At 27, Ayu is already a legend. All her 7 full-length studio albums hit #1 on the Japan Oricon charts, a first in Japan. “(miss)understood”, her 7th album, is officially launched on 1 Jan 2006 (on the shelves from 27 Dec 2005), and hit #1 immediately on the first week of 2006. Two first-print editions are available: CD plus photo book titled “Off My Day” and CD + DVD plus photo book titled “On My Way”. Both packages feature different CD covers. Both photo books feature different content, obviously a marketing stint to jack-up sales.

This album features the infectious J-pop dance tunes, and all tracks are English titled with unusual capitalisations. The benefit of using English titles is internationalisation of her songs. Being dance tunes, the mixing is geared towards heavy limiting at the loud chorus sections resulting in listening difficulty through the earpiece. Agreed, most people would love the loudness, but as an audiophile, I squirm at the trashy sound the mix produces. On the other hand, I appreciate the quieter and lighter passages. However, the difference between the soft and loud passages are too great. In fact, upon analysis using audio signalling software, the mix is geared towards maximising the higher frequencies, resulting in this imbalance of loud and soft passages.

Having said that, listening on speakers gave better experiences because the high frequencies do not travel better than lower frequencies over the air. My favourite music tracks are 'Bold & Delicious' (R&B with indications of influence to Michael Jackson's songs), 'fairyland' (typical J-pop) and 'HEAVEN' (a tear-jerker).

I thoroughly enjoy the DVD music videos. Ayu is the main story-figure in all the MVs, and even plays multiple roles, probably due to her magnetic and kawaii looks. The storyline for each MV is also very well-written and directed. The technical effects found in some of the MVs convinces that the videos are not merely low-budget eye-candy but quality motion-picture productions.

With the accompanying DVD-Video, I began to understand and appreciate Ayu as an artiste. With each beautifully-directed music video is a 'making-of' done within the timeframe of the song, effectively transforming the 'making-of' into a music video in itself. You can see behind the scenes the effort put in to produce the videos that we see. You see Ayu's dedication in reviewing the takes, her child-likeness, her love for dogs, and most importantly, her vulnerability. In front of the camera, she is a superstar, charming, beautiful, confident, talented; behind the camera, she is humble, mischevious, tired, contemplative. In many ways, Ayumi Hamasaki is a product, and that's who she has to be on screen. So by watching the 'making-of' videos, we see the down-to-earth aspect of this 'product', so that we appreciate her more on-screen. She is no god, but just like one of us. She doesn't have to be perfect off-screen, no matter how people want her to achieve. The unfortunate thing about celebrities is that there is no such thing as 'off-screen'. To the world watching them, every second is an 'on-screen' moment. The DVD-Video is the best of the items in the package. The video quality is above average, the audio soundtrack is as good as the music CD.

The 80-page photobook, in my view, does not do justice to Ayu. It's just a casual compilation merely to enhance the value of the package. Photos intend as a journalistic approach but the images does not capture Ayu like what her fans may want to see. To produce such a quality for any photobook client would be considered unprofessional, but use it on a superstar and no one would care as long as her face can be seen.

Final words: a fabulous value-for-money album. With music and video piracy, record companies think of ways to entice people to purchase the music albums. Forget about looking for free MP3 downloads of this album. By paying a standard album price, you get the CD, DVD and photobook, and the DVD-Video more than makes the package an excellent buy. Watch it and you will appreciate each song better, and understand how much sweat that people puts in to produce every single song. Then hopefully listeners will refrain from stealing music (if they actually knew what they are doing is considered stealing).