I think the early reports were probably for Friday, and everyone seemed pretty much in agreement that Sunday was much, much better than Friday. Friday sounded a little trainwrecky.
I think some of it probably does have to do with lack of time to rehearse: Nino mentioned in his J-web that there were scheduling issues since Jun was off in L.A., and Ohno was away in Osaka for his butai for a while (plus their schedules are just freaking insane at the moment on top of that). Also, apparently since Jun was so busy on movie promotion duty, people said he wasn't in charge of the concert this year. Nino and Aiba were the ones organizing it all. I wouldn't be surprised if that were true, it would explain why things felt a bit uneven in the setlist and organization just since they were responsible for it for the first time.
But yeah. They are trying to do too much, and yet with the lack of signature items in the concert, it all still felt like it wasn't enough somehow. In the last Dome, the atmosphere was electric, you could feel such a link between them and the audience. But this time, for whatever reason (large number of newbies not participating + setlist not amping up the tension, etc...) it just felt like they were working so hard to just keep the audience engaged. They really almost never talked to the audience, whereas the speeches were probably the most memorable part of last year for me. There weren't the same easy smiles between them and the audience like last year, and the atmosphere of Arashi seemed more like they were under pressure than last year's feeling of organizing a big party. All of the little slipups made it seem like they were really feeling the pressure, too (Jun tripping, Aiba crashing on his flips, Nino singing off-key).
To not sing A-RA-SHI either night is craziness, though. Especially since if the first night had trouble with people participating to a huge extent, why would they not make it easy on themselves for the second night and sing it? :/ It just didn't feel like the concert was complete without it.
It's not like it was a disaster, but it just wasn't special. I'm seriously toying with trying to get a ticket for the last night in Sapporo, if I can manage to scrape together the money for a plane ticket, just because I think it'll be a much better show by the end of the tour.
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I think some of it probably does have to do with lack of time to rehearse: Nino mentioned in his J-web that there were scheduling issues since Jun was off in L.A., and Ohno was away in Osaka for his butai for a while (plus their schedules are just freaking insane at the moment on top of that). Also, apparently since Jun was so busy on movie promotion duty, people said he wasn't in charge of the concert this year. Nino and Aiba were the ones organizing it all. I wouldn't be surprised if that were true, it would explain why things felt a bit uneven in the setlist and organization just since they were responsible for it for the first time.
But yeah. They are trying to do too much, and yet with the lack of signature items in the concert, it all still felt like it wasn't enough somehow. In the last Dome, the atmosphere was electric, you could feel such a link between them and the audience. But this time, for whatever reason (large number of newbies not participating + setlist not amping up the tension, etc...) it just felt like they were working so hard to just keep the audience engaged. They really almost never talked to the audience, whereas the speeches were probably the most memorable part of last year for me. There weren't the same easy smiles between them and the audience like last year, and the atmosphere of Arashi seemed more like they were under pressure than last year's feeling of organizing a big party. All of the little slipups made it seem like they were really feeling the pressure, too (Jun tripping, Aiba crashing on his flips, Nino singing off-key).
To not sing A-RA-SHI either night is craziness, though. Especially since if the first night had trouble with people participating to a huge extent, why would they not make it easy on themselves for the second night and sing it? :/ It just didn't feel like the concert was complete without it.
It's not like it was a disaster, but it just wasn't special. I'm seriously toying with trying to get a ticket for the last night in Sapporo, if I can manage to scrape together the money for a plane ticket, just because I think it'll be a much better show by the end of the tour.