Virtual Idol Theory: The Road from Tokimatsuri Eve to Vtuber [Kiri Nakazato's "2.5-Dimensional" Idol Historia Vol. 8

Nowadays, many "idol works" have been created for anime, games, and other genres, and the release of CDs and real events by the casts playing the idols have become familiar. Since the beginning of this year, the new coronavirus has caused postponements and cancellations of events across the board, but we are happy to see that reruns and replacement performances are gradually being announced.

How were these "2.5-dimensional" idols, who freely move between two and three dimensions, born and how did they shape the scene? Writer Kiri Nakazato, who has been observing 2.5-dimensional idols of the Showa, Heisei, and 2025 eras, has started the 8th installment of her popular series summarizing the history of these idols!

Virtual idols. Virtual idols are "virtual idols/idols" in Japanese. In the history of Japanese content, various attempts have been made to create "idols" in virtual space using technology centered on computer graphics. In this article, we would like to take a look at the history of these attempts.

Virtual Idols" as a Concept within the World of Artworks

Virtual idols were first depicted as near-future creations in anime and other creative works, and then developed in a way that the technological evolution of the real world followed the creations.

The first representative work that presented the concept of "virtual idols" within the world of the work is the original video animation (OVA) "Megazone 23" (1985). The original virtual idol, Tokimatsuri Eve, appears at the beginning of the work as an idol projected on a monitor in Shinjuku Alta. Although Tokimatsuri Eve dominates the music charts and boasts popularity on television, she is a mysterious entity that has never performed in the real world. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Tokimatsuri Eve is actually a virtual interface created by the giant computer "Bahamut.

The identity and purpose of Eve are directly related to the grandiose and ridiculous worldview and storyline of "Mega Zone 23," so I will not go into detail about them, but the scene in which the realistic idol Eve is revealed to be an imaginary image after being "rewound and replayed" during the recording of the video is one of the most memorable moments of the show at the time. The scene in which the real idol, Tokimatsuri Eve, is "rewound and replayed" during the video recording and revealed to be a false image was very shocking at the time.

As a side note, Jisai Eve (and her creator, Bahamut) had the useful and creative ability to automatically generate songs and lyrics during live performances, and choreograph them in real time. Interestingly, there was one occasion when Eve made a mistake in her dance choreography. This may seem imperfect at first glance, but when one imagines Eve performing live on air, fluctuations such as slight blurring in her singing or differences in her dancing could lead to an overwhelming sense of reality.

What makes "MEGAZONE 23" surprisingly advanced as a work about a virtual idol is that the third work in the series, "MEGAZONE 23 III" (1989), features a mass-produced version of Eve Tokimatsuri, who is "widely recognized by the general public as a virtual idol.

MEGAZONE23 III takes place hundreds of years in the future from the time depicted in MEGAZONE23 and MEGAZONE23 PART II: SECRETS (1986). At the beginning of the film, Tokimatsuri Eve appears several hundred years later, looking the same except for her hair and costume, and is recognized by the youth of that era as a "CG idol that runs on a program. From the perspective of posterity, many people may associate it somewhat with Hatsune Miku.

I think it is fair to say that the template for virtual idols in anime can almost be found in "Megazone 23.

In the 1990s, another virtual idol appeared in the "Macross" series: Sharon Apple from the OVA "Macross Plus" (1994). In the film, Sharon is called a "computer-generated virtual idol," and virtual displays throughout the city project the songs and visuals of the top idol, Sharon. While Sharon stirs the public's emotions and arouses their enthusiasm, at a press conference, a reporter raises the question, "Isn't a singing voice without emotion created by a computer a fake?

Sharon Apple's visuals are based on the female members of the human species, but her appearance and singing voice are multifaceted. She changes her appearance to look like a mermaid or a bird, sometimes powerfully, sometimes coquettishly, depending on the live performance, and her singing voice changes as well. The performance is an integral part of the production, the environment, and the music. In fact, in the first half of the story, it is revealed that Sharon's artificial intelligence is incomplete and that the part of her emotional expression is reproduced by tracing the brain waves of her producer, Mün. The structure in which a flesh-and-blood human being is responsible for the emotional core of a virtual idol may be similar to that of today's VTubers.

In the second half of "Macross Plus," the focus of the story shifts to the events brought about by the evolution and awakening of artificial intelligence, and although this is where the true essence of "Macross" as science fiction begins, there is much to see in the first half of the story in terms of the connection between the virtual idols, society, and their fans.

If we consider the reasons why "Megazone 23" and "Macross Plus," both of which were based on the motif of virtual idols, were created in the decade from the mid-80s to the mid-90s, they are closely related to the background of the time when the mystique of idols in the real world and their presence as residents of another world gradually began to fade away. Idols are also human beings with feelings and emotions. It is precisely because the now commonplace understanding that idols are also flesh and blood human beings with feelings has spread, that the trend to seek ideal idols in the virtual world has accelerated. In the lyrics of the song "Tragic Idol" sung by Tokimatsuri Eve in "MEGAZONE23 III" (sung by Saki Takaoka, who played Eve in "III"), the phrase "I am lonely like an idol trapped in a CRT" is suggestive.

In the 21st century, virtual idols also appear in the anime "LEMON ANGEL PROJECT" (2006). The story begins at the beginning of the first episode when the image of the top idol "Lemon Angel" (first season) on a street monitor suddenly disappears due to noise.

The second Lemon Angel, to which the main characters belong, is a real idol. However, the first Lemon Angel, which suddenly ceased its activities at the height of its popularity, was actually a programmed virtual idol.

The timing of the broadcast in 2006 was the dawn of idol contents, when "THE iDOLM@STER" appeared as an arcade game in 2005, and the following year, 2007, was the eve of the vocaloid boom with the appearance of "VOCALOID2" Hatsune Miku. Of note is the script team for this work. Shogo Sakamoto, who wrote the climax script, has been involved in the series as a core member of "THE iDOLM@STER" and "THE iDOLM@STER Dearly Stars," while Deko Akao and Takashi Ifukube of the "Pretty Rhythm" series and Naotaka Hayashi of the "Science Adventure series, Naotaka Hayashi, and other names in the lineup. The appearance of virtual idols in a work set in the real-time present day and the spotlight on the gimmicky aspects of live performances as idols (rather than artificial intelligence) is a reflection of the times.

In "Wake Up, Girls! A New Chapter" (2017), the virtual idol "Makina X," known as "V-doll," appears. Makina X is set up as a virtual idol that appeared on a smartphone app.

Although the name "V Doll" tends to remind people of VTubers, the voice actress in charge of Makina X is Suzuko Mimori, and her song "Glossy World" was composed by "Love Live! The existence of V Doll Makina X is not a coincidence with the existence of other VTubers, such as "Love Live! and "THE iDOLM@STER CINDERELLA GIRLS," which have been developed for video games, are now thriving in real-life live performances.

Wake Up, Girls!" is another work in which the voice actors perform as a unit on a real stage and move between two and three dimensions. I think the duality of the composition of "real idols being pushed aside by the appearance of V-dolls" in this work is interesting.

I have introduced some of these works, but I believe that the existence of virtual idols in anime also reflects the era in which the works were created.

Virtual idol projects in the real world

We have talked about virtual idols in the world of animation, but the technology of the real world, especially in terms of visual technology to express the appearance of idols, is rapidly catching up with the world of creation. From here, I would like to keep in mind the trend of virtual idols in the real world.

The origin of this attempt to create idols that do not exist in the real world began with a terribly analog prank or story that took place in the field of AM radio. The project started with a story about a fictitious idol named "Yui Haga. At first, the project was about creating an ideal fictional idol, but it gradually eroded into reality as Yui Haga held events and radio programs, and released CDs and photo collections. Yui Haga never showed her face publicly, and paradoxically ensured her anonymity by having several people in charge of radio, songs, and photo books for each of her various activities. It was a grand experiment in creating a fictitious idol by making the most of the characteristics of radio, a medium in which one cannot see the faces of the participants.

The first use of the term "virtual idol" in real life is said to have been around 1993, when Konami launched the "Winbee National Idolization Project". The project was to market Pastel, who appears in the game "Twinbee" (Winbee's pilot), as a virtual idol. As a result, the project as a virtual idol project did not develop much and spontaneously disappeared, but it was the moment when the term "virtual idol" was officially recognized.

Despite the poor reception of the virtual idol project, Konami did not give up on the virtual idol project, and when the romance simulation game "Tokimeki Memorial" was released in 1994, its heroine, Shiori Fujisaki, was marketed as a virtual idol. In 1996, Shiori Fujisaki made her CD debut with the single "Teach Me Mr. Sky/ Let's Go with the Wind. It was groundbreaking for a character to release a CD not under the name of the idol or voice actress who voiced her, nor as an "artist" as opposed to a character song.

The pioneering virtual idol in the real world using 3DCG is often referred to as Kyoko Date, a virtual idol created by HORIPRO. The development cost of Date Kyoko is said to have been in the tens of millions of yen, and she used the latest 3DCG and motion capture technology available at the time. Unfortunately, the premature existence of Kyoko Date was not a successful project due to technical limitations, high running costs, and the fact that real-life popularity did not follow. The producer of the project was Yoshitaka Hori of Hori Productions. Hori Pro is also the agency of Hikaru Ijuin, and Mr. Hori was actually involved in the "Yui Haga" project from the middle of the project. The person who was involved in the prank that became one of the original forms of virtual idols later became the real thing? I think it is an interesting trend that the person who was involved in one of the original virtual idol pranks later worked on the real thing.

The subsequent trend of virtual idols was greatly influenced by the appearance of "THE iDOLM@STER" in 2005 and "HATSUNE MIKU" in 2007. The other is to use voice synthesizing software to create virtual voices and singing voices. These paths sometimes intersect, and in recent years, a hybrid called VTuber has emerged.

The situation where voice actors are the ones in charge of the voices on stage at live performances is a great contradiction from the perspective of virtual idols. However, the presence of voice actors carrying characters on their backs has a mysterious appeal that differs from that of flesh-and-blood idols or computer-graphic model idols. With the advancement of technology, it is now possible for 3DCG model idols to appear on stage as they are in real life.

It has been 35 years since Tokimatsuri Eve. Perhaps it is only in later times that we will come to realize that we are witnessing the weaving of a new history of virtual idols.

(Text: Kiri Nakazato)