Love is sweeter the second time around; our second Laruku gig in Hong Kong certainly proved that. Not only were we traveling as a gigantic group of eight (plus a couple more here and there scattered throughout Asia World Expo Arena), but there were plenty of tour goods to be bought, and no excruciating waits. Bliss.
Let’s get started with the tour goods: the line this year was blessedly short. Compared to the excruciating four-hour wait we endured at the 2008 live, the mere forty-five minutes we stood in line was a breeze. It definitely helped that there were a lot of us at the queue — making the wait fun, but the line was formed outdoors and was subject to wind chill, so there were still sacrifices made here and there.
The gig itself was also easy-breezy — it started more or less on time, unlike the Luna Sea gig thirteen months earlier. The queue to get inside the arena was fast and orderly — I guess it helped that there were less people at the gig compared to 2008, since this year Bangkok, Jakarta, and Singapore are all included in the line-up.
L’Arc~en~Ciel 20th Anniversary World Tour
Live in Hong Kong
SET LIST
Ibara no Namida
Chase
Good Luck My Way
Honey
Drink it Down
Revelation
Hitomi no Jyuunin
XXX
Forbidden lover
My Heart Draws a Dream
Seventh heaven
Driver’s high
Stay away
Ready Steady Go
ENCORE
Anata
Winter fall
4th Avenue Cafe
Link
Niji
Some of my favorite performances of the evening where Ibara no Namida and Forbidden Lover — making in clear that I am an oldbie that doesn’t give too much of a hoot at the newer songs 
Anything post-solo break that I liked were few and far between — Drink it Down, XXX, and Seventh Heaven in particular. Which goes to show that I really do love Luna Sea more than Laruku — sorry Hyde, Tetchan, Yuki, and the curiously hotter-than-before Ken.
While the gig was fun and the band more so, not so hot were the security people tasked to prevent people from taking pictures or video recordings of the gig. They tended to get very in your face — even accosting the rest of us who were only taking out our iPhones to check the time. But then again, there were some people in the crowd who just wouldn’t quit — not content in just taking one or two stolen shots, but insisting on recording the entire performance.
Sheesh — if you’re gonna spend the entire concert staring into a screen, go watch a live DVD instead. Yes, I am talking about you, guy with the HTC phone standing behind me.
JPOP Manila 
It was a pretty organized gig. As it was my first time, I was pretty impressed. My friend & I waited until the last minute to enter the concert hall — because we were standing by the performers entrance. Y’know, just in case. Hehe.
The only goodie that I wanted was the cd but it was quickly sold out. You guys must have been there pretty early. 🙂
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Much much better than the 2008 live, from experience.
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the concert took how many hours?
and what are some cool stuffs you can buy there?
Im going to Taipei on 17th.. the concert starts at 7pm.. maybe I should go to the venue at 5pm >_<
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We suggest heading for the arena before noon. We were at Asia World Expo at around 1PM and still didn’t manage to get everything — the limited CD, t-shirt, and bag Premium Set, in particular.
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I was at the venue around 11:30 and the line for the goods already extends on the other side of the building. They started selling the goods by 12nn.
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Good for you! Did you get everything you wanted? I wanted the Premium Set but it was sold out >.>
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I did! Got the premium set and the photobook plus some other stuff. Well worth waiting an hour and a half in the freezing weather.
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LOL. as expected, I wasn’t able to score the goods I wanted. Opted to buy the 2 shirts the red and the the black of the same design instead. orz. I didn’t regret it, we only got one day in HK (my friend who goes to med school can’t afford to miss a single day at duty) so we decided to head off to the Giant Buddha instead of waiting in line for goods we could probably score in their next world tour. LOL.
overall, the gig was awesome for first timers like us. Worth the price we paid for the tickets. Good thing we didn’t bring our Apple stuff to do snapshots and record a few perfs because we practically enjoyed jumping and belting out their songs to our hearts’ content. And besides, if we want to their perfs recorded for posterity, there’s always the tour dvd to wait for. haha.
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