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I want to say that regardless of how you interpret her words, it's still okay to be a fan of the work she has done in the last few years. Those are moments that she was having fun with, or expressing herself in the most honest way she could, finding those moments of freedom and happiness in what has seemed to be a long time of strife and hardship personally behind the scenes. I don't look at the long gap between music releases and think she was just having fun, I see it as Ayu struggling to connect with "Ayumi Hamasaki", and the few pieces of music we have had (in comparison to her typical release schedule) are even more remarkable to me in retrospect, in acknowledging how hard it has likely been to write and record things in that sort of headspace.
It doesn't mean I don't agree that there was definitely a shift... but she's human. I don't think she could help it. She needed this time to do whatever she needed to do.
For anyone who has been just as much a fan for years (whether you were enjoying all of her output or not), you have still been supporting the same Ayu. Here it is Ayu finding that she has refound a spark that she had lost, but it doesn't mean her recent work is any less special. It was just Ayu coping in a different way and this marks a new era.
That's my interpretation, and I'm sure there will be many more that people will have. Everyone here is such an invested fan that they come back after all these years, and still care for her well-being most of all. Let's try to remember that even if we may have different opinions on her work, past or present.
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