With the new Walkure tour announced yesterday, I think one thing is clear is that as Japan (and other first-world nations) slowly emerges from pandemic-induced shutdowns and slowdowns, the US is going to be lagging these countries in international travel allowances.
By most metrics, the USA has done a below-average job as a first-world nation in dealing with the Coronavirus. Unfortunately the price to be paid from an eventing point of view is that international travel will resume slower for Americans going to and from other countries that have successfully reduced the spread and the number of infections.
Given most big character-franchise lives tend to announce events on a 3-to-6-month rolling basis, we might be clearing the initial hurdles in Japan with events rolling out early 2021. Will oversea tourism resume in Japan? Until this happens it would be quite hard to travel there to attend any events.
Maybe you can think that once a vaccine is available things will be better. I think that’s true generally, but it would be hard to know if this extends to how tourists are going to be let in. For one, it only seems responsible to do so after the vaccines are widely available and administered, and the timeline for that is likely as long as developing the vaccine in the first place.
Perhaps it is a backstop of sorts, regardless the challenge that lies between today and those goal posts. There is that postponed Tokyo Olympics, so I think things will come to a head early 2021. Of course, I don’t think athletes and their support crews will have trouble going to Japan, but I think Japan will be economically and politically pressured to allow tourism by this summer if things are playing out to the best case scenarios.
That means the domestic events from November onward until then will be blocked for a lot of oversea fans! And that is in a best-case basis. This is not even addressing the lack of Japanese guests in oversea events (read: US cons), which is a different ball of wax with different sets of risks.
Of course, Japan is not risk-free now, nor will they be in the coming months as more of their social distancing limits are lifted. I imagine until they also get widely vaccinated, leisure gatherings will be reduced. Venues are still limited to 50% capacity for now, so we’ll see in november if this means things are really spiking–and if full-blown events are really going to happen again soon.
It’s seiyuu idol biz in the new decade. Lapis Re:Lights employs dance-focused seiyuu units sing for the multimedia project, launching with an anime with game in tow. Lapis Re:Lights also put on youtube their old lives from 2019.
The Venus Fort mini-live was really impressive because they were able to convey the dancing with the idol standards of an environment-controlled mall stage. But the “First solo live” thing was really doing not much for me. In any case, you can watch both in the video here.
I think a big limiter is the screen. The way that mix reality stuff works today require a compromise on viewing angle and fidelity. It is like, if you watch it from a distance, it looks pretty okay. But at the same time, it’s unclear how much value it adds versus a backdrop. Well, you can have both, but then both screens are a constraint on each other lest it’s just crazy disco lights and colors.
What is clear is the drawbacks of mixed reality performances where it’s literally “candy” on otherwise dance-focused performances. If you want to do mixed reality stuff, you kind of go this far, right?
The limitations, from my own experience:
Viewing angle: This one everyone knows. Ever been to a Hatsune Miku live and situate yourself beyond 45 degrees from center? 80 degrees? It’s not a good experience. This is mediated by being farther back, but you don’t see the image as clearly, and you already lose some clarity versus looking at an image without a double screen.
Clarity: Well, I mentioned it above, but if you perform behind a screen, people will see the screen and it just won’t be as vivid in terms of how the stage light reflect on the performer. It also depends on the opacity of the screen, and of course, if the projection is in front of the performer and blocking them.
Fewer seats closer to the stage: This is an impact of the viewing angle. If you have a simple theater stage and a trope of dancing idols (let’s say, 16 of them). They can move in formation and engage all across the front edge of the stage. People at the front can look around and they’ll get their eyes full of performers. The performers can engage all parts of the stage at all angles. But if you put them behind a screen, first of all, you won’t be able to fit as many people because graphics can’t layer more than you have screens (eg., performers in staggered formations won’t really benefit from the mixed reality stuff when they are behind others, even if they are still plainly visible). Second, viewing angle comes in play again. If your normal act is 2-3-4-5 folks dancing around around a focal point on stage, then only really the area right in the center-front will get a good view. If you are side-front, well, it’s going to be kind of funky seeing the graphics not line up with the dancing. That said, I think Lapis Re:Lights can work this in their routines, even if generally this style of performance performs “for a camera” so to speak.
Limitation on stage layout: It’ll be pretty hard to have layered stages, elevation changes and formations, etc, if you have a screen. Not that you can’t, but the screen loses a lot of value. Of course you won’t be able to fly in the venue, or ride a whale. Or more commonly, it doesn’t work well with a cart, or when the performers walk around the stage freestyle and appeal to the crowd. Well you could, but what good is the screen? Like, the MR stuff is really just icing on top of solid dance formations at that point. Certainly a live can have both MR and normal parts, so there’s that. It’s also possible to have a moving stage with a screen, but I don’t think we’re there yet.
I think the standard Love Live style dancing works well with this gimmick. It’s also kind of an odd thing because it works even better with staged camerawork, but you might as well just edit the video in that case? But in Lapis Re:Lights’s case, it puts the hard work on the dancing seiyuu. They may still be seiyuu dancing as characters, but they gotta do those milkshake while singing. So in that sense this is nothing really worth writing home about. It is what was always going to bring the customers to the yard in the first instance.
What I find amusing, looking at the anime, is that the light tricks are literally that. The impressive things about the performances in the anime were the stage arrangements and how the performers interacted with the stage, plus the performance itself. The SFX were just as gimmicky in the anime as it is in real life. What is amusing and impressive with the anime “orchestras” are the stage direction and the fancy stages themselves. Using projector mapping seems a bit cheap looking when there literally are lives with fancy stages?
Having watch these, I feel like the usual known suspects are naturally good. Matsuda Risae particularly was noteworthy because I’ve seen her twin Satsumi perform for Cinderella Girls for quite a while now, so it’s good to have this reference.