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Ikimonogakari's NEWTRAL. The album is amazing and made me fall for the band right away. It's undoubtedly the best album of the year and I'm not sure if it can be surpassed at all. Beside that, there's Do As Infinity's TIME MACHINE, which was also amazing, but I wasn't expecting any less from them, so I wasn't caught by surprise like with NEWTRAL.
Less amazing but still nice albums would include two cover albums from artists I was previously unfamiliar with: Angela Aki's SONGBOOK and BENI's COVERS. Both albums were very nice but nothing mindblowing. Party Queen, to me, was also OK, but not on the level of any of the albums previously mentioned.
There's also the beautiful, almost flawless Eiko Shimamiya produced mini album 5TEARS, but I'm not sure if I should count it since it was released almost last year... Whatever, I'm counting it, it was amazing and while I was expecting it to be good, I wasn't prepared for so much goodness.
As for expectations... There's Mami Kawada's SQUARE THE CIRCLE coming out in August, but I don't think I'm expecting any other albums at the moment. I'm ready to be pleasantly surprised, though!
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