For a few years now, there’s been two things I wanted to experience in Japan… 1) go to a sumo wrestling event and 2) go see a Hatsune Miku concert and find out how that works and what the big deal is. So when we were making plans for this trip and found out that Hatsune Miku was going to be ‘playing’ in Brisbane literally the day we get home from Japan, it kinda felt like we had to go.

For anyone who happens to stumble accidentally over my dribble driven blog, and is unfamiliar with Hatsune Miku, the whole thing is totally weird, and also very typically Japanese. Hatsune Miku is a Vocaloid (a vocaloid is a like a digital software voicebank, in this case one that was developed by a company called Crypton Future, which is capable of talking and singing entirely with a large pre-reordered database of vocal data). Hatsune Miku is officially known as CV01, and is a likeness of a 16 year old Japanese girl with extremely long turquoise hair that she wears in huge long pigtails. The personification of Hatsune Miku has been very cleverly marketed and branded and is effectively a virtual rockstar or teen idol? The representation of Hatsune Miku perform at “live virtual concerts” (oxymoronic much?) on a stage as a high tech animated holographic projection. The image is rear projected on a special glass screen… so we are effectively all here to watch a big TV screen with a pretend pop star playing a pre-recorded show that is synced to live music; cos yes, there’s a back up band!

Yale and I had really good seats actually, we were in the stalls, probably about 25 rows deep. We got a great view of the hologram, and it afforded us an opportunity to really observe the crowd – which I found quite twice as fascinating as the show. I did feel like I was Jane Goodall amongst her subjects though, just completely fascinated by how enthralled and engaged the audience was with this ‘artist’.

Cos Hatsune Miku is computer generated, I got AI to create me a selfie of me as Jane Goodall observing the concert… stupid AI wouldn’t make me into an age appropriate Jane Goodall though, would it?! But other than the grey hair and the obvious wrinkles, yeah not a bad representation. 😁

The music was largely unfamiliar to me, if you want to see Hatsune Miku videos, there’s heaps of them on YouTube, and it’s all super poppy, with high pitched young squeaky voices… not my thing at all – which is probably evident when you consider the only other concerts I’ve been to this year are Rammstein and the Hu..!

She (I don’t know?! Can you misgender a holographic vocaloid?) also had a bunch of holographic vocaloid friends that were part of the show too (I’m reluctant to say they ‘performed’, for obvious reasons!). So I spent the show watching the quality of the display, but also watching the crowd, and they were soooo into this!

My iPhone coped really well with the lighting conditions, the projection and the 30m or so to the state to get some great renderings of the rendering!

Hatsune Miku is a cultural phenomenon in Japan, I would have loved to be able to go to one of these shows in Japan to see how over the top the crowd was, but I imagine, in order to be right up in the middle of it, I would have totally bawked at the cost of tickets. As it is, we were surrounded by fans who had the offical Hatsune Miku Glowsticks that look like this:

They sell for AUD$60 each and were sold out FIVE HOURS before the concert started! They’re literally a strange little torch with LED light/s that have a colour changing function. And (this was the weird bit to me), every single one of the fans who had these Glowsticks knew exactly what colour to change their Glowsticks to for each song *and* they all knew a routine of movements for waving their Glowsticks that went with each different song! 😮

There were some who didn’t have Glowsticks that literally filmed the entire show from beginning to end, and I don’t think looked up at the stage directly hardly at all…

And there was this lovely lady right beside me who didn’t smile once during the concert, but appeared to be in an almost trance-like state of concentration waving her stick. She was in the zone!

This couple in front of us had bought the VIP Premium ticket that came with a Hatsune Miku souvenir pack containing a Glowstick and a short, lightweight Miku kimono. There was one guy a couple of rows in front of us and a bit to the right, who was wearing a full length Hatsune Miku kimono that obviously was something he owned from a previous event or shopping expedition, who had SIX of the Glowsticks and was holding three in each hand and was almost conducting the audience behind him in keeping everyone’s the actions in synch! It was fascinating to watch how excited these kids were; I’d like to say it was a diverse crowd, but it really wasn’t… it was super saturated with cosplayers and gamer types (and some of their parents playing chaperone!).

There was even some duet acts… I have no idea how they kept the holographic display in synch with the live music, but it all went without a hitch and the holograms looked like they were singing without any lag or hiccoughs.

One thing that was very different from a traditional concert was the speed with which Hatsune Miku and friends could do a costume change! Holey moley there was some quick changes going on! Complete with huge change in hairstyles. 😆

At the end of the show, and two encore songs, there was a huge explosion of streamers from the roof which spooled out like a massive bukkake of white from the ceiling, and had the kids scrambling to try and collect some up to take home!

All up, it was fascinating to attend. There was probably less than 3000 people here, I can’t imagine what seeing this would be like in Japan or Korea with a crowd of tens of thousand. Amazing! Quite the unique cultural experience, and rounding out the end of our trip to Japan really … weirdly, I guess. 😛

So, now I guess I have to try harder to get to some sumo wrestling next time we are in Japan!