[ImpactBreaker]

It's hard to tell how much original ULTRA BLUE actually is. I played This Is Love (my favorite new Hikki song) to my brother and he said: "japanese artists aren't creative anymore...why is she recycling Traveling and SAKURA DORAPPUSU all over again?". I disagree about the creativity part but I agree that hikki wasn't exactly original. The songs in ULTRA BLUE aside from some of the singles such as passion, as much as they sound brand new, aren't really original. I had the feeling of listening to a mix of Exodus+ Deep River - some of the songs have the "march-like" thing from Animato and the mysterious tunes of Deep River. In terms of structure some of them can be rather random that it's quite difficult to actually pay proper attention as the song is totally undecided on what it will turn out to be (yeah, nichiyo no asa).
Aside from that I loved the album! I can't tell which album I prefer though because I need time for the songs from ULTRA BLUE to sink in, in order to judge.