As I walk to the Kings Theater in Brooklyn, New York, a line of people snakes around several blocks, many carrying merchandise with blown-up fan art images of anime girls. I enter the stately theater with its ornate gilded plasterwork and luxurious stage curtains and find my seat. A concertgoer holds up a German flag with the orange-haired VTuber Takanashi Kiara printed on it. The crowd erupts in a thunderous roar, people waving bright orange glow sticks in the air and chanting: “Kiara! Kiara! Kiara!”
Kiara is a VTuber – a content creator who streams via a virtual avatar – and she is part of a group of streamers signed by talent agency Hololive. Over the past four years, there has been a surge in VTubers in the US. They are Breaking streaming records on Twitch, Gain millions of followers on YouTubeand even Takeover of MLB games. Now they are entering the main stage and giving live concerts in America. To understand all the hype, I was at Hololives Breaking dimensions Concert at the Kings Theatre. While the troupe Shows in other countriesIt was only the second time that VTubers have appeared in the USA in English What made this show truly unique was the way it connected the virtual world of VTubers with their IRL audience.
I decided to attend the show after Cover Corp., Hololive’s parent company, provided Polygon with a ticket. Previously, I had only streamed these VTubers playing video games or watching them sing on the occasional karaoke stream. Similar to other virtual performers, like Hatsune Miku, the women of Hololive appear as hologram characters. However, this show takes it a step further. Instead of showing a fully recorded set, as Miku’s shows do, these characters came to life for portions of the show and spoke to the audience.
Between songs, one or two VTubers would appear on stage to chat amongst themselves, or they would walk, talk and interact with the audience as any live performer would. In these moments, all of the girls seemed particularly lively and bright and almost flirtatious. They talked about what “breaking dimensions” meant to them, and some waxed poetic in almost superficial lines about how this represented the Hololive girls “breaking” into the audience’s hearts. But even this aggressively positive energy couldn’t prevent a bit of memeing, and in one particularly absurd moment, Koseki Bijou And Mori Calliope led the audience in a call-and-response version of the song “You’re so skibidi”.
When VTubers stream on Twitch and YouTube, a real person sits behind a desk and chats using an anime avatar that is mapped onto their face. It seems like this show worked in a similar way, as VTubers were able to interact with the audience in real time. To date, Hololive has not officially announced which parts of the show are live or recorded. However, to me it seemed like the musical numbers were recorded, as they ran on a set schedule and didn’t revolve around the audience as much, while the chat parts were live.
Even though the musical performances were apparently recorded, there was still much to Oh And ahhh at. The Ethereal Fauna of Ceres wore a tulip-shaped skirt that floated and bounced slightly with her every move. Kiara, the girl with the flag, sang a solo of a sweet little romantic pop song – with the number featuring an entire visual scene of pineapples raining down behind her. At the end of the show, all 15 VTubers appeared on stage together. Neatly stacked in two rows as if it were one big musical number, the VTubers and their colorful outfits looked like a singing and moving rainbow on stage.
But as great as those moments were, the fans were truly an integral part of the show, transforming the event from a show with digital aspects into a total experience. The show was held at the same time as the Anime NYC Convention, so many Hololive fans attended both events. One fan I spoke to at Anime NYC told me about a Discord server for fans that organizes bulk purchasing of custom merchandise for Hololive shows—which explained why so many of the attendees arrived with matching merchandise.
Fans were involved in some performances, and when the duo with the donkey ears FuwaMoco sang her song, the audience knew exactly when they would react. Fans also bought flashlights and brought them with them. On Reddit, fans prepared for the show by Discussion of etiquette for the evening And precise choreography for each idolAs I watched the sea of hundreds of rainbow-colored glow sticks moving in unison in front of the theater’s French Baroque architecture, I leaned forward in my chair, completely motionless and absorbed in the sight.
With the lights flashing and concertgoers screaming with excitement, I left the venue a little overwhelmed (and with a stabbing headache), but the glitz and glamour brought these characters to life and it’s an event I won’t soon forget.
