Hatsune Miku and friends recently held two sets of concerts, with one set in Hong Kong on October 2 and one set in Taiwan on October 6. Each venue featured both afternoon and evening concerts, and the concerts blasted through 23 songs and one encore song in Hong Kong, with Taiwan getting an additional encore song. The full set list is now available on MIKUBOOK. Furthermore, there were many meetups held, especially in Taiwan, where there was an unofficial pre-party as well as both official and unofficial after parties. Part one of this report will detail the happenings during the Hong Kong concert.
Day Two Report (Taiwan Pre-Party)
Day Three Report (Taiwan)
Hong Kong’s Mikupa concerts were held in the Star Hall at KITEC (Kowloonbay International Trade and Exhibition Centre). There were two separate showings, one at 3PM and one at 8PM. Each showing had three sections, with two sections being standing only and one section in the balcony having assigned seats. People for the standing sections were to line up on the 3rd or 4th floors, depending on whether they were up front or further back, and lines for the evening showing opened once everyone from the afternoon showing were ushered into the concert hall.
Not only was there a line for the concert itself, there was also a line for official merchandise that started getting more hefty as the day went on. Merchandise were open to ticket holders only until 5PM or so. In addition to official merchandise, there were several opportunistic merchants who plowed the concert lines selling leek plushies and rather large electronic glowsticks. The longest ones only had the ability to strobe at varying speeds and couldn’t simply be turned on, although the merchants went through the trouble of decorating the longest green ones with Miku’s name.
The evening line started at around three, with maybe a few dozen people in line and eventually built up to a rather big pile of people that snaked back and forth across the hallway. Friends came and went to meet each other, and the occasional cosplayer could be spotted here and there. One of the Japanese fans got mistaken for staff due to his rather exquisite Mikupa-related getup. A big group at the front of the line was watching footage from previous concerts and practicing their cheering while waving glowsticks around. Many others passed their time by playing Project DIVA f or Project mirai. For those without the game and console, there was a packed DIVA f demo station downstairs that had the game. Finally, at a little past seven, people were herded into the concert area, with a mad dash for the front of the arena in the beginning moments. In the front standing area, fans were densely packed in a cluster near the center front, with a bit more breathing room towards the sides and back.
Finally, around 8PM, the constant cheering of the audience was broken by the onset of loud music, as the band members were introduced, culminating with Hatsune Miku’s name on the screen. The music quieted to a lull and then blasted full on with the intro to Miku Miku ni Shiteageru. Throughout the concert, the audience chanted rhythmically during the instrumental sections and sang along with Miku for many of the chorus sections. In fact, Uta ni Katachi wa Nai Keredo ended up being a big sing-a-long as audience members waved their green glowsticks back and forth, generating the effect of a large field of leeks. During the concert, Miku had various talking sections, when she attempted her best to speak to the audience in (Mandarin) Chinese. The concert “ended” with Tell Your World, as confetti cannons sprayed silver strands everywhere when the last refrain hit. However, after some encore cheering, Miku came back to close out the concert with Melt as the audience la-la-la-ed along.
Of the over 5000 people who attended the concerts, many of the audience members knew the lyrics to the songs and the proper calls to do, and the atmosphere rivaled concerts from Japan. However, one unfortunate downside to the concert was that there were many people who started simply taking videos of the concert without permission. In fact, there were many complaints about this on the official Facebook page for the concert, and complaints gradually gave way to apologetic posts about not knowing that filming wasn’t allowed. The flashing super-long glowsticks being sold by roving merchants also made it hard for many people to see over them and formed some of the complaints.
The following video, via news site Game Over, captured Miku performing her first song in the afternoon session as well as her first time talking in Chinese at the concert.