As I stroll to the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn, New York, a line of individuals wraps round a number of metropolis blocks, many carrying merch with blown-up fan artwork of anime ladies. I enter the stately theater, with its ornate gilded plasterwork and luxurious stage draperies, and discover my chair. A concertgoer holds up an Austrian flag with the orange-haired VTuber Takanashi Kiara printed on it. The gang breaks into a thunderous roar, with folks waving glowing orange gentle sticks within the air and chanting: “Kiara! Kiara! Kiara!”
Kiara is a VTuber — a content material creator who streams by way of a digital avatar — and she’s a part of a group of streamers signed by the expertise company Hololive. Within the final 4 years, VTubers have been on the rise within the U.S. They’re breaking streaming records on Twitch, scooping up millions of followers on YouTube, and even taking over MLB games. Now, they’re taking to the primary stage and placing on stay concert events in America. To know all of the hype, I went to see Hololive’s Breaking Dimensions concert on the Kings Theatre. Whereas the corporate has placed on shows in other countries, it was solely the second time that its VTubers have performed in English in the U.S. What actually made this present distinctive was the way it bridged the digital world of VTubers with its IRL viewers.
I determined to attend the present after Cowl Corp., the father or mother firm of Hololive, supplied Polygon with a ticket. Prior to this, I had solely seen these VTubers stream video video games or watched them sing within the occasional karaoke stream. Related to different digital performers, like Hatsune Miku, the ladies of Hololive seem as hologram characters. Nonetheless, this present takes the whole lot a step additional. As a substitute of displaying a totally prerecorded set like Miku’s reveals do, these characters got here to life for parts of the present and spoke to the gang.
In between songs, a VTuber or two would seem onstage for mid-show chats between themselves, or stroll, speak, and work together with the viewers similar to any stay performer would. In these moments, all the women appeared significantly bubbly and vivacious, and nearly flirty. They talked about what “breaking dimensions” meant to them, and some waxed poetic in borderline glib strains about the way it represented the Hololive ladies “breaking into the hearts” of the viewers. However even this aggressively optimistic power couldn’t cease a little bit of memeing, and, in a significantly absurd second, Koseki Bijou and Mori Calliope led the viewers in a call-and-response model of the “you’re so skibidi” tune.
When VTubers stream on Twitch and YouTube, a real-life individual sits behind a desk and talks to chat utilizing an anime avatar mapped to their face. It looks like this present labored in a comparable method, for the reason that VTubers might work together with the viewers in actual time. To at the present time, Hololive has not revealed formally which elements of the present are stay or prerecorded. Nonetheless, to me, it appeared that the musical numbers had been prerecorded, since they ran on a set schedule and weren’t as a lot in regards to the viewers, and the chatting elements had been stay.
Though they appeared to be prerecorded, the musical performances nonetheless had loads to ooh and aah at. The ethereal Ceres Fauna wore a skirt formed like a tulip that floated and bounced evenly at her each transfer. Kiara, the woman from the flag, sang a solo of a cute little pop romance tune — with the quantity incorporating a complete visible scene the place it rained pineapples behind her. On the finish of the present, all 15 VTubers appeared onstage collectively. Stacked neatly into two strains as if it had been a massive musical quantity, the VTubers and their colourful outfits regarded like a singing and transferring rainbow on the stage.
However as grandiose as these moments had been, the followers actually had been an integral a part of the present and remodeled the occasion from a present with digital facets to a complete expertise. The present was hosted concurrently the Anime NYC conference, so a lot of Hololive followers attended each occasions. One fan I spoke to at Anime NYC instructed me about a fan Discord server that helps folks set up the bulk-buying of customized merch for Hololive reveals — which defined how so most of the attendees arrived in matching merch.
A number of the performances included fan participation, so when the dog-eared duo FuwaMoco sang their tune, the viewers knew the precise response and when. Followers additionally prepurchased and introduced pen lights. On Reddit, followers ready for the present by discussing etiquette for the night and precise choreography for each idol. Seeing the ocean of a whole lot of rainbow gentle sticks transfer in unison towards the French baroque structure of the theater had me leaning ahead in my chair, utterly immobile and totally absorbed by the sight.
With all of the flashing lights and concertgoers screaming in pleasure, I left the venue feeling a bit overwhelmed (and with a searing headache). However the glitz and glamour introduced these characters to life, and it’s an occasion I received’t neglect anytime quickly.
Correction: A earlier model of this text mistook the Austrian flag for the German flag. We’ve edited the article to mirror this.
