Mikupa Hong Kong and Taiwan, Part Two

Festivities for Mikupa Taiwan actually started one day before the day of the concert. Fans from Japan and Taiwan collaborated together to hold a pre-party and managed to fill up the venue. The official tour group from Japan also swung by, swelling the numbers, and two famous Japanese VOCALOID producers made an appearance. The event consisted of name card exchanges, PV showings, messages from the Japanese side (including a very interesting message from Crypton CEO Itoh) and finally a gift exchange.
Day One Report (Hong Kong)
Day Three Report (Taiwan)

As is the norm for most exchanges in Japan, people greeted each other and exchanged name cards. In fact, to make it easy to remember everyone, attendees were handed special name badges where a name card would fit snugly in. People also took the chance to buy drinks from the bar and dine on snacks while swapping cards. A booth at the back sold VOCALOID CDs and books from Taiwan-based creators, as well as CDs from UMAA. On display were also two fairly large Miku papercraft models, one decorating the entrance and one gazing at the congregated attendees. Amongst the attendees were VOCALOID producers, cosplayers and various staff involved in VOCALOID related businesses. There was also a group of fans from Japan showing off pictures of their VOCALOID-decorated cars.

Eventually, the PV showings were started. Video played on two large screens — one a normal screen and one a fly screen. Videos included the two numbers Miku performed at Animelo Summer Live this year, Birthday Song for Miku, as well as videos from famous Taiwanese and Japanese producers. The Taiwanese side included amongst others the only song by a Taiwan P to get over 100,000 views, Jiraigen Yomichi by DongaRingoP, as well as Hoskey and Yukie Dong’s Hanamai Tsukuyomi Tan, which made it onto the arcade version Project DIVA. The Taiwanese producers present were invited to make a speech with their video showings.

On the Japanese side, representative from record label UMAA were present, and they had brought along both DECO*27 and sasakure.UK as guests to the event. Videos for two songs of each producer were aired — DECO*27’s Mozaik Role and Nisoku Hokou, and sasakure.UK’s *Hello, Planet. and Lost and Found. Finally, since they were both present, their collaborative work 39 was also shown. In their speeches, both producers attempted to plug in some Chinese, with sasakure.UK saying “xie xie” (thank you) to everyone while DECO*27 sent out a “wo ai ni” (I love you) to his fans. Furthermore, when sasakure.UK first took the stage, he greeted everyone with an “ohayo-hayo-“, a characteristic line from *Hello, Planet. that many VOCALOID fans on Twitter seem to use for morning greetings. Many more videos were shown, including messages from creators of the music and animation. However, what was very interesting was a message from the CEO of Crypton Future Media, Hiroyuki Itoh [translated into English here from the original]:

Hello, everyone. I’m Hiroyuki Itoh, CEO of Crypton Future Media. I’m very gracious for everyone’s constant support for Hatsune Miku and VOCALOID. I know that Taiwan is a place where VOCALOID culture blooms, right alongside Japan. We are already working with many creators from Taiwan and are amazed by the high quality of their works.

Now, in the message I sent to everyone at this Taiwan event in May, [Mirai no Neiro in Taipei -The Sound of the Future 2012-] I had said that we were working on a surprise with Hatsune Miku for Taiwan. According to plan, she will hold a concert tomorrow. Miku’s first live concert in Taiwan will be broadcast live on television to Japan, and even in Japan, many fans will be watching. Taiwan and Japan being on the same stage, isn’t that a wonderful thing?

There are no boundaries when it comes to creative works such as music and illustration. A world connected by social media has fewer boundaries and is more realtime than ever before. I believe that through VOCALOID such as Hatsune Miku, the creative activities of the two nation’s youths serve to deepen dialogue and understanding between these countries. We at Crypton would also like to support everyone in order for such types of interchanges to occur.

As for Taiwan, sales of Hatsune Miku will actually start soon. Please wait for more details in the near future. An official announcement should be coming soon.

In the future, we hope to keep evolving Hatsune Miku. What do you think the next surprise will be? We’ll be making an announcement soon on MIKUBOOK.COM. Please sign in and wait for the news.

And with that, I would like to hope that everyone enjoys tomorrow’s concert! Xie xie!

In fact, according to additional comments, Crypton had already registered the trademark for Hatsune Miku in Taiwan a while back. A quick trademark search online indicate that a request for trademark registration was made on 2009/09/14 and the trademark was granted on 2010/09/01.

The main event ended with a gift exchange. Fans from Taiwan were encouraged to bring VOCALOID original goods made by Taiwanese artists as well as Taiwan-only VOCALOID CDs and specialties from Taiwan. Fans from Japan were encouraged to bring VOCALOID related books (e.g. doujinshi) as well as non-major label items, including goods from VOM@S, etc. People brought so many gifts that there were very long lines at the beginning when everyone was checking in, and the resulting pile of gifts became a mountain. Many of the Japanese fans brought Famima and lucky draw related items, including many figures, KEI illustrations, etc. The party eventually got kicked out of the venue due to time constraints even before all the gifts could be distributed. What did manage to get distributed included many bottles of Miku’s special vegetable juice and yakisoba.

Of course, as is customary with Japanese events, there was an after party where everyone essentially went drinking. Interested attendees eventually all got shuttled over to a new venue taxi by taxi. The remaining pile of gifts were also shuttled over. At the after party, the guests dined on Taiwanese food and chugged lots of beer. A certain individual in a red T-shirt brought along a bottle of sorghum liquor (58% ethanol) to the various tables and had people try it out. Reactions ranged from shock to pleasure, and sasakure.UK took it quite well. Eventually, rock-paper-scissor competitions were held to give out the rest of the highly prized items, such as signed artwork and CDs. The remaining goods were piled in front of the venue, and fans sifted through them before taking armloads back home.


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

  1. That was extremely sensible of Itoh to speak about the ties that Vocaloid was creating between the youths of both countries, especially with all the fuss about the Senkaku going on at the time of the concert.

    And as usual thanks a lot for this very interesting report.

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