^1. I didn't take "some singles", as I said, all of her first two albums singles, that happens to be her best selling albums, traveling, Flavor of Life, Prisioner of Love and Goodbye Happiness. This is 11 of her 27 japanese singles, almost half. If we take Heart Station (that I myself don't find generic, but you do), Final Distance and Boku wa kuma we have 14 easy listening, radio friendly, low risk singles. This makes her any worst of an artist? Nops... it's just one of the oldest promotional strategies ever on the music industry. She is a pop musician, her music is meant to have heavy airplay, so, obviously, she will promote herself trough the most comercial stuff.
2 . You are mistaking Exodus reviews (mostly done by people with no knowlegment about her japanese work other than the fact that she was big in Japan) with TITO reviews (done mainly by people who reviews mainly japanese entertaiment and were expecting Deep River in english)
3. She actually said Exodus was infused with her quirk sense of humour... I can find the interviews, but it will take me some time (as I read them 8 years ago
). I think I remember saying something about that during TITO promotiong too. I also don't think Hikki is sexually frustrated at all, she actually seens to be pretty... kinky by some of her personal blog posts and english interviews...