I returned from Los Angeles and Anime Expo 2011 a few days ago and I have to say that the highlight of my trip, other than the soon to be regretted level of purchases I made in the dealer’s room, was anything dealing with Hatsune Miku. While the high point of all things Miku was obviously Mikunopolis, it was fun to learn a lot more about Miku over the course of the weekend through all of the panels. Before heading to Los Angeles, I was definitely a fan of the virtual idol, but going into the weekend I didn’t really know what to expect. After leaving, it struck me that being a fan of Miku was really a lot like believing in Santa for a few reasons.

First, like the meaning of Christmas, Miku can really be whoever you want her to be depending on what you like to do, and I’m not talking about her seemingly endless wardrobe for all the perverts out there. Well, I suppose that might be part of it. Still, fans can create new songs, animations, or character designs of and about Miku and send them out there for others to enjoy through the use of the internet. But just as Christmas isn’t just about candy canes and sleigh bells, Miku isn’t just about the music. One thing that became perfectly clear to me almost immediately this weekend is that Miku could very easily be a synonym for Commercialism, and in a lot of ways this is a good thing. It is because of this entrepreneurial spirit fan designs for Miku show up in games or on figures. It is because of this entrepreneurial spirit that allows companies to make money off of Miku’s products, even through the use of a decentralized business model. And in the truest of sense of all things commercialism, Miku is often depicted in pictures that are less than pure.

Continuing the Christmas analogy, it is often difficult for kids to understand the concept of Christmas during their early years. A 2 year old doesn’t necessarily understand what it means to get free presents, but within a few years it is the center of their kid universe. I kind of got this same feeling over the course of this weekend when it came to Miku. Obviously, many of the people who came to Anime Expo had some idea of who Miku was, but for many, this was their first large dose of all things Miku. While it seemed like the interest in the virtual idol slowly grew over the course of the weekend, I think most people really began to appreciate Miku during her concert. At first, it seemed like only select groups of people were cheering and fewer still were standing. However, as the concert progressed more people got into the groove of things, so to speak, and by the end of the night it seemed like almost every person in the Nokia Theatre was on their feet screaming their lungs out for Miku to return for an encore. So I guess like a lot of things in life, Santa Claus and Miku included, it takes a little time to understand what it going on, but once you do, it is something special.

Now, while I admire everything that the Japanese companies have done to increase the popularity of Miku, from implementing fan designs into concerts and figures to giving individual creators relative freedom to use Miku in their productions to this past weekend’s concert, I kind of got the sense that the Japanese feel that other nations need to follow their model for Miku to be a success, which I don’t think is the right approach. Just as people celebrate Christmas and Santa differently across the world, so should we Miku and the other Vocaloids. While having different language software available in the future is a step in the right direction, it is an obvious one. What is worrisome is that Miku won’t necessarily be available or well known to the wider audience of people in the U.S., or other western nations. Now I suppose it might be impossible for people outside of the normal anime, j-pop, etc. fan to ever really be a fan of Miku, but the creation and use of new sites in the United States, like niconico.com, seems like it will go about as well as the United States trying to introduce democracy into the Middle East.

So, assuming that Miku (and her handlers) truly do want to conquer the world, it would become absolutely necessary for them to conquer a wide range of the Otaku fan base, from Narutards to people willing to travel across the country to see Miku and everyone in-between ( as a sort of power base). From a few panels I attended during the Expo and people I’ve talked to in the past, it doesn’t seem like the anime industry has done a good job getting its online product well known. I remember several people during the con didn’t know that Crunchyroll offered free anime (and to be honest, it seems like a very small subset of people know you can get anime online via streams, legally or otherwise), so it is by no means a given thing that people will utilize niconico.com or the newly announced Mikubook on a regular basis, especially when there is the 500 pound gorilla in the room that goes by the name of YouTube.

If there is one thing I learned from my business consulting classes, it is that if you have the ability to work with a company who already has the resources needed to help you produce a product, it is better to work with that company, than to try and develop the capabilities yourself. The use of joint ventures is even more crucial when you are trying to introduce a product into a foreign country. Obviously, I have no idea if the Miku people have tried to create a joint venture of some sort with American based web companies, but if they haven’t, that would seem to be a blunder on their part. The time and money it will take to make the average fan of anime/j-pop become aware of niconico or Mikubook will more than likely not be worth it, and they can forget about ever drawing the attention of the average American consumer. Instead, Japanese companies should really think about doing special promotions for Miku on already popular American internet mediums, so that Miku will not just be searched for by those who already know of her.

That’s not to say that Miku is doomed to failure outside of Japan. The business model developed in Japan really does seem to be working and they have a great product to work with. As a person who would like to see Miku become more popular, I would like to see Japanese companies work more with American companies as a way to promote her, which they have done to some extent with the Toyota commercials in the U.S. Still, these things need to be more than gimmicks; they need to be real sustained attempts at letting people learn about Miku through already established video mediums, or eventually the costs of doing business will become too high, which force them to cut and run.

One of the main events I attended during this year’s New York Anime Festival was the Hatsune Miku “concert” at 8pm on Saturday. This was actually an “encore performance,” arranged due to the high demand for the initial “concert” that morning at 10:45. It was held in a room far too small for the event, and most people who wanted to go ended up unable to attend, it seemed.

My friend and I had actually arrived at the room for the first “performance” 30 minutes before it was to start. When we saw that there was no line, I decided to show my friend around the anime section’s artists’ alley a bit. When I got back to the room literally 8 minutes later, a line had formed and had already been cut off for new people as the room had reached capacity. Clearly I and the con organizers had misunderestimated the popularity of Hatsune Miku.

I was initially pretty pissed, at myself, more than anything. I was right there, less than 10 minutes ago! I could’ve been at the front of the line! But, well, there’s no use dwelling on the past, and I got over it pretty quickly. So it came as a pleasant surprise when I learned that there would be an “encore performance” of the “concert” that evening at 8. This one, I wasn’t going to miss, even if it conflicted with the Minori Chihara concert. I wasn’t a fan of Minorin, anyway.

I was at the front of the line for the “encore performance” an hour early and got to meet some very nice fellows from Baruch College, a college of the City University of New York. I can’t think of the last time before that day that I had played the card game bullshit.

They called it a concert, but really, it was just a screening of a special 1 hour cut of the Hatsune Miku 39′s Giving Day concert Bluray. That said, that’s pretty much what I expected going in, as I heard that the earlier “concert” in San Francisco in September had been the same thing. Though it would’ve been nice to have exclusive footage from the concert other than the ones on the disc.

Some people brought glo-sticks. Fans started claps, cheers, applause, etc. as if it were a real concert. When some of the more popular songs started playing, cheers would spread throughout the crowd. The loudest one was for a Kagamine Rin + Len song, when Rin initially appeared and Len suddenly popped out from behind her. Megurine Luka also made an appearance for the always fun Just Be Friends. The guy to my right, who knew nothing about Vocaloids going in (“So it’s like a virtual Japanese Britney Spears, right?” after the first couple songs – note that at this point, he didn’t even realize that the singing was synthesized) was one of the most energetic of the people I saw there, starting claps and fist pumping along with the fans in the video.

There was a very surreal feel to the whole thing. Here we were, sitting in a room, watching a recording of a concert that featured a virtual idol that had been projected onto a glass screen, and people were loving it. It was one of those experiences that was uniquely possible in the world of Vocaloid. All in all, it was a lot of fun, thanks to the concert-like atmosphere. It was somehow fitting that the fans had made the “concert” a success, given how the success of Hatsune Miku and the Vocaloid software is thanks to the fans.

The final song, fittingly enough, was Melt by supercell. Though I’ve grown to like supercell’s final Nico Nico Douga song, When the First Love Ends, more, Melt will always hold a place in my heart as one of the classics, the one that put ryo on the map. After the “concert,” I went up to the front with a lot of people and got to shake hands with Hiroyuki Itoh, the CEO of Crypton Future Media and one of the creators of Hatsune Miku. I also got to have a photo taken with him, which was pretty cool. Even though there wasn’t supposed to be anything after the “concert,” Itoh was very welcoming of everyone who wanted to greet him and get their photo taken with him.

What I want to get to, though, is my disappointment in the concert. Not the fact that it was just a screening – again, that was expected – but rather, the unimaginativeness of the contents of the concert itself. The guy to the left of me – one of the students from Baruch (sorry for forgetting your name) – and I had some short conversations throughout the “concert” about how to improve it. For example, there was a lack of variety and difficulty in the dance moves performed by Miku. Given that she’s a computer generated image, I thought she should be doing “flips and shit” that normal humans can’t do, or at least can’t do consistently. She’s a computer generated image! Have her do some freaky circus-type shit!

And on the flipside, how about making her seem even more real? For example, why not have her appear to sweat as the concert went on, like a real performer would? That Baruch student commented that that might be too kinky – my response was, all the better. Or, have a staged trip or wardrobe malfunction that shows her messing up. The Baruch student suggested that she could throw something out to the audience, which would be synced with an actual item being thrown out.

Really, there are so many possibilities that become open when you have a virtual performer, and the producers of the concert seemed all too happy just to emulate a regular idol. They did prepare an “encore” at the end after the show was technically supposed to be over, but that was too predictable. And the performance of The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku did use the fact that Miku was just a computer image to some effect, having her faze out into static at the end. But more could have been done throughout the concert.

Perhaps reflective of the anime industry in general right now. In the world of animation, anything and everything is possible, but the industry players seem all too content to pump out the same shit again and again. Even though I’m enjoying quite a few shows this season, the only one I can honestly say is doing anything creative with the animation is Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt.

Another idea I with regards to the concert was to have some of the popular Nico Nico Douga Vocaloid performers come on stage, unannounced. Start a song with Miku, then have someone like Nayuta or Chouchou walk on stage and sing. Reveal partway that one of the guitarists or keyboardists is a Nico Nico Douga performer. Use the concerts not just to promote Miku or the composers, but also the performers who have helped create this movement by uploading their own renditions of the work. I, for one, would go absolutely nuts if Nagi suddenly appeared on stage and started singing Melt, instead of Miku.

So I wonder, what else do you think could be done in a Vocaloid concert that simply wouldn’t be possible in a regular one? What should be done to take full advantage of Hatsune Miku’s unique properties? I feel like there are some real opportunities being missed here by playing things too safe, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s had ideas like this.