Mikupa Hong Kong and Taiwan, Part Three

Finally, on Saturday, October 6, Hatsune Miku held her first live concerts in Taiwan, at the foot of the Taipei 101. The morning, or rather, the entire day was lines, lines and lines, but the concert was considered a big success, gathering over nine thousand fans to sing along and jump around with Miku and friends. After the concert ended, both an official and an unofficial after party allowed a small group of fans from Japan and Taiwan to cool off and celebrate the occasion.
Day One Report (Hong Kong)
Day Two Report (Taiwan Pre-Party)

Fans weren’t afraid of showing off their stylized transportation implements.

In the morning, there were to be two types of lines for Mikupa Taiwan — a line for official goods and a line for picking up a number for the actual concert line. The official goods were limited to ten of each item (with the exception of the badges) and were open to everyone, not just ticket holders. Hong Kong, on the other hand, had no item limits, but restricted initial sales to ticket holders and only opened it up to the general public later at 5PM. As for the other line, there were to be three different entrances for each showing of the concert, corresponding to the different areas in the concert hall. In order to make for an orderly line before the concert, fans were asked to line up beforehand to pick up a number, which determined their placement in the actual line. Of course, in an apparent attempt to discourage overnight camping, the head of the goods and line-position lines weren’t to be announced until 9AM.

So, at around 8:30AM, there were actually two lines outside the venue, but instead of one being a goods line and one being a position ticket line, they were lines betting on which door of the venue would form the head of the real position ticket line. The front door contingent had wrapped around the other side of the building and ended up colliding with the back door contingent. When asked which line he wanted to be in, one of the fans who came from Japan stated that he wanted to wait in the “front” line, because “men faced challenges head on.” There were a few cosplayers present as well, as well as lots of item peddlers selling everything from glowsticks to binoculars and random Miku-themed clothing.

Shortly before 9:00AM, it looked like people realized where the actual lines would start, and line reorganization began. The “front” line got unraveled and was told to ravel the other way around the building. The “back” line then got reshuffled to behind the “front” line. Then, the announcement came for the actual line structure. For picking up line-up positions, there was to be three lines, one for each section of the hall, and goods would form a separate line. However, to make everything even more confusing, the organizers decided now would be a good time to start introducing the end-of-line signs.

Now, it wouldn’t have been as confusing to people in line if the end-of-line signs were corresponding to the three lines (let’s call them A, B and C). However, in the end, there were to be six lines, lines corresponding to A afternoon, A evening, B afternoon, etc. This of course brought confusing for people who bought both afternoon and evening tickets. Eventually, it was clarified that people who have afternoon tickets and evening tickets should go in the afternoon line. However, it turns out that there was only one table for each section of the concert hall, so people in the A afternoon and A evening lines, for example, eventually merged together at the table.

Miku fans aren’t afraid of a little electric shock here and there.

Gradually, the end-of-line markers made their way back towards the end of the line where they belonged, as people were sorted out by section. However, the A evening line got snaked around a bit around the bend, and people in the unsorted line didn’t realize that the lines had already gotten sorted. Eventually, there was a mad dash of A evening people for the end of the A evening line, while some of the other A evening people were left confused. By the time the venue opened for both goods and line positions, people had managed to find the correct lines.
The front of the line was still jam packed.

The actual tables where fans could pick up position tickets.

After the first set of lines, welcome to more lines, this time for goods.

Getting to the head of the position pickup line, fans were handed a small ticket with a number on it for future lining, and those who bought tickets before July 31 proceeded onward to pick up a free plastic sheet protector (clear file). Hong Kong also had these, but they could be picked up separately with no lines at that venue. All the meantime, the goods line just kept getting longer and longer, as people who picked up positions moved onwards to the goods line. The tail end of the goods line finally reached the goods room by the time the afternoon concert started, with many of the afternoon session people having to leave the line to run for the concert entrance.

While waiting in line for goods, you could also buy these unofficial goods as well.

The set list for the concert was essentially the same as Hong Kong, with one exception at the end. However, the audience in Taiwan was slightly different from the audience in Hong Kong. There weren’t vendors selling super long glow sticks, and thus the audience in Taiwan had much shorter ones overall. There was also a lot less rampant video photography going on at the concert. The fans sung along to the songs, shouted and jumped around to the music, although the cheers might have been a bit more subdued than the Hong Kong event.

What was interesting was that, while waiting for the concert to start as DIVA f commercials played, the audience in both afternoon and evening showings started to chant along with the SEGA logo. It was just a few people at first, but by the fifth or sixth showing of the ad, pretty much everyone was joining along.

Just like Hong Kong, the cheering during the actual concert usually needed one or two beats to build up, whether it was cheering during the instrumental sections or the PPPH during the prechorus parts of songs. Also, it took varying amounts of time for the audience to recognize a song. For example, Romeo and Cinderella opened with simply a shot of a European castle under a purple moon-lit sky on the two side screens. However, when the view finally zoomed in to the clock, everyone eventually realized what song was coming up. Meanwhile, for Hatsune Miku no Gekishou, the intro didn’t really give many hints as to what was coming up next, and the purplish lighting threw off a lot of fans, since they ended up expecting Luka. However, when Infinity Miku showed up on stage suddenly, there was no doubt what was going to be sung. As for the people who had been keeping up with what happened in Hong Kong, there was another surprise for them. When Melt concluded during the encore, Miku again took the stage and asked everyone to sing “ai wo” along with her, kicking off Starduster, with ardent fans again swinging their glowsticks from left to right, bringing a wind-swept field of leeks back into existence.

Finally, after the concert, many fans participated in a sanbonjime, which is a Japanese way of concluding big events, including concerts. As people filtered out of the hall, a small group of fans were preparing for the after parties. Meanwhile, one of the cosplayers, necoco, who had been getting photographed by hordes of photographers during the line up for the concert, was again surrounded by photographers outside trying to get one last shot of her. As for the after parties, the Japanese fans who came with the official tour group went to an official after party with the staff. This same type of after party also took place in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, ardent Japanese fans on Twitter also organized another after party, and asked for people who didn’t know how to get to the new venue to meet near the goods line. Eventually these people were split off into taxis, with one hefty group deciding to brave it out using public transit. Except for a small fiasco when the Chinese-speaking half of the public transit group got separated form the Japanese-speaking half when the train doors closed, everyone managed to reach the venue without issue.

Let’s just say she was kind of popular.

What had originally looked like 20 or so people on the Twitter invites somehow blossomed into 80 or so people, with ASCII having their own contingent there. Just like the pre-party, fans discussed Miku and dined on Taiwanese food, enjoying squid, fish, beer and manbou (as in the sunfish, and not the VOCALOID producer). Some sorghum liquor was passed around again, with varying reactions. One cosplaying girl said it felt like fire was coming out of her mouth, but she also said she liked it and wanted to find out where she could buy more. Another cosplayer took one sip, remained motionless for a few seconds, and then made a mad dash for a nearby table where she started chugging from a giant tea jug. On the side, many people participated together in setting up a “Miku shrine” with everyone’s “wives”. After many bottles, the night was finally closed out as fans said good bye to each other.

The next morning, four mainstream newspapers in Taiwan put up articles about the concert, stating the number of fans who attended and about 20 million TWD of proceeds from just ticket sales alone. Many of the Japanese fans scoured convenience stores to find the newspaper articles to collect.

Unlike the Hong Kong concert, the Taiwan concert (at night) was also streamed on Tokyo MX, with recordings being played back on other TV channels in Japan as well at later times. Kobayashi Onyx helped MC the Tokyo MX show, and unlike a Nico stream, the Tokyo MX show did have to cut to commercials and such, and didn’t have time to cover the entire concert during their 90 minute segment. While 25 songs played during the concert, the show only managed to cover up to supercell’s Hajimete no Koi ga Owaru Toki. Meanwhile, after the show, Tokyo MX announced that they’ll start selling a limited amount of concert merchandise as well, including 390 of the black T-shirts that sold out in both Hong Kong and Taiwan. As for the commercial interruptions and time cutoff, apparently uncut footage of the Taiwan concert will be distributed through the PlayStation Video Store, and NTT Docomo has an offer where people who either buy a new prepaid 3G data plan or recontract a postpaid plan would get an access code for the footage starting November at the earliest.

Footnote: Strangely enough, even though DECO*27 and sasakure.UK were both at the pre party, none of their songs were played at the concert, although the Tokyo MX broadcast had Aikotoba running in the background during talk sections.


One thought on “Mikupa Hong Kong and Taiwan, Part Three”

  1. Just in time for the nations League of legend victory eh?

    Seriously though, I hope the Hong Kong didn’t have too much bad blood considering the recent political controversies of the islands.

    Oh btw why didnt you guys help spread the word about VocaNicoNight?

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