Mhmmmm Ok ... You are absolutely right. I am so so sooooo sorry. I hope you can forgive me :yes

I will never do it again ... I promise!

^ I knew someone would say "There is an Ai thread" when i posted - but I don't want t discuss Ai but she came up and that are what forums for after all.

Yet I hesitated to send my post - so i guess it is okay for you to react that way.

@DeepRiver hahha oh, the shade.

And wow 1,63 million in one day. How can they even print that much lol

Every time I talk to my Japanese student (he's a Japanese 29 yo man living in Brazil, working for some big company) and my Japanese teacher (also 29 yo, moved from Kyoto seven years ago) about Jpop we end up talking a lot about Utada Hikaru and Ken Hirai. They talk very fondly of them both and are super hyped for Fantôme as well (I actually sang along with my student to 花束を君に)

Is Ken Hirai still a big Nummer in Japan? He would be a great Duett Partner for Godtada!

^Nope, not anymore. Almost 90% of the artists from our time (Ai, kuu, Mai, MISIA, Ringo, ayu, etc...) are all pretty much going downhilll except hikki.
Back then 2 million copies (overall) were not uncommon for the top-tier artists. If you look at the numbers from this site for 2001 yearly album chart, you can see 22 albums sold over million copies, and the top 5 sold at least 2 million. (If you go back to 1999, you can see the top 8 were all over 2 million copies).

And yes, that 03.28 (to be more precise, it was 03.27) was a big day in Japan music. I remember that oricon renovated its website again that particular day when the number came out. It was very insane for the whole week. Hikki and ayu fans fought so badly, and those who loved both of them were really torn (including myself, though I was hoping hikki to win lol).

It is the nature of discussion for other people or topics to get brought up when talking about a subject. As long as it doesn't completely derail a thread and is related, it's fine. There's no rule saying you must only ever mention UTADA in the UTADA thread. There have been far worse OT things brought up around here and most of us are guilty of it, so... :rolleyes

I don't get why so many people dislike the Ookami song! I liked it from the first time I heard it. Not my favorite, but I don't dislike it.

Also, I listened to the album with headphones for the first time yesterday and the intro to Boukyaku is INTENSE. I loved it so much already, but man. I wish it was longer.

yeah, I know that, but... let's say: now we're thinking they printed 400k for fantome for it's first press. how much did they used to print for the first press back then. I mean: the first DAY sold more than a bunch of other albums lol were those numbers predicted?

It's not hard to predict. I think the first press for Distance was about 3.5 million copies or so. Back then, cds were still the dominant source, and people preordered copies in stores (as it wasn't that easy to order online). So they could use the number of preorders to determine how well the albums would sell. Ayu was at her prime time, and hikki's first album sold like a hot cake. Plus both companies (esp avex) have already prepared lots of advertisements everywhere like... a month before hand. You can see their promotions basically in every corner of Shibuya. And as you can see the cd stores made some stands outside the store to sell Fantôme, they did the same thing for Distance and A BEST (but 10x... They even put stands down the streets). That was really the golden era of female singers...

^ God, the battle between Ayu and Utada back then was ruthless as it gets to friendly competition (because of the companies, no doubt.) I wish I had been a fan back then/old enough back then to understand what was going on because it must've been one hell of a ride. I cannot believe how much work went into the promotion of those albums (considering Ayu didn't even want A BEST released at that time). But I've seen the pictures. My favorite is of the train station (can't remember which one) having one side advertising Ayu and the other advertising Utada. It really was crazy.

I gotta say avex did a better job on promoting A BEST.
1) Change the avex logo to A BEST in every avex commercial since Jan.
2) Pasted ayu's face in every corner, so that you can't miss seeing her face wherever you went. (Yeah, even the lamp posts on the streets have her banners).
3) Ayu almost dominated magazines' covers.
4) Lots of cms.
5) The glamorous countdown cm from day 5 to day 1.

And all I can remember from Toshiba's promotion on Distance is the ugly album cm...

Lol, i remember Hikki's CM. The good old days ;)

Not to forget ... A Best had 597 Versions and Distance only 1!

To be honest, I like how there's not so much in-your-face on-the-streets competition. I get so annoyed seeing one face everywhere I go. I totally understand that they gotta do promotions because promotions=sales, sales=profit but had I been actually living in Japan around that time seeing Ayu's face EVERYWHERE would've annoyed me.

Nowadays it's mostly done through the internet--youtube, instagram, twitter, whatever--and if you don't care about it, you can just scroll on by or tell youtube you're not interested in it and it doesn't appear again.

I mean yeah, I'm sure the predictions and anticipations of the 'battle' was fun and I'm sure it was exciting to watch from a 'distance' (hint hint; wink wink; nudge nudge... shut up. I'm funny) but to have actually been there would've driven me insane.

Though I do have to say I find it interesting that even without all that promotion (or at least not as much promotion) Hikki still got huge sales whilst Ayu went on an advertisement media-murdering-marathon and didn't outsell by all that much in technical terms. (to be honest, I don't really remember how much those albums sold at the time. So that last line right there could just be me just throwing swings in the dark, which I usually tend to do when I try to sound smart :laugh Please don't hate on me if I'm absolutely wrong. OTL)

10.10: No. 1 - 13,155
10.11: No. 3 - 7,836
10.12: No.1 - 6,053
10.13: No.1 - 7,536
10.14: No. 1 - 5,733

Est. weekly sales: 40,313
__________________________________________________ _______________

LOL. But true, A BEST had 6 versions (if you wanna get all the booklet covers). Not to mention that you had no idea what cover you would get since it was hidden the sleeve.

And that Distance cm... Just the translucent Distance cover spinning slowly to the center while showing the music videos. Then we heard hikki said, "Utada Hikaru, Dees-tance" (sounds like she's pronouncing it in Japanese way lol). Such a lame cm...


You're totally right. That was how it drove me into my first turn off towards ayu during that period. Basically she was everywhere in the JPop world. Too much exposure (magazines, tv lives, the fever of DOME TOUR), hectic cd releases (Jan - evolution; Feb - ayu-mi-x III and re-release 8' singles; Mar - NEVER EVER + A BEST; May - Endless sorrow; July - UNITE!; Sep - Dearest + ayu-ro mix 2 + trance; Dec - A song is born), lots of cms (VISEE, Hi-chew, TU-KA). I got saturated by those releases, so I was indifferent when she released I am... I didn't get back to her until she released RAINBOW.

I can't really recall how much promotions did hikki have for Distance. All I can say is that ayu's promotions were far more fabulous than hikki. Even I got excited when she did those countdown cms. Don't forget, hikki was already the queen at that point, and ayu was just rising to the peak. I gotta be fair, they both got benefits from that battle. Hikki secured her "already queen statue". I mean, even without the battle she could still easily get over maybe 3.5 million in the end. But that battle actually showed how strong she was. For ayu, before the battle she was just one of those "most popular singers at that very moment). That battle actually pushed her to the peak (at least that's how I felt during that moment). It's like, "hey ayu can actually compete with hikki. Look how close the sales are." If someone told me that ayu could compete with hikki half a year ago (Sept 2000, when Duty released), I would just laugh. But she proved that she could compete with the queen and eventually became one of the queens.

^thats not quite true. Ayes peak was with the A single and the 2nd and 3rd album...after A BEST compiled everything she went down.

A BEST is Ayus peak saales wise, it's her Immaculate Collection. She was definitely a bigger celebrity after it than before it though

I wish I had experienced the madness of jpop world in 2001 but I was obsessed with Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings instead. XD

Also, Fantôme is a great album. I was finally able to listen to it through yesterday and I did so 6 times. It's such a epic album. I didn't really expect it because singles were so slow paced. I thought this album will be a ballad album but I was positively surprised. <3

All that and yet...didn't Utada get #1 the first week? Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Distance is, in my opinion, Utada's lesser album.

She got #1 in the first week but it in the second week it was Ayu with around 500k copies sold.

Distance had that LP version, wasn't it? I guess it was released together with the normal version...

Distance is still my favorite album from Hikki. I like how RnB she was back then, and I'm still sad she never returned to it, but I think it's more because she went further to hew "own genre".