ayumi hamasaki ~POWER of MUSIC~ 2011 A LIMITED EDITION

"Welcome to the POWER of MUSIC!!"

That was how Queen of J-Pop opened her 2011 tour in Japan titled "POWER of MUSIC". Originally, the concert was supposed to be named "HOTEL Love songs" but because of the Japan earthquakes and nuclear disasters, she thought that the concept was not appropriate and therefore, being the influential and responsible artist that she is, she scraped the extravagant concept and settled for probably her simplest tour ever.

There were minimal costume changes and even if there were, the costumes were simple and straightforward. The entire concert features a round stage in the middle of the arena with a massive band and orchestra supporting ayu's vocals. On top of that, the dancers were kept simple as well - they did not have costume changes throughout the entire concert.

Her concept of simplicity was so that she can capitalize on music and her singing to touch the hearts of the Japanese who were still mourning for the loss of the thousands of people which were prematurely snatched off the planet due to the unfortunate disasters. She wants to sing to make everyone happy and stronger and I really commend her on her efforts because despite having the simplest concert I've ever seen, she delivered really well.

Let's look at the packaging now, yes?

Unlike her previous arena tours or major tours which normally comes in a plastic slipcase with two DVD casings, she released her 2011 concert DVD in a single plastic case, continuing with the simplistic concept of the entire concert. Honestly, there's nothing special about the entire packaging because it's just a simple case but nevertheless, the pictures are still awesome.

Here's the close up of the summary stuck to the shrink wrap of the Hong Kong press of this DVD concert. It roughly translates to what I've previous mentioned regarding the unfortunate disaster in Japan. Furthermore, it also mentions that this particular show was filmed at Saitama Super Arena and 25,000 made it for this limited edition of the concert, which basically included new songs into the original track list performed elsewhere in Japan. Songs from her mini-album, "FIVE" was also performed at this limited edition of the concert.

The DVD casing minus the shrink wrap. This is also probably the first time ayu has a stand where she puts her lyrics on so she could refer to it when necessary but honestly, I have not seen her refer to anything on that stand throughout the entire concert though. Maybe it simply serves as a prop.

Also, another difference between this particular concert and her previous arena tours is that this time round, no making of footages were included inside this box. They basically compacted the whole concert into a single DVD and the second DVD is for some of the other songs performed at other locations. Slightly disappointed that they did away with the making of but again, it could be because the process was painful due to the disaster and therefore, they omitted that.

What I really love about the back of the packaging is the design drawn by ayu herself. This design was featured in the merchandizes that went on sale during the tour and it reminds the Japanese to continue having hope. She's not the only artist who did designs like this. Lady Gaga released arm bands to encourage the Japanese as well. These genuine gestures are really touching, no?

When you open the box, you see the lyric and photo insert on the left and the DVDs on the right. Nothing extremely special about these other than the fact that they used back the "HOTEL Love songs" A logo for this concert and they used it again for the COUNTDOWN LIVE 2011-2012 and for this year's 2012 tour - probably the most used tour logo ever. On top of that, the lyric booklet is also smaller than usual.

The cover of the lyric booklet in it's full glory. Normally, the lyric booklet would be as long as the DVD casing itself in terms of its length but this time round, I don't know why they opted for this smaller design. Saving paper or something?

Size does not define what goes inside the booklet, yes? Because in this tiny booklet, we still get to feast our eyes on tons of gorgeous images plus the lyrics of the songs performed in the concert. Here's the first page with the track list.

This is also the first concert where ayu experimented with different arrangement of the same songs. For instance, the famous interlude "Catcher In The Light" was done in the orchestra styled featured in her "My Story Classical" remix album, along with sone other selected songs like "walking proud". Furthermore, other songs like "Born to be..." and "Mirrorcle World" were done in a different but unique and fresh arrangements as well. Really interesting~

Every single song from her mini album "FIVE" were performed in this concert and what I liked was that ayu managed to invite Naota Urata and JUNO to perform the songs that they were featured in along with her, unlike how Namie Amuro sang by herself during her LIVE STYLE 2011, which I think is a little sad. That brings more fans and more surprises to the stage, yes?

I think we've seen her in this pink look a million times but it never gets old. She performed the medley of vogue~Far away~SEASONS in a different arrangement in this look and invited her fans to sing along in SEASONS and gosh did the fans sing! They didn't sing just a single line, they sang an entire verse! Really touching.

To end the concert with a message, she performed "A Song is born", originally written for the tragic 9/11 incident to remind us of how the planet is born and how important peace and love is. If I were her, I would choose this song to perform too. Well, technically this isn't the last song but it does lead to a perfect closing nevertheless.


Even though the packaging this time round is really simple and the entire concept of the concert was not like her usual over-the-top style, I still enjoyed the concert. In fact, this is one of those DVDs that you can pop in and do something else because all you need to do is to listen with your ears and feel it with your heart.

We all see that Japan is recovering strongly and steadily and I hope that they will continue to do so. Japan is definitely blessed to have so many people who cares for them and would go all out to continue bringing hope to it's nation.

Stay strong Japan!! :)