As usual, she destroyed a few songs, this time it was Arco (off pitch during the whole song T_T), Waiting for the Rain and Life is Good. Overall the backing vocalists were also off pitch from time to time, that's so unprofessional but this is common in Japan. Finally the mixing was not great: Maaya's voice was too strong, and the master level was also too high. Also, for me, they used too much pre-recorded music parts (strings and effects mainly) where I think they should come up with some more acoustic or pseudo-acoustic arrangements.
But there were a lot of very good moments and the lightning/visual effects were absolutely great.
I will describe every song performance:
The special intro for Follow Me was very good, but when she appeared wearing this ugly black red check two pieces, I was a little bit less excited since I also don't like the song.
Then she sang Gift, it was great!
I'm not a big fan of Be Mine but her live performance are great, it was quite fun to watch!
Then, like all the high tempo songs this night, she nailed Sanagi and it's actually a very good song when performed live.
Then came the horrible performances of Arco (exact same arrangement as the album version by the way, with almost everything pre-recorded -_-') and less horrible but still not so good performance of Waiting for the Rain (same kind of live arrangement, characterized by the actual absence of an live arrangement)...
But the following songs were great. First Chibikko Folk was awesome, it was an acoustic arrangement with 2 guitars and the backing vocalists.
Then she did Kimi ga Suina Hito, in a piano-vocals version. Nice but I think the song is dull so let's move to what's next.
She did That is to Say, in a nice jazzy performance with the bassist playing a double bass.
Then, the beautiful DIVE was nailed vocally, but the arrangement was the same as the original song, and I preferred the acoustic arrangement from the IDS live she did this year in Itsukushima Shrine. But that was still awesome.
After an instrumental part of Secrear she came back with a beautiful black dress and kept it until the Encore and performed T-Shirt, her performance was great!
Then was performed Mada Ugoku, great performance for a boring song
After great performances of Replica and Shikisai similar in every way to those from Super Arena, she performed Shiawase in a version a little bit more acoustic than the one from Super Arena. This song turns out to be great live, and this time she was less nervous than when she opened Super Arena with it.
Then she did a very good Platinum (seems she can really sing it well now
The countdown was disappointing because it was exactly the same song as 3 years ago: Magic Number. She was more yelling the song than singing it, but it was fun. She ran to both ends of the stage with her dress which wasn't clearly design to run but she was so fun. I really would have preferred another high tempo song instead...
Just after that, she was of course exhausted from all the running, and because of that she couldn't sing Life is Good properly and even just yelled some of the lyrics without singing them, but it was the excitation of the new year thing so I don't mind actually, I had fun. I think we can say that was a fun song destruction! ^^
Then came the most boring ending setlist that can (hopefully) ever be: Happy New Year (like in 2012), nice song but since it's a cover, I don't think it's related to Maaya and it's so slow and boring, and then a few forgettable songs from Follow Me Up (Kazukana Melody and Iris, the failed attempt to write some musical song), and the usual SSW.
She then came back with a beautiful white dress and performed Korekara and Pocket.
Performing those final songs was even more boring cause it was 1am and everyone was tired among the spectators, some up-beat song would have been great.
This was the 3rd major live event she did this year. In my personal ranking I would put Follow Me first cause of the big thing, a lot of great oldies and Yoko Kanno of course, then the Itsukushima Shrine live since it was 100% acoustic with mainly old minor songs, and then this one.
Oh and one last thing: here's my bootleg!
https://mega.nz/#!odJRGKpK!wDtHwRIgdsVo ... 5O0kzjdtSs (won't stay there for long)