Anime Girl Vtubers is selling concerts, but are they “real”? It depends on who you ask

I’m at a file Concert sold out in Hollywood, and I am the only one in the headquarters of over 1,200 skills that knows no songs. One of the documents has just finished and everyone around me start singing and shake their light sticks. We must not wait a long time: Kou Mariya, one of the protagonists, appears. Not on the stage itself, but on a huge screen that lasts all its length. (He will never appear on stage, because he is a 6,669 -year -old blonde anime girl sexy who exists only in virtual reality.) Mariya begins to sing in Japanese. An adult man next to me seems to be on the point of tears.

Welcome to Fantastic Reality, a Mini-Festival at the Vermont Theater that brings eight main vtuber-tits the anime girls of various colors for the eyes and hair-in a live place, accompanied by IRL musicians. I’m here to find out more about why fans are willing to pay up to $ 180 (the cost of a VIP pass) for the privilege of looking at these acts of person, rather than on their screens comfortably from home.

Photography: Erica Hernandez

If you’ve never seen a vtuber before, it’s probably just a matter of time. Vtubers has been in circulation for about a decade in Japan, hosting everything, from online meteorological stations to iPhone launches, but have increased in popularity outside Japan during the Covid quarantine. If you like to watch something online – Cook, play, history, there is a vtuber version. The name is a “Virtual YouTuber” Portmanteau, and as it suggests, it is a livestreamer or a video creator, but instead of showing their face, the audience sees a virtual 2D or 3D avatar.

Technically, a vtuber could take any aspect or theme (my favorite: a Ex-Yakuza in Prison Stripes that talks about crime organized in real life), but the most popular are the anime girls with nice voices. Some of these vtubers also sing and the output varies from simple karaoke flows to complete music videos. If the vtuber is large enough, fans can also listen to their music on most of the main streamers. The market is growing: last week, the major Vtuber Hololive agency launched A record label. Which takes us back to the concert.

For most of the show of about three hours, there are three human musicians on stage: a drummer, a bassist and a guitarist, who play accompaniment for a parade of anime girls who appear on the huge monitors (one in the center, two in the balance on the right and left side). The two DJs, Mono Monet, a Vtuber with purple hair that jump from Filter House to Gabber, and Joenn, a true human DJ that appears physically on stage to close the night with an even more frenetic set, could easily merge (musically) to any rave. But the meat of the show is what a random listener would probably call only “anime music”, occasionally living in songs that went to foolish memes (Issa Corva: “I hate coriander, small / I hate you almost as much / how much I hate coriander, small“) With a rap equally silly bio-bio (cottontailva:”Shouts to my goons / who show my love fan“).

Mariya, the aforementioned sexy anime vampire, began in vtubing in 2020, just in time to ride the wave of popularity fueled in quarantine when everyone was looking for a parasocial friend. Its contents range from games to chat with Asmr videos (occasionally only to members) to Karaoke, and has also released a single for streaming services.

I saw some of his flows, but I didn’t know what to expect to his concert. The promotional material for the event promised that there would be a live human band, but how would it interact exactly with them?

So I ask myself to speak remotely, a couple of days before the show. The video call begins and appears just like her in her flows. I mean, literally: I’m talking to the avatar who see his fans.