It's not possible to say that the reviews aren't well-written, they're definitely well-written, but keep in mind that they're written quite a while ago when information wasn't quite as available on Ayu, I think.
I also read the I am... review--really feels like a genuine discovery by a foreigner of Ayu's music at a time when research into the discography/tracklist wasn't so easy. The person couldn't find what the hidden track on I am... was.
But there's also very genuine appreciation of the music and the grandiose of the arrangement by Ayu's composers and arrangers (and Ayu herself) so I find that there's a much deeper understanding of Ayu's music here than with most reviewers online nowadays.
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And of course, I'm not actually worrying about collating order or type-case while I'm listening to the records, but the bulk of the singing is in Japanese, and as I've admitted before, I've usually found it very hard to develop emotional attachments to music whose lyrics I don't understand. But apparently if the music is kinetic enough, it doesn't matter nearly as much as I'd assumed, and Ayumi Hamasaki and producer Max Matsuura's songs, at their most upbeat, take kinesis to very near the point of absurdity. Many of the skittering sprint-techno arrangements on I am..., their fourth album, would sound like they're being played at twice the proper speed even without the exaggeration provided by Ayu's helium-infused vocals. In my favorite moments, with this album turned way up, the sensation is something like having the crap beaten swiftly out of you by a cheerfully belligerent Tinker Bell, perhaps after being shrunk down to her size and trapped with her inside Cher's pitch-corrector.
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