[Delirium-Zer0]

I can not BELIEVE some of the stuff being said on page 25 regarding PV comparisons. O_O!!!!

Yea, I agree. E.g. SURREAL is seen as a classic PV (..I think), and I agree it has some artistic concepts, but it's basically a toned down version of BLUE BIRD with Ayu standing at random locations. =3

Uh, no, BLUE BIRD has no plot.
A big thing for ayu back in the day was the idea of facing herself (something that seems to have stopped with the RAINBOW video, which was also wonderful). It was scary to her and it was more like an adventure than something normal that she thought about. So when ayu dreams about climbing up the mountain and facing the cat version of herself, that's actually something thought-through and important. The the-plant-isn't-really-there special effects are really well done & interesting looking too.
What's BLUE BIRD? Yay let's have fun at the beach. It's exactly the definition of no planning that seems to go into ayu's videos. "Let's have fun & be silly & stick my dancers in the video cuz they're my friends!!" was as much thought as probably went into that one.

Like evolution is nothing but an upbeat version of flyhigh.
Without the audience.
And only one ayumi.

WTF is wrong with you? Have you SEEN evolution?? Like, the whole way through? And paid attention? The idea of Ayu as a pop star as a holographic projection, whose image is carefully controlled, is actually a really interesting one. And it's a great metaphor for what a pop star really is. Given ayu's status as the biggest thing in japan when the PV was released, the video is far more interesting than "just another Fly high." (which, btw, was a fairly interesting PV about self-examination, but I don't think they took the concept far enough.)

It's not bad, but I think it's not fair to say that her pvs in the past were so godlike, and then now so bad.
It sounds so confucian to say it like that. ahaha.

Actually I've hated her videos' editing since the beginning of time, and the art direction is often not so great. But more thought about the plot, message, visual metaphors, and references went into them before; that's hard to deny.

Like, to me, Dearest, Rainbow, Momentum, JEWEL, evolution, SURREAL, they were all about glamourous, star images.
They had storylines of course, but you know like, they also had that glamour glamour sort of feel.
To me, at least.

They not only had storylines (aside from JEWEL, which is nothing but sparklies), but they had good, well-executed, intelligent storylines with meaning. Most of her new PVs have wimpy storylines without much effort - they DEPEND on the glamour, where older videos depended on the message. Ayu's not even IN "Endless sorrow", for example (on the home video version she shows up at the end, but the original TV version of that video, which we saw for MONTHS before A Clips volume 2 came out, doesn't have ayu in it at all). You can't say that's a video that doesn't depend on its story & message. Mirrorcle World, however, depends solely on ayu's pretty dresses & cool boots.

Like, Boys & Girls, to me, was her first glamour pv.
All it was was her. In the yellow rooms.
That's it.

QFT, just to show I'm not one of those "ayu's older PVs are automatically better because they're older" types of people.
However, ayu's first real story PV was "WHATEVER", and it is still one of my absolute favorites to this day. I mean that's a really sad & beautiful video.

Modern Ayu videos that have planning & thought, I have respect for, but they're still executed very poorly most of the time. "glitter/fated" was really not scripted well enough... if you're going to do a short film, put more time into ironing out the shoddy script. If you can't do that, don't do the short film.

"alterna" was the last ayu video that made me go "oh wow, this is really really good!" It had a great plot about being manipulated by a record company, coupled with great imagery & fabulous "old movie" stylings. That video had her best art direction EVER.

I'll acknowledge that some modern videos like "Marionette", "(don't) Leave me alone", "Together When..." kinda, and "part of me" (actually those are the only 3 or 4 I can think of) had a little bit of a plot, but like "Fly high", it just wasn't executed very well; the plot wasn't very fleshed out, or there weren't enough metaphors, or the art direction was shoddy.

I have my hopes high for GREEN though, based on the pictures. It DOES look like planning has gone into this one, and I'm hoping there's a better put-together story than "kyoai" had, and I'm hoping the colors have low saturation (the old-timey theme would lend itself to that look) and I'm hoping there's war involved (the time it's supposed to take place would lend itself to that) and I hope any special effects used don't suck like the fake glass in "glitter" did.

I keep on hoping for a video that wows me, but it's been a few years, so. We'll see what happens I guess.