[ayumisrael]

Which would be a complete contradiction to whatever has been said on the last few pages, but we cannot know for sure. I prefer to wait. I still expect for the "worst".

About some of the things that has been said on the last few pages though. I'm sure that the Japanese are not interested in ayu enough for years so it really doesn't matter what ayu would do, great or aweful (talking about music/visual work/performaces). She is not at a state that the Japanese audience cares enough for it, so she doesn't have to care and deliver what they want, so she finally does the things her way how she wants them. You can love it or hate it. Also, if her sales are not going to drop by a huge amount, it pretty much means that she and her team did a good job getting what they wanted (to try to maintain as much sales as possible) and not shove her to the public to make her popular again, ayu is CLEARLY not interested in it, or else she wouldn't have a choice but to do things differently, wether people like it or not, it's not the problem with ayu's actions, it's the problem with how people/fans recieve it around here (because in Japan except for mainly her fanbase no one cares). And well, except for namie (which is on a different path) there are no other artists that are as veteran as ayu that are still accomplishing that she does, so it's now like she is in a hell state, nor interested in a heavenly one. People also choose to ignore of her capability of making loads of money and with no relation of money for her great perfomances (didn't a lot of people were amazed at Angel's performance?) and still being capable of having a huge crowd per year (and most money comes from it).
The SHOWCASE itself was the main promotion point of the album and if ayu doesn't end up seliing 40,000 in total with it then it did the job. Overall the SHOWCASE should have brought her around 100,000 attendants.

And that's without mentioning Hello new me's digital decent success (hopefully enough to be certified gold).

I totally understand the disconnecion here or distant getting between fans to ayu, but there are many differences between it, her state in Japan, and if the work she does is good or bad.

Rather than people (besides myself), I take artists as a validation on critisizing ayu's work, like the people who work or wants to work with her (Big producers like Red One and Darkchild, even Fedde le grande who's coming to my country for a summer party event, DJing with artists like Aviici and David Guetta, m-flo who are big into artists who make high quality music and like less others that make music just because, namie and kuu who go to see ayu's concerts from time to time). How come these artists don't feel the disconnection and "aweful" work ayu does?

And really, Lelio made me enjoy music like I haven't been for a long time (including ayu herself).


Adding that about the fact that tomomi's album has only 4 new songs, if anything that fact should HELP her because in Japan they love compilations, better than original albums and if it's mainly made of singles then it should even play better for her so it's a reason to sell better in japan, not the opposite.