Ok, so I'm home now where I can properly type my review. Before I get into this, let me preface this by saying what I love about Ayu's concerts - I love the parts where it is just her on stage or her and her band, and if the dancers are a part of it, I like them to be in the background. Now, unfortunately, this was NOT that concert at all. For those that are more a fan of her performances with her dancers, you will probably love this show. But for me, this was about the 15th time I've seen her live and unfortunately I thought it was the worst time that I have seen one of her shows. I really loved loved loved the Love Songs album and I thought the Rock n' Roll Circus tour was one of her best ever, so I was really looking forward to this but I felt somewhat underwhelmed while watching this show tonight.
I look forward to seeing the opinions of others who went to the show because I have a feeling that this show will really divide people's opinions.
First, what I LIKED about the show:
- No, PECO! lol
- How Beautiful You Are is a really pretty song and it was also the only one of the night that Ayu sang totally solo. People were wondering if the song picks up or not. It's does somewhat, but it firmly remains a ballad, so it doesn't pick up to the point of say Progress or something. Something that might divide some fans I guess though is that Tim's vocal shows up towards the end of this song; I didn't mind it though.
- There was no lip synching
- Her hair and outfits were better overall than last year imo.
- The November performance was really nice and if not for the aforementioned Shuya, would have been amazing. The performance also incorporated the fountains from the My Story tour. That would probably be considered the "wow" moment I guess.
- I'll put this as a positive: If you are a Maro fan this just might be your favorite concert ever. He spends a lot of time on a bed with his shirt off.
ummmm, that's it. Like seriously. haha
What I didn't like:
- To pick up the last point; this concert didn't really feel like it had a wow moment. At least nothing newish. There are the fountains in November and she performs Ladies Night suspended from the ceiling in a chair, but that's all been done before, so I don't think anyone really sat back and was like amazed or anything. I'm not sure how much different the Arena tour will be because Ayu asked the audience in the encore "what did you think of the real love songs?" If this is for the most part going to be it, it
really pales in comparison to Rock n' Roll Circus.
-Ayu herself I thought was lacking some energy in this show.
- The setlist doesn't read like it would flow well together and it didn't really.
- The set and props in general I thought looked pretty cheap. More so than usual for a CDL and if this is what is being used for the Arena tour, then even more so. I also couldn't really tell what theme they were going for. Often times the costumes and what not for the dancers were just all over the place. It really looked like kind of a mish-mash onstage a lot of times.
-The band members were not highlighted even once. Enrique and Yoshio were in the background off to the side and did not move from their positions the entire show.
- The biggest problem I felt was actually most of the whole first part of the concert. Of the first 7 songs, she is actually sitting for the majority of 4 of them. She sits through most of Moon, Fated, Never Ever, and Sparkle. Yes, Sparkle. She is only up and moving in the last chorus of that song. That imo, is way too many and they were all right around each other in the set list. She then also later sat through a good chunk of Ladies Night. That just seemed odd to me in an Ayu concert and kind of dampened the excitement. She also didn't even touch the catwalk or circular stage until the 10th song in the setlist. I hope I'm not the only one that thought the first half of the concert felt kind of dead.
And this then led to what is imo a problem with the dancers. I really felt like they were highlighted waaay to much. In the first half of the concert I often felt like Ayu was singing backup vocals at a dance performance instead of the other way around like it should be. In Never Ever and Sparkle Ayu is even seated upstage while the dancers are down stage, meaning the audience had a better view of the dancers than Ayu.
Sorry to say, but this was just not my type of show.
Hopefully the others that went got more enjoyment from it than me.