists .there is things that cannot be said or wanna be kept private (by the artist or the company)

i also felt everything was just a little too convinient and her private life put her in the spotlight again thanks to all the promo in those scandals magazines, newspapers and regular magazines.
promo or not promo, mannie or maro everybody knew it wouldnt last.


im personally tired of seeing her love life in PVs and cd covers . i also wish she would stay more mysterious about her love life among other things .
i will not critisize ayu on twitter since she also use it to meet her fans , i think its really nice of her to do so, very very few do same.

i also think ayu reputation have been hurt by this and she lost a bunch fans due to over exposure and bad choices .

hopefully her next relationship wont end up in a pv or a cd cover again ....

So basically it's split like this among fans

-The relationships were nothing more than being staged and used for PR
-The relationships were genuine, Ayu just rushed things and it made for awkward endings
-Ayu's just thirsty

I just think it's a much simpler explanation that she did something stupid. Even if you think she's absolutely brilliant, even brilliant people do stupid things. Planning a fake relationship around someone who's as public as Ayu isn't exactly easy. Lies have to cover more lies which have to cover more lies...The amount of money they'd have to pay people to keep their mouths shut and/or perpetuate the story is NOWHERE NEAR worth the tiny bump in sales she might have gotten from it, not even close.

pimenta: Yes, I just meant that Virgin Road was the starting point of it. Since she ended up dating her co-star, may as well keep using him as a love interest since he's her real significant other anyway.

I'd totally go into hysterics to see Ayu dating Keiko from globe Ô.O

When you say that its like "Yes very good point and I totally agree," but the thing is that this is the entertainment industry so a staged relationship isn't exactly a new thing concept. It happens all the time, a lot of celebrity marriages and relationships are precalculated for various reasons. And, if I'm wrong I do apologize, but didn't Ayu did say herself at CDL 11-12 that her goal for the coming year was to begin "living more scandalously." little too coincidental.

If I'm not wrong she said that concerning 2013, not 2012.

Yeah, I think it was for 2013 cuz as I recall it sounded rather sarcastic & tongue-in-cheek to me.

Even if she did say she wanted to "live more scandalously" before 2012, it wouldn't shock me that she'd have actual scandals based on actual things she DID rather than staged relationships - if you say "I want to live more scandalously" it says to me you'd want to seize the day & take more risks. Well, romantic relationships that you reveal to everyone DO certainly fall under that category, don't they?

And Japan doesn't typically stage relationships unless they make the singer look good - these ones really didn't. These types of relationships are NOT the kind of thing that would boost sales, they're the type of thing that makes sales plummet among the japanese music buying public. Things don't work QUITE the same there as they do in the west. The west would have eaten ayu's love troubles up - they were alienating to fans in Japan.

I just laughed when she gave us that "work is work" and "private is private" deal over Twitter not too long ago. Could've fooled me.

This the only thing prevent me to think Mannie and Maro's relationships were staged. Especially with Mannie. Maro was a huge mess, imo.
Japan it's really strict when it comes to relationships between famous people. I don't see how pairing up Ayu with a western guy could helped her career. I remember japanese were mostly upset because Mannie was a foreigner, than for the shotgun wedding (or maybe for both of them, lol I don't remember).

Maybe she tried to date Maro to save her image, but we all know how it ended.

It bugs me when Ayu slap her private life on PVs and covers (I prefer something subtle like Together When...) but in the other hand, she's not afraid to make bad choices and I respect her for that.

I hope she will find love with her new boyfriend. Even if angsty Ayu makes better music :rolleyes

"We clawed, we chained, our hearts in vain
We jumped, never asking why
We kissed, I fell under your spell
A love no one could deny"

Wrecking Ball - Miley Cyrus

I believe she fell in love both times. Whether she handled them professionally - is my gripe. I don't think she did.

Ayu made lots of contradictory statement... Couldn't she think before she speak?? Saying something and doing otherwise... :p

Which is basically what every person does, even if they say they don't... "Do as I Say (Not as I Do)" :P

Ayu learnt the lesson....just a little, maybe. When you done shit, man, if you step over it, it smells! Ayu done shit with Mannie marrying him and putting him on her PVs, then stepped over it announcing her divorce through Return Road, and showing him there, kicking dead dogs. With Maro she done shit putting him on PVs about new lovey-dovey but no step over it...yet:)

Simply put: NO. These men should know what they're signing up for when getting into a relationship with her. I'm sure Mannie could have gone back to Japan with ayu if he had truly wanted to.

As for Maro...he's just a train wreck and I think it would be fascinating to know what was going through ayu's mind at the time.

it seems like me, she takes almost nothing from past experiences :P

I truly wanted to believe that she had found happiness with Manny and be happy for her, but I couldn't when she was flaunting his ugly mug in my face especially when I honestly and truly don't really want to know anything about her personal life and then there was the timing of the marriage and divorce announcements and then flaunting Maro over the covers... If it wasn't staged, and if she was truly horrified by the backlash when she announced that they were dating, she would've re-shot the covers for Again...the timing is all too convenient!

Or maybe she just doesn't care what people say and wants to share her happiness with the world like a naive teenager delerium-Zer0 said, but if that is the case then obviously her staff if useless and is incapable of stopping her from destroying her own career with her own hands.

Its sad, but I can't take anything she says seriously and I felt so much second hand embarrassment following all of it and if Party Queen was the last album after all this nonsense, I probably wouldn't even be here any more, so at least there's always the music (thank god)

Good thing about being the boss: You can tell everyone to fuck off.

:laugh

really does seem like she would do that. didn't she change her manager recently? maybe the old manager couldn't stand her way of doing things anymore. it's scary and amazing sometimes, what love does to people.

Sorry to quote an old post but I thought he did go back to Japan to do some MC gig at a rock festival and stayed there for an amount of time before the divorce was announced. I don't recall that he actually met with Ayu during that time though.

He could have been trying to and she ignored him? Or maybe they were just finalising legal things and didn't need to be together...? Who knows?

I'd really prefer to see Ayu keep her private lift separate like she wanted to years ago. She's probably learned that people close to her will use her relationships for their own gain (I personally feel Mannie was wronged by Leslie as time goes on) or for other reasons.

Ayu needs the separation of personal and private moreso as she gets older. Japan isn't overly kind to her on a good day and I think she'd be suffering if she had another visible relationship especially if it failed :no

I think we all agree that we want Ayu to be happy and I think that since late 2011 she hasn't been feeling safe and secure like she did before :(

I loved reading this thread.
My opinion is similar: I think Ayumi is afraid of love and now that you mention about it, yes, it was really opportunistic of her to use Mannie and Maro as material for songs and marketing strategies.
I think since she broke up with Tomoya Nagase, she hasn't been good at handling romantic relationships. Ayumi is a great person but I think she's forcing herself to love people.
I don't blame her because her childhood wasn't the best, so even in friendships, I understand why some of her relationships are unstable.