As I walk to the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn, New York, a line of people wraps around several city blocks, many wearing merch with blown-up fan art of anime girls. I enter the stately theater, with its ornate gilded plasterwork and luxurious stage draperies, and find my chair. A concertgoer holds up a German flag with the orange-haired VTuber Takanashi Kiara printed on it. The crowd breaks into a thunderous roar, with people waving glowing orange light sticks in the air and chanting: “Kiara! Kiara! Kiara!”
Kiara is a VTuber — a content creator who streams via a virtual avatar — and she’s part of a group of streamers signed by the talent agency Hololive. In the last four years, VTubers have been on the rise in 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 main stage and putting on live concerts in America. To understand all the hype, I went to see Hololive’s Breaking Dimensions concert at the Kings Theatre. While the company has put on shows in other countries, it was only the second time that its VTubers have performed in English in the U.S. What really made this show unique was how it bridged the virtual world of VTubers with its IRL audience.
I decided to attend the show after Cover Corp., the parent company of Hololive, provided Polygon with a ticket. Prior to this, I had only seen these VTubers stream video games or watched them sing in the occasional karaoke stream. Similar to other virtual performers, like Hatsune Miku, the women of Hololive appear as hologram characters. However, this show takes everything a step further. Instead of showing a fully prerecorded set like Miku’s shows do, these characters came to life for portions of the show and spoke to the crowd.
In between songs, a VTuber or two would appear onstage for mid-show chats between themselves, or walk, talk, and interact with the audience just like any live performer would. In these moments, all the girls seemed particularly bubbly and vivacious, and almost flirty. They talked about what “breaking dimensions” meant to them, and some waxed poetic in borderline glib lines about how it represented the Hololive girls “breaking into the hearts” of the audience. But even this aggressively positive energy couldn’t stop a bit of memeing, and, in a particularly absurd moment, Koseki Bijou and Mori Calliope led the audience in a call-and-response version of the “you’re so skibidi” song.
When VTubers stream on Twitch and YouTube, a real-life person sits behind a desk and talks to chat using an anime avatar mapped to their face. It seems like this show worked in a similar way, since the VTubers could interact with the audience in real time. To this day, Hololive has not revealed officially which parts of the show are live or prerecorded. However, to me, it appeared that the musical numbers were prerecorded, since they ran on a set schedule and weren’t as much about the audience, and the chatting parts were live.
Even though they appeared to be prerecorded, the musical performances still had plenty to ooh and aah at. The ethereal Ceres Fauna wore a skirt shaped like a tulip that floated and bounced lightly at her every move. Kiara, the girl from the flag, sang a solo of a cute little pop romance song — with the number incorporating an entire visual scene where it rained pineapples behind her. At the end of the show, all 15 VTubers appeared onstage together. Stacked neatly into two lines as if it were a big musical number, the VTubers and their colorful outfits looked like a singing and moving rainbow on the stage.
But as grandiose as these moments were, the fans really were an integral part of the show and transformed the event from a show with digital aspects to an entire experience. The show was hosted at the same time as the Anime NYC convention, so a lot of Hololive fans attended both events. One fan I spoke to at Anime NYC told me about a fan Discord server that helps people organize the bulk-buying of custom merch for Hololive shows — which explained how so many of the attendees arrived in matching merch.
Some of the performances incorporated fan participation, so when the dog-eared duo FuwaMoco sang their song, the audience knew the exact response and when. Fans also prepurchased and brought pen lights. On Reddit, fans prepared for the show by discussing etiquette for the night and precise choreography for each idol. Seeing the sea of hundreds of rainbow light sticks move in unison against the French baroque architecture of the theater had me leaning forward in my chair, completely motionless and fully absorbed by the sight.
With all the flashing lights and concertgoers screaming in excitement, I left the venue feeling a bit overwhelmed (and with a searing headache). But the glitz and glamour brought these characters to life, and it’s an event I won’t forget anytime soon.