Opinions on COUNTDOWN LIVE 2004-2005

[ayu_ayu301]

well .. I was wishing for nicer costumes .. her costumes are so-so this time in my opinion .. but she is a lot more active this time .. dance-wise I mean ... which is good ...

Stadium Tour 2002 still top my list .. and I was watching it again a few days ago .. I think the reason it was so good was because it was outdoor and ayu danced almost the whole concert .. and the costumes are really nice throughout .. I wonder if Avex will let Ayu do something like that again .. or at least do something like Arena Tour 2002 .. all those costumes are like jaws-dropping ..

[PSYCHEDELICOdust]

I don't like her vocals and I thought it was a bit....cheap? I don't know, just what I've seen in the past, I'd expect more.

[lolo66]

I saw MJ in the opening haha ^^;;;

[hiroko1234]

i love it! her vocal is better than ARENA TOUR 03-04!

[Qt Mashi]

i've only heard her singing M and her vocals were perfect, it was the best M vocal i heard

[jkm444]

I thought it was okay I like arena 2003-2004 a better. It was funny that ayu forgot the lyrics for trauma. (This reminds of wat happen to ayu for voyage.) I really like the Whatever, Duty, and inspire perf.

[ayu_ayu301]

yaa so that's what I was looking for ! .. it seem Avex was a bit cheap about the production of this concert .. but ayu definitely sing and move a little better .. but the stage design and costumes lack a lot of things ..

[Surreal]

Countdown Lives are usually of a cheaper production. Actually this CDL's audience capacity is already very big compared to her past CDLs. Anyway I don't understand why people add an 'Arena Tour' in front of the CDL. They are two different concerts, or am I mistaken?

Oh, not too found of her vocals in some of the performances. Very flat and low.

[SunshineSlayer]

Yeah, I don't know why people are putting Arena Tour in the title either. This is not the arena tour. I thought it was very good, not her best CDL but not the worst either. The CDLs are never as good production wise as her tours and she never has as many costume changes either, so this was typical for a CDL.

[Jonny]

I found this countdown live to be rather monochrome and bland. I haven't fully been able to get myself to watch it in its entirety though, so I shall save my final judgements for later. But this is my current impression:

The stage wasn't very exciting to look at. It just looked like a boring mass of white. At some of the closer shots, I could see how intricate the designs are. I really like some of the patterns that were on there. I don't think it was portrayed very well though. Maybe it's just the horrible quality of the video, but from here it just looks like a mess. I didn't think the lighting was very good either, but I'm going to chalk that up to bad video quality once again. Hopefully, this will be released on DVD. But I was just left with a feeling of cheapness.

Costume-wise, I'm sure some better choices could have been made. Considering her previous costumes at her other countdown lives, I did expect much more. But same as the stage...boring.

Vocally, it had its ups and downs. She never fails to amaze me whenever she just nails M. CAROLS was absolutely beautiful and perfect. I'd have to say it was probably her best performance of it. All the others sounded like she was straining. Then as mentioned previously, she has her moments where she tends to get flat. It also annoys me whenever she cuts a note short instead of holding it out...listen to TO BE. I really like that song, but I thought she killed it... =\

This turned out to be longer than I expected...so I'll cut it here. Overall, it felt like the show was rushed and didn't carry the same quality as her other countdown lives. It left me feeling empty. But I'll sit down and watch the whole thing without skipping around, and maybe my mind will change.

[alternarist]

i just like it when she sang Duty.. i do not think her vocals are that good cos she simply cant reach the high notes for INSPIRE and others as well... she cant hold the note for a longer period of time.. and gosh her Trauma.. so funny.. lol

[Qt Mashi]

Originally Posted by Surreal

Anyway I don't understand why people add an 'Arena Tour' in front of the CDL. They are two different concerts, or am I mistaken?

yeah that got me kinda mixed up

[elaniel]

i think it had some of her strongest performances.

she made Whatever sound even better live than on CD!! It was so cool.

And when she forgot the words to Trauma That was cute.

(She messed up a bit on the second verse of Inspire as well but it was so good to see her do the entire concert live)

I just missed Unite! but I guess we cant get what we wanta ll the time.

I just hop they release it on DVD (Unlike when they didnt do 03-04 countdown live DVD)

[Surreal]

The worst vocals were probably during when she was wearing that white taiko jacket. Every song there is kind of bad. But others were surprisingly good. Eg. M, Carols, Walking Proud

[SnowDrop]

The WHATEVER performance rocked! I really think that this song suits her voice. However, Immature sounded horrible and I can't even watch the whole song through. The Duty performance was so weak and at some points I didn't hear her voice at all. But M and CAROLS were perfect, I think.

I felt like the encore started really earily in this concert because she did those encore songs (Flower Garden, Independent etc..) after like 40 minutes so I just felt like the encore was more than 1 hour long and it got very boring. Her voice was very very bad at some times and it sounded false during many of the songs that she usually does a very good job with.

Her costumes were lacking in style, the only costume I like was the WHATEVER costume. She danced a bit more than usually and I didn't always like that..it was kind of silly and made her voice sound even worse.

The worst part of the concert was when she sang TO BE and Key. She can't hold those high notes during the chorus on both songs. The background vocalists did a HORRIBLE job during the whole show and I think they destoryed those two songs.

Overall, I couldn't have been more disapointed and I hope that if this concert is released on a DVD they will edit it a bit or make Ayu's voice sound more on Duty. Maybe it was just the poor quailty of the file...

[hiro]

I hated it when her vocals went nasal and high. I really loved it though when she uses her lower, more powerful voice like what she did for Inspire and Whatever. The duty performance was dissapointing since it wasn't nearly as good as the one in Dome Tour. The independence perf was ruined by the cutesy baby voice. TO BE was actually ok even though im not too fond of the song. It's nice to hear a diff version of it.

I'm still waiting for the day when Ayu stops singing high and nasal. lol
I;m gonna wait till she's around 30 and maybe it'll kick in.

[tsuki]

I loved every part of it. TO BE and Key is two of my favs and she sang her heart out...

[SunshineSlayer]

Yeah, I actually thought the accoustic To Be and Key were some of the best moments of the concert.

[ruixiong89]

Well, the only CDL performance I enjoyed was the ayumi hamasaki countdown live 2000-2001. That was the kick ass one. However, I do agree that for this particular live, Avex is still very cheap with every thing that they are doing.

With regards to Ayu's voice, I know that her CDL performances do then to be a little weaker because of the tight schedules. She first has to rush with the Kouhaku Competition then rush to the CDL performance. I guess for CDL 2000 to 2001, she probably had more rest then she had now, so she sounded better.

This CDL was still great vocal wise, except for some of her older songs in by which she just couldn't sustain that voice she had in the past with them. Her costume changes didn't really interest me, but they were still visually ok.

Overall, I think that the CDL is quite good, BUT Avex seriously needs to invest MORE and I mean MUCH MORE to promote the CDL and improve on the background and everything, because it just seems a much cheaper production to me. (Avex is always like making the wrong moves ... for Ayumi, don't they know that "cheap" productions DON'T SELL? Although you're running on a "tight" budget (at least I suppose that), you should still always deliver top notch quality to your consumers!)

[Winky]

I thought that they were putting an "Arena Tour" in front of it (as for the 03-04 CDL) 'cause it's part of the Arena Tour.
I think they just make a little change in the tracklist (i'm not sure of that, but for this concert, it was like there was an "Encore" in the middle), just because it's suppose to be a party, as it's new year's eve.
It was that for cdl 03-04 (well the Evolution part and everything), it was the same stage, costumes etc...

As for the concert itself, i seriously found that it was the worst ever (even the CDL 02-03 was better!!!). Some of the costumes were horrible, the stage is just blank (i already found the Arena 2004's stage poor, but there...), there was just no point on this concert. It was boring. It's the first time i did another thing while watching an Ayu concert on my computer. There was nothing visually, so what's the point? The vocal performance wasn't that good (except for the Duty/M part, it was excellent (vocally i mean, there was nothing to see except the costume...)), so i better hear my CDs...

The only positive point i found was that i was glad to hear i live performance of songs she's never sung before (Duty was a great surprise).

And i'm still mad they KILLED Evolution >_______________<