I didn't mean it that way . My bad in fact, I didn't express it correctly :headache. It's not a matter of age.
Can't wait for the other covers too.

I wish we will have a different shoot for the poster... But usually they are using the CD+DVD one (not with RNRC though).

very pretty. now intriguing to buy, but nice. it's so monochromatic with such a blah font. but i like the simplicity of it. not too much happening, which makes it easy on the eyes. so i say, great cover!

no worries. its common stereotype and is expected (unfortunately)

and yeah. . .and actually it would be nice for a different shoot for the posters. but yeah thats probably 0 chance of happening

she looks breathtaking pretty *-*

i think she looks a bit like miliyah kato because of the expression of her eyes and the hair!!!

anyway i like it very much :)

Complaining over the same thing is boring, but everyone has the right to complain. I'm already used to her crazy expressions and over-photoshopping so I don't care, or for the god sake, I don't get upset or hurt if the majority of fans dislike fishy lips or whatever they are called.

Oh but I like the font and the colors, they're nice. I also like the AZU thing. The only thing I don't like about this cover is simplicity, because I'm tired of her boring covers, I always expect sth more interesting and cool from Ayu.

Wow the cover is extremely pretty! Very nice. Well the picture itself that is, why couldn't they have kept the font simple, that gradient in the stroke is awful. :dead2

Aw, they're killing me by not putting up the other cover lol. How awful that they did that to us, one more day :laugh.

I think I was expecting too much this time around, because you could do a pretty nice background with the "moon" theme, but this cover kinda dissapointed me in that aspect, she looks cute though and the font is nice

covers are not important to me anyway and I'm not diggin MOON that much but at least I hope the PV will be pretty good ^^

Overall I like it. It's simple and romantic. And I like that she looks kinda vulnerable on the cover. It does look like something out of her recent magazine shoots, but I can honestly say that for 95% of female pop singer covers, so that doesn't bug me. (plus i love her recent magazine shoots.)

Although I wish she would have went with a less glossy lip, and maybe a different dress (something isn't strapless. Her posture in combination with the dress makes me think she's holding a towel, which I'm sure she isn't. But something with straps would be nice. And something less shiny.)

And the font is kinda...jarring? I dunno, it would have been a great cover without the font (or if the font's smaller and simpler). But then again, her font placement on her covers tend to be a hit or miss, so...*shrug*

She IS wearing straps on the dress, though they're thin and pink so they're not very noticeable.

nvm, I do see the straps. (I thought they were part of a necklace at first)

Something with more visible straps then. =P

mehhh... pretty average.. a bit..normal..

jajaja I think im one of the few or the only one that thinks that the font is ok ~

I think that this cover is a bit to...girlish...sortof...either way im getting both cd versions only so cant wait to see what those covers look like

I honestly do think it's pretty. It's simple, yes. Even a little boring. But it looks good, so why complain?

God guys.. no need to complain that a few people don't like it.. if you're concerned so much with other people's opinions then the majority of fans do love them. :P And yeah, those are NOT fish lips.

I was expecting too much I think, I feel disappointed

Not doing too much for me... At least Ayu's beautiful eyeshape is shown nicely. :D

thank you for posting

I knew that in the end will be alot of ppl dissapointed. XD

Never go to the point of being extremely picky :innocent

yeah that's what I thought! just like Miliyah! :yes

lool when i first saw it i got a huge deja-vu feeling cause the picture looked so similar to her recent magazine shoots.

but i really like it. it's nice, simple and she looks pretty. i just can't help but feel this would have been muuch more suited as a cover for Sunset/Sunrise with the lovely colors <3

It´s "Simple and Clean"...and lovely

Pretty simple... but simply pretty.
I like it, not over the top, but it's a nice photo.

I like it =D

am I the only one who doesn't notice the moon reflection :/

It's pretty and all.. but .. *sigh* boring

Nope, same here.

But some people think the extreme glow is the moonlight. I think it's just a lamp.

The photographer is Kazutaka Nakamura ^^

Ayu told me it now ^^ http://twitter.com/ayu_19980408/status/16719460800

he did the pics for sCawaii June 2010 *-*

yea I think it's a lamp too xD

OMG so beautiful Ayu!

I like the idea of it, but I think that another shot from the photoshoot could have been used. I find it weird how each eye seems to convey different expressions, her lips look bee-stung, and her face looks slightly bruised and stoned.

Oh well. Only one cover though?

She looks gorgeous, but I expected something huge.
They're much better than S/S disaster but they're.. meh.
Maybe too simple and the font its really awful.

Lol I'm so disappointed :laugh

I like the new cover :) It seems soft and sweet

Glad I got it!! :D

And people who even dare to say "bad photoshop" should be shot. As if one of the richest women in one of the world's most technologically advanced countries cannot afford to hire people who know how to use photoshop. Sheesh.

That's because GREEN is not about the colour green, but references trees and forests. And Mirrorcle World is a play on "miracle world", not mirrors.

Not loving it. Lol.
The lighting - how it hits her hair so bright on the back of her head.
The font isn't great either.

Honestly, I'm disappointed - especially for the singles project.
Mirrorcle World & Days / GREEN were much more amazing.

Oh well.

We just need the lipstick to be a bit darker and this cover would fit awesomely to some porn magazine. Don't like this cover. But I don't like most of the CD covers. Always over-faked. I liked the photos from Paris and London, made by the fans, because they weren't fake. I wouldn't call an official picture "a photo". Rather a photoshop-clone. For me, a photo is: you take it, and then you print it / upload it / whatever...

Just my opinion.

^gosh i cant tell u how many other covers would be like porn covers then if thats all u had to do. . .

All album/single covers look fake and/or overly photoshopped. Very few just feature a shot of a smiling, natural girl/boy, and a neutral text. Almost always, they will look manufactured and fake. Jus' saying.

pretty and simple... was expecting a bit more though. so i guess this will be what the FP poster will look like too.

looks like a boring cover. i'm not really impressed; it's pretty and average.

I don't understand why though. Nobody looks exactly the same in every single photo they take.

If you think ayu looks weird (mismatched eyes, big lips, whatever), why not just understand that she's human, and not a machine/doll? Or if you think ayu looks too fake (too flawless skin, too big eyes), why not accept that she's naturally beautiful like that?

I don't get why everyone loves to (mis)use the word "photoshop" and expect it to explain away everything they personally dislike about the covers.

I created a monster from older covers I thought had similar features, haha.

http://img682.imageshack.us/img682/2921/omit.png

Dear god.

Maybe it's some kind of a "blast from the past" pose or so...

What?

Man, you are a prime example of someone with too much time on his hands. lol!

My point exactly :yes


I'm...oh my.
I need to go lie down.

LOL. . . :laugh . . .thats really gross. it looks like Christina Ricci for a second.

then it just looked disgusting.

this is great work. Picasso

I actually like the font.

I think it's overall an okay cover. I don't find anything particularly omg beautiful about it, but it's not ugly at all. She has worse covers and she has better covers. I really don't expect much from her covers anymore. the only ones I've really liked in the past couple of years were NL and MW.

As for the Miliyah references (yes I still see it :laugh) I don't think it's an insult at all...but then again I'm apparently one of the only people who thinks Miliyah is pretty. It's just mostly her hair an dthe lighting and her facial expression. It still looks like "ayu" though.

I'm so happy you pointed all that out. I'm a photographer and I definitely know what "over photoshopped" looks like and how people can look different in different photos due to lighting, posing, ect.

I only spent like one minute on it. And it shows. -hides-

I guess I made it because I'm a bit curious about how people would react if she did covers like NEVER EVER or Depend on you now. "Why the blank stare? Why is she so dirty?! This sucks!" I wonder if a lot of Ayu fans have just come to hate anything that isn't what they -thought- it would be. "Oh, this isn't good enough for this three-consecutive-singles... no sir!" Then what is? (I have this feeling that if she did something similar to vogue / Far away / SEASONS in this era, she'd get slammed for it. In fact, any cover that wasn't done by Leslie Kee would probably get some really bad criticism for being boring in this day and age, I think.)

beautifull... ayu you still look as young as before!

"why not accept that she's naturally beautiful like that?"

nah, she doesnt look like this. she is prettier in real life than this. she looks like a manequin in 3/4 of magazines shoots and covers shots. the blur - it takes all...

But i accept that fact, she doesnt have any "reli natural" covers since LOVEppears. (oh, there was (miss)understood... but it was ugly.) (i dont include booklets etc) The main fact i dislike it, it's that they try to make her more cute then she ever ever was. She is 30 (above). She could try do something like years before, she looked sexy, indepented (the Lady Dynamite look <3) , w/e. 30 doesn't equals for cute... She wasn't even that cute on cover when she was 20.

many here are constantly acting like all her old covers and magazine shoots were like genius or something. . .when i actually see them (as im definitely not a fan from those eras) i figure if that cover wouldve been released now im sure many wouldve found all the criticism in the world for it. besides that i never found her crooked teeth smiles extremely beautiful or some of her hairstyles in that era pretty at all.

but here we are. i feel like majority of people dont like this cover. oh well~~~

umh... yes... but no... I don't realy like her expresion BUUUUUUT!!! the photography is gorgeous~ :3

i didn't mean that they were genius or sth, it's just that this "cutesy" fact is out of her age area. japanese have their own obsessions about looking more younger then they really are, even they look younger than people from other countries. she still looks young without that curly hair, cutesy face, blured skin. i just... don't know WHY.

Ahh, but what's that saying that goes that no matter how beautifully taken a photo is, it can never equal the real thing? :)

And I have to disagree on the cute thing, though. She doesn't look cute on MOON/blossom. RnRC DVD version, vogue-SEASONS-Far away trilogy, GREEN/Days, now those are cute. And I'm sure ayu is more cute than you give her credit for. She's probably one of the few people ever to prance around on stage in a hot pink maid's outfit at the age of 30/31 and still look decently adorable. :D

This is why I apologized...
Sometimes things just are bad. Doesn't mean we're coming to hate everything, lol. It's honestly just not a good cover.

But she is still a woman. Oh, a gorgeous one. Not a child.


// but this is just my opinion, ye? :) I prefer her more mature, i get tired of cutesy, she is cute with her mobile pics, with her lovely dogs. It's just i would love to see her more woman than a cute japanese girl.

ah well now~ im not specifically referring to you. . .but nevertheless. . .i dont see it necessary for someone too look what is deemed as proper for their age. imo she pulls it off. i dont find the cover cutesy anyhow but pretty and simple.

ayu can pull off cutesy imo. shes lucky.

i really dont think the pictures are making ayu look ugly or really that much less pretty. she doesnt look like that creepy feline chick. so its okay. :)

(id hate to be 30 and told i have to dress super mature all the time)

i don't think that anyone thinks that the covers are ugly :) (decent, average, but not ugly, lols) there are some exceptions like S/S or (m)u covers that are really UGLY, but it's still her - she can't reli look ugly C:

i don't find them cutesy as well. they do make her look younger though, which isn't a bad thing.

Still i think "cutesy" seems to be a big feminine thing in Japan. For one reason or another I also get the impression that being a woman tomboy isn't really looked upon as a positive thing over there. Oh well, the cover's nice, but simple. Not sure what else to say about it.

she can but it's annoying, especially at her age. i wish she'd do more natural, classy and sexy looks instead of straight up cute like she's been doing for the past few months. she goes through more "cute" phases than anything else unfortunately.

i didnt even find the (m)u cover ugly. i like it in fact T.T ah well . . .i find beauty in the littlest things.

Which was exactly my point in the post she replied to. MOON isn't purely about a moon, or the Moon, so why should the cover have a moon when it can convey the song's actual message instead? BLUE BIRD has a deeper message than a song about a blue bird, so there is no reason to include a blue bird on the cover(s).
The covers should fit the songs, not the song-titles.

I want some more classy and sexy looks too. :( It would be nice for her to have more of those, but I can only hope for future releases.

you got my point [;

how about. i would love ayu to go around looking creepy and demented and sexy like in alterna, 1 LOVE, ourselves. . . .(these are my favorite ayu looks)

sadly that does not happen and i just go with the flow of whatever ayu does. and appreciate it. especially if it looks nice on her. or fits this over bubbly personality she gives off

I don't know if I'd call these covers "cute" though.

They seem to be a happy medium imo. Not completely burikko-status, and it's not matronly looking at all.

I don't know if I like them or not. I think I liked the pics from TA better sadly.
But I really think it's awesome that the majority of everyone likes them!
:3

O.o Sorry to butt in like this, but...
I don't think Ayu has a large amount of "cute" phases, or more of those phases than anything else. Maybe when it comes to photo-shoots, yes, but not when it comes to music or performances, which is really where it matters (to me, anyhow).
Japan is a country DEAD SET on "Cute". The general image women are supposed to have in Japan is "cute" and "pretty", not "classy" or necessarily "natural". So of course Ayu and her whole team has that idea in their heads since they mostly live and has grown up in Japan.
And I'd much rather have a cute Ayu (which I can find incredibly adorable many times!), than the sexualized and superficial works of some artists. When Ayu does it, I feel it more from the heart, "cute Ayu" doesn't mean "annoying Ayu" in my opinion. It always feels heartfelt in everything Ayu does, whether it's cute or sexy.
And to my last point, YES, AYU IS A 30+ WOMAN! Does that mean that she can't do "cute"? Why would "cute" have a set age? Probably all of us hold some of our innocent, cute and childish parts close to us through our whole lives, why is it so wrong to show some of those parts sometimes? Well, if Ayu started to cry like a baby and asking for a bottle, and throwing a tantrum when no one gives it to her, it wouldn't be all that nice, in fact it would have been rude and childish in a bad way. But the childish Ayu we have, is nothing like that. So what's so wrong with that? Cute Ayu (in fair amounts) is wonderful IMO!! :D
If you started to listening to Ayu for a constantly sexy and serious artist, well, you probably should find another artist.
Hopefully no one's taking offence? I don't mean to criticize, I just wanted to bring up my opinions and some points. :innocent
WELL, back to topic, while I do feel that cover has a certain innocence and childishness to it, I don't find it "cute-sy". I find it sophisticated and soft :)

I like it! Its like Fairyland cover but dry LOL.

I'm afraid that if I touch this picture it will shatter like glass! :P

I don't care if it's Photo-shopped or not, AYU IS A GODDESS!!:love

@Ayu-me Agreed. I was talking with a Japanese guy over dinner last night, and I asked him what he thinks of Japanese girls. His answer? "Well, they're cute, but definitely not beautiful" So there you have it, "a country DEAD SET on Cute" :yes

I really like it! Its simplicity is gorgeous! Nothing overdone in my opinion! Can't wait!

Loooove it! She looks positively divine! I love how soft and pink it is!!! Gorgeous!

To be honest, I think this is one of her more recent single covers (You were.../BALLAD too) that has actually looked like a CD cover. Most of the other ones after glitter/fated looked like awkward magazine shoots.

I like it! It's simple and pretty!

i kinda sort of like completely agree with this post

Her lips looks weird, mmmmm

Excited to see the other covers~~
I really like her hair like this, but I hope she'll switch it up for the rest of the singles' promotion.

I want her in long, straight hair like in 2002, 2003, 2006 and 2007...

to be honest, MOON/blossom its like her most 'magazine-photoshoot looking' cover to me.

Anyway please stop saying 'she's too old to be cute' :/ she's not 80 she's only 32 and cute doesn't mean ridiculous.
Oh and look at this

I'm with you, Seiko is a great example!!!!!
And c'mon ayu is young

I hope Ayu can be as cute as Seiko at 48.

I think MOON/blossom looks very magazine photo-ish because she has had in the past few months several shoots with the same look and hairstyle. I remember a couple times thinking "Wait, didn't I see this already?" but no, it was another shoot. M/b doesn't look exactly like them, but it's as if it and those shoots could all be part of a same photo book.

^:yes
And sorry for this but: ROFLMAO @ "bless you" (*wipes nose*thank you!!), "My Prelude" (engrish, engrish, engrish is the thing-ish) :D Cuuute! :love
(My Prelude isn't grammatically wrong, exactly, but it does sound very Enrish-y)

There's something different about the cover though. I think it's that pinkish glow + the "moon" lighting. Most of the shots in editorials don't seem to have much done to them other than adding text, etc... so perhaps that's why I feel this is more CD-worthy, haha.

I kind of felt the same. In Magazines and such, I always feel like the models are always being photographed against a screen, and not in a natural setting (which is the case most of the time, but not always). This cover feels natural, and non-studio-ish (even though it seems to be shot inside, anyway), in a way that I've actually never seen a picture be in a magazine. If that makes any sense?

I never said I wanted her to be sexualized and superficial. Sexy does not mean superficial. When Ayu changes to a sexy style, she's always been a very classy version of sexy. I personally am getting a little tired of her cutesy photos for now and would like something different. :yes

Well, I like the cover. It's simple and she looks pretty. :)

That's just the opinion of one person though. You can't base it off of one person. In fact (and no offense) I don't find myself attracted to all that many women who aren't Asian. I think a lot of them are very attractive, and I'm honestly not all completely for the "cute" thing. Also, I think Ayu's absolutely gorgeous.

I'm just wondering.. I see the word cutesy being used a lot.. are people honestly calling this photo that? What are you on? lol

@identity: i think it sorta looks sweet but sensual... if thats the right word to use...

It does look cute-esque to me, but definitely not as cutesy as her recent mag shoots. It's a natural and sweet cute, which I think is very pretty and fits Ayu quite well as opposed to the forced cutesy look that she's had recently. :yes

I admit that I glanced at the cover earlier and wrote it off as another usual cute look, but when I took a second look I realized that I really like it! :D

I think of it as classy and beautiful, like the Moments cover. Sure, ayu's cute, but the cover itself is not a cutesy cover.

^_^Well Ayu is beautiful. Always has been and always will be no matter how old she gets. Not all beauty always comes from the surface either. She has beauty in both.

Really anticlimactic for me...:/

When people titles this picture as cute I think it devalues ayu at least in this picture as if they were talking about a little girl, when I'm seeing a woman. Probably cause there is no other reference of what she's doing in the pic like is she was holding a teddy bear I would call it cute yes, if she had a lot of jewerly I would call it diva or classy but it's just a portrait of herself. =/

I don't really like it but I like the soft colours.
To me it seems awkward and like its a spread from some men's magazine or something. :shrug
I hope the others are better.
And her lips bother me XD

it's an OKAY over.

CHEAP FONT tho. :P

covers are gorgeous...and simple, love it :heart

...
You're kidding right? :thud
Ayu what's going on. It looks boring to me :weep