[Delirium-Zer0]

Originally Posted by pommy48

Doesn't TA come with English translations now?

No, they kinda stopped after the photobook was released. booooo.

Originally Posted by hayasaki

Is there an option there to make payments thru convinient Shops?

Actually, as I recall, that was the only way to do it - kiosks at convenience stores. And you have to do it by a certain date or your tickets are forfeited, which means even for TA members planning trips to Japan towards the end of a tour, we can't take advantage of the advance sales.

Originally Posted by Andrenekoi

And them you start looking for details and the hints that something is wrong start appearing...

What's funny is that I'd COMPLETELY agree with you, if not for the fact that all the visual "little details" contradict each other.

Look at what we have:
-The date on the mirror, which (when it was photographed in mid-2011) would have been a tribute to Aneki since Keiko hadn't had her hemorrhage yet. The facial expression on the hbya page bothers me - she's making one of her puckered-up flirty faces at the camera. It really doesn't work. It's a HUGE mismatch.

-Roses & rose petals: love? romance? the finer, more expensive things in life? Funeral flowers? At first glance, they seem like meaningless decorative elements, perhaps flowers from admirers. And when you delve in... they still look like meaningless decorative elements. Roses have had various symbolic meanings throughout history and we can't pinpoint one here.

-Shoes. TONS of shoes. To most audiences, that's just gonna symbolize shoes. Probably cues for money, wealth. If you read into it you can find "waste" but man some people just love shoes. Again, looking at the booklet for the first time, this is just a show of wealth and fun excess, and doesn't change meaning with further context.

-Jack Daniels with breakfast. That's our first hint ayu might have a problem. That's clearly someone with a problem if they're drinking first thing in the morning.

-Ayu and Timmy laughing at the breakfast table. This plus ayu's face by the mirror are the two things that bother me most about this booklet. I mean that's friendship, that's connection. That's something she sings about NOT having on the album - why is it here?? And that's not regret the morning after - that's just letting the party continue. It doesn't fit. If she'd taken these photos with the "Party Queen = self-destruction" concept in mind, I think she'd have left that out.

-the "reminds me" pages have two ayus - a sexy "take me now" face on one page, and a staring-at-the-ceiling "what did I do last night" face on the other. This was actually VERY good, though maybe not for that specific song.

-The Return Road pages have the toppled-over lamps as a sign something went wrong among the busy, fashionable goings-on from the "FIVE" photo shoot in this room. Another fairly good one.

-The ESM page has ayu passed out on the table among her jewelry. With a bottle of smirnoff in or next to her hand, this photo would have been flawless for this booklet. As it is, it just looks like she fell asleep looking at her nice expensive stuff.

The booklet, on the surface, shows only the sort of party life that normal people sort of dream of getting to experience, which is the problem. Too many fans looked at this and thought it looked "fun." Even when you look for details, things like her facial expressions, Timmy's presence, and the relatively harmless "mess" left in this hotel room are all detracting from the message that in reality, this is NOT GOOD.

If ayu is on a journey of self-examination through this album, realizing she has a problem and needs to fix it, the album booklet should have gradually gotten darker as it went. It should have done away with "details" that were positive. She should have looked gradually more and more sad and less like she was having fun hanging out. As it is, she looks flirty when she shouldn't. She looks happy when she shouldn't. She never looks embarrassed. She never looks sad.

I'd give ANYTHING for the little details to hold the answer to this album art, as you suggest - but it's just not the case, because the details behind the happy fun facade tell two entirely different stories.

Originally Posted by Andrenekoi

Shiina Ringo, started as one of the 00s biggest stars, and now she has respect as an artist, but she isn't selling to the mainstream public anymore

When "Heisei Fuuzoku" came out there were posters for it EVERYWHERE and it was a #1 album. When she released "sanmon GOSSIP" in 2009 (her latest album of all original material) it, likewise, hit number one. She isn't selling to the mainstream public like she used to because she's not releasing like she used to - it was 6 years between KSK and "sanmon GOSSIP" because she was working with Tokyo Jihen in the interim... and oh look at that, all their albums were commercial successes as well - three number ones, two number twos. Not sure why you used her as an example.

Originally Posted by Andrenekoi

Also, Ayu's public IS ageing... Some people who were part of her target public during her peak is around 30, and the complexity of her releases must reflect this ageing... Actually, this is something that part of her fanbase seens to have a hard time understanding...

I actually completely agree with you here. Party Queen made me happy because it felt like Ayu from the A Song for XX era now singing about grown-up problems. Most of her albums are pretty generic, although very well-put-together pop. But Ayu started flirting TOO much with a younger audience in a sad effort to not be 30, and most fans from before about the MY STORY era wandered off to other stuff cuz Ayu was trying to do pop music, not honest music that happened to be pop. She also was kind of in a bubble and not moving forward with the times quite enough, which was hard to deal with because she was so ahead of her time for so long.

Originally Posted by Andrenekoi

even if she can (and must) flirt with younger audiences with lighter releases, she has a better chance of selling to adults.

I think one major issue with PQ is that she needed to do an album like it YEARS before she did. It was too little too late - because there were no singles, no one really realized it was coming out except for fans; and the fans that would have enjoyed it most abandoned her 6 or 7 years earlier.

Originally Posted by Andrenekoi

Overall her only era without a single that could become a classic on her discography (no fan favorites, no minnor hits) is Party Queen...

But there technically WERE no singles for PQ lol... but I know what you mean. And that's because these songs don't work on their own as well as they work in the context of the album. I think she needed to do a whole music film for this album, telling the story of a Party Queen hitting rock bottom & having to climb back up again. It could have been amazing, really, and Ayu would have been perfectly capable of it. PQ COULD have been her magnum opus if she'd worked on the mixing & the visuals JUST A LITTLE BIT MORE, you know?