Waybackmachine, old ayu forums
 

Everyone I was checking on what software some of the old forums I was on used, unrelated to that I got reminded so much of old times and wanted to share this with you.

I'm happy we have this forum standing still...

Think that ayunite went offline first, then AHN, hamasaki.de and then ayu-kult.de

Anyone remembers these forums?

Which forums were you on?

https://web.archive.org/web/20070210...orum/index.php

https://web.archive.org/web/20060320...ite.net/forum/

German forum :

https://web.archive.org/web/20050308...kult.de/forum/

The first forum I joined was AyuDesign. I remember they had a lot of issues with their servers - eventually that forum was hosted on AHS' site, just with a separate forum. That didn't last so long, and it eventually died. But it led to an influx of members from there, such as myself.

Wow I just got a wave of nostalgia looking at the Ayunite! forum page. That site brings back a lot of memories for me despite being more active on AHS haha

oh my God oh my God! I found my old profile at AYUNITE! I forgot I used my old nickname, not YUKARI. So I registered on March 13, 2003 and I had Heart Place Initiate with 2169 posts.

btw I only remember the old black&pink layout. I think they used the black&pink photo from the Dearest era. and then they changed it to Step you in 2005, I guess

thank you for sharing the links!

ahhh ayu-kult <3

I remember them all, but I was only a member at Ayunite and AHN. What nostalgia.

I had no idea there were german ayu forums back in the day :O
I was on Ayuminte for a bit, but AHS was still my main one :D

Remember the good old divine ayu/ ayu primenova site?
That was my place for all Ayu lyrics translations originally :luv2

^ ayumi.primenova.com divine ayu is the legendary website! it was active just a couple of years ago so I remember it very well. I think it was the best ayu's fan-site on the entire internet. I remember the old layout with Hanabi pics :heart

I also loved hamazaki.net/x/ (or misstokyo.tk) :heart I think these layouts look soooooo cool even now. I loved her wallpapers (1, 2, 3 and etc) and quizzes! By the way, this was the first pic of ayu I saw. It was the morning of June 18, 2002. I saw the pic of this quiz result on a diary of my internet friend. I fall in love immediately and I thought like I had to know who she was. I first thought she was Miss Tokyo or some model because the link took me to misstokyo.tk website. then I learned that it was a photo of a singer ayumi hamasaki and this is how my story with ayu began. Then I tried to search for her songs but that time I had dial-up internet so I couldn't download a whole song. But I managed to download Hanabi TU-KA CM at Divine Ayu's website (I guess it was the geocities website back then) and it was magical to see Ayu moving and singing for the first time in my life. Then I managed to download .wma of evolution song (it was 800kb I guess) and it blew my 11-year-old mind! ohhh sweet memories!

Next year I'll celebrate my 20th ayu anniversary. Oh Angela from Jakarta, you changed my life actually :heart

it's amazing how we can look through all these dead websites... feels like touch to another side

So nostalgic... AYUNITE! was definitely my first ayu forum (back in 2004, I was known as "Love~Ayu")
I was also on Tokyo Nights (there was a huge ayu community there), Ayumi Hamasaki Net, Ayunation and a bunch of french ones, if not all of them (even a chinese one later AyuChina, and a russian one, Ayu-mi-sS, but mainly to grab download stuff, sorry xD)

As for websites, divine-ayu was definitely THE website for everything, it was just the best.
There was also a website with fanart that looked a bit like team-ayu's old magazines fanarts ? I thought it was so pretty at the time, maybe it still exists... And then of course eneabba with its huge data collection.

Not an Ayu-only forum but there was JpopCentral with the best Oricon data sales (before they moved to Yuku platform), oh boy the time I spent on that Oricon thread reporting Ayu's sales every week...

PS : There was also a forum on hamasaki.de, just checked my registration emails xD
Good old time indeed :)

OMG I found the original Divine Ayu website on freehomepages (not geocities)! and here's the Download page. I had all those CMs!!

When Divine Ayu (and the other forums) stopped updating regularly I was so sad lol
Once all the big fan sites and forums stop, it’s the true signal to the end of an era haha

Being a fan nowadays is so… easy? Not that that’s a bad thing haha, but the treasure hunting that we did made everything super special to me.

Waiting hours, DAYS for some things to download :-p

Actually I find that Ayunite went to down too early.

Right? Everybody worked so hard. I remember how misunderstood was leaked which was very unsual, was it 1 month early or so?

Ayu's releases were so frequent back then that I think she always had a stockpile of things ready to go. Her stuff used to leak months in advance pretty regularly, especially around the RAINBOW period. Sometimes it was due to tie-ins, but not always.

My first Ayu forum where I was really active was a Finnish forum in 2007 where I didn’t enjoy hanging out at all because of the toxic atmosphere it had. I ended up here few months later in early 2008 and never left because this place was so damn amazing in so many ways. I immediately felt like I belong here because I've always liked bigger forums the best for so many reasons. It does make me sad that this forum is so quiet these days because it used to be so active. There was like +2k new posts to go through every day, some juicy drama (I loved this too much for my own good. :'D). I remember spending hours and hours here back then. It was so much fun! :heart

Edit: I also remember visiting Ayunite and AHN in 2006 when I was feeding my curiousity and a need to listen her music. I remember downloading a very LQ LOVEppears from AHN and for some reason it only had remixed versions of TO BE and kanariya on it but at the time I just assumed it was how the album was because it was a 90s album. :D I did later find a good version of the album with the original versions on it and deleted the LQ one faster than the speed of light though, lol.

Ayunite was the first Ayu forum I joined before I found this place! This makes me think of other old JPop forums I used to go to like Hikaru Online which I spent a lot of time on (then changed to Utada Online) and a Kumi one. I can't remember the name but I think the address had the phrase "stream of stars" in it.

Oh, thank you so much for sharing these! I wasn't part of any of those, but I always hear people talk about them so I feel a bit of second-hand nostalgia looking through some old posts. :tipsy

Ooooooooh my god, such a throwback!

I opened this thread and read the opening post and while I was aware of at least Ayunite I never used it. It got me thinking of the forum I used before AHS though and I couldn't for the life of me remember but damn, this was it! Wow. Crazy times, I remember finding it and experiencing its small but dedicated community for a bit, and then I found AHS. Wow! It was so huge and active, it was an amazing find. I pretty much transferred wholesale to here since there was so much happening here. Divine Ayu was a great resource though. I never really bothered with translations but the CMs were amazing. I remember getting MP3s of the Suntory Boss CMs to put on my MiniDisc player back then, haha. Great times. What a trip down memory lane!

Ayunite! was the jam. Everyone knew each other & was super sweet. It was so abrupt how it went down.

My first forum was ayumix. Can't remember the full address :(

I still have the email where they announced the old forum was closing xD (2005-12-25)
They did open a new one, found an email registration in 2007, but wasn't much active back then...
The website was http://www.ayu-mi-x.com but unfortunately doesn't seem to have a backup...

This one was HUUGE back then, the Ayu community there was so active :
https://web.archive.org/web/20050601...yo-nights.com/
(I can even see my old account online, feels so weird xD)