[review] ARENA TOUR 2006 A ~(miss)understood~ Saitama Super Arena [11-12 March 2006] - Ayumi Hamasaki Sekai
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Old 11th March 2006, 02:13 PM
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[review] ARENA TOUR 2006 A ~(miss)understood~ Saitama Super Arena [11-12 March 2006]

Setlist:

1. Are You Wake Up?
2. Born to Be
3. Audience
4. Evolution
~video clip~
5. Step YOU
6. Ladies Night
~video clip~
7. alterna
~Yoshio guitar solo~
8. is this LOVE?
9. (miss) Understood
10. tasking
11. Pride
12. Rainy Day
~video clip~
13. Startin'
14. Unite!
15. Bold and Delicious

Encore:
~short MC~
16. Heaven - accoustic
17. teens - accoustic
~MC 2~
18. Humming 7/4
19. Boys and Girls
20. Beautiful Day

I'm pretty sure I remembered the order correctly, but I will be able to confirm 100% after I see it again tomorrow.

Review:

This was my second time seeing Ayu live(I saw the My Story tour in Hiroshima last year) and this arena - the Saitama Super Arena certainly lived up to it's name. It's well super huge. The concert was sold out(no suprise, she sells out her tours every year). Getting merchandise was no fun as all of the stands were outside and with the huge number of people there it seemed to take forever, plus it's not exactly warm in the Tokyo area this time of year - I think most people there probabaly ended up with a cold after last night. (like me) There are actually 7(!) Ayupans this year! Only I couldn't find where to buy them! They weren't up with the regular merchandise and one of the people working there motioned towards the concert hall when I asked where to get them. But I must have missed them somehow because I didn't see them - will have to check again today.

The stage: Before the concert started, I was disappointed with the stage setup. It is exactly the same as the My Story tour. A stage with two large video screens on either side and one in the middle of the stage. On the stage itself are steps that cascade up to the video screen in the middle(like the my story stage) and then there is a walkway that goes out into the audience with a round little stage at the end. (like the my story stage, see a pattern? ^_^) The only difference is that on the stage there are multiple seperate video screens aside from the main screen. This is going to be hard to describe, but I'll try. These screens are set up so they look like the curtains that would seperate the wings on a theater stage and each of the screens can move across the stage. So while the stage is essentially the same, the video screen effects throughout the concert are very cool.

Are You Wake Up - The videos on the stage play footage of Ayu and the staff backstage - doing the pep talk with the group before the start of the show, walking to the stage etc.

Born to Be - Everything goes dark and the first muted line of BTB plays, then everything lights up at once for the start of the first chorus and there is a big red rose in the center of the stage with Ayu dressed in a red dress with a red hat shaped like a flower on. It's like she is at the apex of the rose. This opening got a nice reaction from the audience.

Audience/Evolution - She strips off the bid dress to reveal another flower themed dress underneath. This one is red and yellow and short. Looks kind of like a 60s go-go dancer type dress with thigh high red sparkly boots.

Video clip plays of Ayu in a cute pink and black nighty with guys with numbers painted on their chests chasing after her. Really cute and fun video that of course segues into -

Step YOU - Ayu and the guys appear on stage wearing the same thing as the video. By the end of the song, there are 5 poles with chains attached to them on stage. Each of the guys gets changed to the pole and then

Ladies Night - when ladies night starts, suddenly it is the women who are chained to the poles. A mishap occured here - one of the girls' pole fell over while she was chained to it. A bunch of staff members rushed on stage to help her while the song continued to play. Ayu gets free part way through the song and goes up to each girl to try and break their chains but can't. When she got to the girl who fell (she had been undone from the chains by the staff at this point) Ayu gave her a hug. I can't remember exactly what happened in the performance because I was focusing in the girl that fell, but somehow the rest all get free too and they make their way down the stage into the audience - remiscent of the My Name's Women performance last year. And no, Ayu does not do the rap, she doesn't even lip synch that part, she just lets the track play.

The next video clip now shows the freed Ayu and girls having a pool party until Ayu falls in the pool and then the set gets all blue and bubbly. Alterna's going to take place underwater The video shows Ayu underwater and she opens her eyes and starts singing the first muffled "Heys".

alterna - the song kicks into full gear and at the center, suspended above the stage is Ayu and two other dancers in a ball made up of red lines. It's hard to describe without a picture but it's like Ayu is in a bubble at the bottom of the ocean but it looks like it has red vines around it. With all that going on, it was hard to make out Ayu's outfit, but it's a zebra pattern and she looks like maybe she is supposed to be a sea horse or something, lol. It was weird. As the song continues the ball starts 'floating' down the stage and out over the walkway that goes into the audience. It's really cool and very theatrical - one of the main centerpieces to the concert. Hopefully some pictures will be available soon as I'm not sure I described it well enough.

Yoshio gets the stage all to himself for his guitar solo. It was great - I love Yoshio.

is this Love?/(miss)Understood - is this Love? starts off much the same way it did at A-Nation. Ayu is wearing a two piece light blue and silver shiny outfit. She is wearing long form fitting pants with a short skirts wrapped around, all in silver and then a long sleeve form fitting top that shows her stomach.

tasking - the dancers take center stage here and some cool video effects play.

Pride - Ayumi in a black dress with a diamond pattern in the front. I think it was a crucifix but can't remember. The video panels on the sides feature pillars that slowly dissolve away, then get rebuilt and twisted and vines grow over them. I must say I did not like this dress. I didn't think it looked flattering on her at all.

Rainy Day - she strips off the dress to reveal a white one underneath. Looks similiar to the white dress she wore durring Monochrome in Arena tour 2000. She sings as one of the male dancers dance in the background. They embrace as the last clock noises of the song ends. Got an awwww from the audience.

shows the begining of the Startin' video with the guys in the video shop and the cheesy announcer guy announcing Ayumi. It then cuts to static and Ayumi appears on stage to perform Startin'.

Startin/Unite - Ayumi is in a short silver dress that's all sparkly and she has a bright red long wig on with a diamond head dress on. She looks like She-ra or a superhero or something.

Bold and Delicious - damn, almost made the whole concert without that song. :p However, the stage setup made this song worth it. Along with alterna this is the other major set piece of the show. Ayu stands at a railing that has appeared at center stage and as Bold and Delicious plays, where Ayu is standing keeps rising up and each level reveals like a crystal chandelier beneath her. By the time the song is over, Ayu is high up and beneath her are layers of crystals - it looks like Ayu is at the top of a wedding cake and each layer is made up of crystals and then glitter falls from the ceiling and it is just one big sparkly ... thing. It's very pretty.

Heaven/teens - Both were very nicely performed. It's the same accoustic setup that she has done at her last 2 CDL concerts. Teens was especially impressive - the song obviously means a lot to Ayu or else I don't think she would have put a cover in her tour.

The last three are basically the same as her past concert. Durring Beautiful Day, red and gold streamers are shot into the audience.

Stand out performances: is this LOVE?, (miss) Understood, and teens.

alterna is my favorite song on the album, however I was a bit disppointed in the performance. As a theatrical performance it was great, but for that type of song, I prefer it to be more about the song and the performing of the song than about all of the bells and whistles. I would have liked it more if it had been performed like is this LOVE? and (m)U.

Those two songs were great emotional performances with just Ayu and the band. Also teens was an emotional performance - you can tell the song has special meaning to Ayu. She was on the verge of tears durring it.

No fairyland, which I thought was suprising. I would have taken fairyland over B&D any day of the week. I also wish that Criminal and Will had been included somehow.

This concert really didn't have anything that topped the whole water fountain show of the My Story tour and I don't think it was one of her best concerts costume wise, but overall for some reason, I liked this concert slightly better.

Night 2:
Originally I wasn't going to write anything about the 2nd concert, but some interesting things happened so I decided I would. Also I've removed the part where I ranked her tours to date from the original post. I want to give this tour like a week to sink in before I rank it, I may not feel the same after some time passes.

Info about the 7 concert Ayupans : Apparently this year the are only available for purchase through Avex's online shop. I really wanted to get them. Maybe they will make them available at later dates on the tour, but as of now it is online only. This will make it super rare for foreigners to get these I think.

Ok, Rainy Day night 2: There was a sheet of water that fell in front of the stage for most of the performance. I don't know how I could have missed it on night 1 - I just must not have been able to see it from the angle I was at.

Beautiful Day night 2: She started crying durring this song, so at least we know her tears aren't for just when a DVD is being filmed.

The MC: They replayed the clip on the monitors of her falling during the wave at Saitama last year. Then Ayu said she wanted to redo the wave without falling this time. So I got to do the wave.

And the best part - on night 1 there was the messup in Ladies Night and on the 2nd night there was an even bigger messup:

After alterna, Yoshio came out to do his solo. Only this time he walked all the way to the end of the round stage that is out in the audience(the night before he had been center stage on the main stage). All the lights on the rest of the stage were out and one spotlight was on Yoshio. He played his solo and then just kept playing and playing longer than the night before. I looked towards the darkness of the main stage and was able to make out barely that the alterna ball was still hanging over the stage and Ayu was still inside! She got trapped in the alterna ball! lol. The ball could still move backwards and forwards, but it couldn't lower. After a few more minutes of Yoshio playing, all of a sudden Ayu just starts going "Wooo woooo" and cheers Yoshio on. They put the lights back on Ayu and she just starts cheering from Yoshio from inside the ball and the crowd starts getting into it. The 2 backup singers come out and join Yoshio out in the center and the band just launches into an impromptu jam session and become a real rock band for a few minutes. They still couldn't get Ayu down so she just decides ok, what the hell, I'm just going to perform is this LOVE? and (miss)Understood from in here. She was really limited to how she could move around in the ball but helped make up for it in really singing her guts out durring those two songs and it made for a one of a kind Ayu performance. You could also see durring is this LOVE? a few times where she would look down and like estimate how far it would be for her to jump down and then almost do it and decide against it at the last second. ^_^ She missed an entire costume change in her show - don't know it that's ever happened before.

I must give the band and staff props for being able to improvise so well at the last minute.

After those two songs they moved the video screen and had the ball move backstage. They still couldn't get it to lower though because when it was time for Pride to start they had Yoshio come out and do another guitar solo. I'm sure most of the people there that hadn't seen the first show were confused, but I just couldn't help but laugh at the whole situation. Ayu definitely had her Spinal Tap moment! She couldn't perform onstage because she got trapped in her underwater red sea bubble thing. That's just so ridiculous when you think about it.

Eventually she did get out there to do Pride but I'm wondering if they might change the alterna performance for the other dates because if this thing messes up this badly on the second day, it may be more trouble than it is worth. My Mom also thought the thing just looked unsafe - Ayu isn't harnessed into it or anything from what we could see.

Also on a related note, this kind of messes with the theory that wearing a head set mic usually means that the artist is lip synching. Because she wore a head set mic for these performances. The first night I wondered if she lip sanc alterna simply because it didn't seem like she would be able to sing with all of the theatrics that were going on with the ball and all the moving around inside of it etc. But she was obviously singing is this LOVE? and (m)U on the headset mic live, so when this DVD comes out and people start saying that she lip sanc alterna(many people probably will say that once they see it), I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt and say no, she didn't.

I hope that this whole ordeal makes it onto the DVD release. They may only show a clip of it or something. I hope they show the whole thing, otherwise those 2 one of a kind performances will get lost. (and all of Yoshio's great guitar solos too^_^)





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[Edited by AHS Staff]
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