Hi all! I'm not a regular poster to the forums but I am a massive ayu fan and felt reasonably incensed to join in the conversation surrounding CDL11-12.
I've watched every arena tour and CDL since AT03-04 and to me she's never done a below-average show before now. In fact, most if not all of her shows have been way above-average. I'll also be the first to admit that I hated CDL10-11 when I saw the Ustream rip, I thought it was very poorly shot, but I was pleasantly surprised by the DVD. This time, I felt the Ustream was far better but the show itself was absolutely terrible.
I saw the set-list first of all and was distinctly unimpressed. Apart from Sparkle and sending mail I wasn't especially looking forward to seeing any of the songs performed, particularly evolution and Humming, which seem to crop up year after year after year after year.
The stage looked cluttered and was designed in such a way that was never going to fit in with some of the themes used later in the show. Despite not being visually pleasing to me, it worked fine with the doom-and-gloom numbers in the first half but seeing performances like Ladies Night with the rainbow-feathers and brightly-coloured lighting against a backdrop of a dark, creepy hotel just didn't gel. I also didn't like the platform the band and chorus were positioned on and the fact it stayed lit the whole time. I thought the chorus in particular looked awkward in the numbers where they weren't used, whereas Princess and PECO quite often used to disappear into the background.
The choreography was shocking. Once we'd seen Shuya flailing and flinging himself around the stage to an ayu power-ballad once we never needed to see it again. Unfortunately we've seen it a thousand times by now and now he appears to be choreographing entire shows, as the other dancers seem to be doing it. Maro for instance has buckets of talent as a dancer, far more than Shuya, but he was reduced to random "expressive" dance with no real direction.
But my main issue with this show was the lack of cohesion with theme. For a start, most CDL shows haven't had a particular theme or narrative at all, just being a simple concert performing a selection of songs. Now all of a sudden we have a CDL show with three or four themes and stories running at once, sometimes more than one on stage at the same time. As I mentioned before, the stage didn't fit in with some of these themes, which made them look awkward. Between the clowns, the chimney sweeps, the neon PJ's and the rainbow feathers it was just total nonsense from beginning to end.
Despite ayu's vocals being very impressive, for me there was absolutely nothing to like about this show and I didn't feel at any point that she was enjoying herself. Sadly, I don't think the properly filmed and engineered DVD is going to do anything to change my mind this time.
