Kikuo: A rainbow fever dream of a concert

I had convinced (not that it took much convincing) a close friend of mine to attend Kikuo’s concert with me, on September 8th in San Francisco. For context, this friend was one I had known since second grade; we had seen each other through virtually every phase that a middle school nerd goes through. We grew up obsessing over many of the same interests and entering the same fandoms, be they video games, music, or other media. Of course, having liked anime growing up, Vocaloid was one of these. Being at the Kikuo concert now, after over ten years of friendship and navigating fandom space together, it felt like everything had come full circle.

I had no clue what to expect at Kikuo’s show and as soon as I stepped into the dark embrace of the Regency Ballroom, I had the feeling that many of the folks there felt similarly. Bright wigs marked the locations of cosplayers, some Vocaloid, some completely unrelated, but fitting nonetheless. Folks held up Hatsune Miku plushies, everyone cheering every time another one popped up from somewhere in the crowd. More than one person had brought a Nintendo DS to film the show with, and several more held up their phones as they played Project Sekai, a Vocaloid rhythm game. There was an underlying sense that we had all occupied the same digital sphere, enjoyed the same media, and shared many of the same interests, an underlying sense of community that only elevated my excitement for the show.

After much anticipation, the crowd practically buzzing with impatience and excitement, Kikuo finally appeared on stage to a cacophony of cheers. He wore a headdress with horns and ribbons of all different colors that obscured the top half of his face, a mask that hid the bottom half, and a loose, monochromatic shirt with strange patterns. His wrists were adorned with beaded bracelets. It was as if a spirit had stepped into our dimension from another. As he emerged from the fog, his strange silhouette made stranger by the colorful, ever-changing projections behind him and the flashing lights, I had no doubt that this concert was going to be truly one-of-a-kind.

The show was nothing short of a fever dream; a mix of psychedelic imagery, people pressed against one another in a whirring mass, and glitchy, manic sound. He played Vocaloid classics that had practically the entire crowd jumping and singing along, such as “Gommene, Gommene,” “Aishite, Aishite, Aishite,” and my personal favorite, “Kimi Wa Dekinai Ko.” Alongside these, he played new music, songs that were meant to transport you underneath the ocean, into a floaty, watery world.

Kikuo, standing behind his setup, had no trouble controlling the crowd. Their energy rose with a single wave of his hand; a conductor and his orchestra. It was entrancing, watching him bend and mix the music into a deafening wave of bass-heavy, mania-inducing noise one second, and eerie, glitchy music the next.

At the very end of the show, during the last song, “Soshite Kimi wa Tsuki ni Natta,” Kikuo brought out Hoshi, a mascot character that Kikuo created as a persona. Balloons dropped from the balconies as rainbow lights flooded the venue. The song, carnival-like and whimsy-filled, was the perfect song for the scene. Balloons of all colors bounced from one end of the crowd to the other as Hoshi and Kikuo held hands and danced along to the music on stage. I stood in awe. It truly felt like the perfect ending to the show. Everything seemed to move in slow-motion as the music chimed away in the background.

That night, my friend and I left the venue with ringing ears, sore legs, and full hearts. It was almost unbelievable that something which once occupied a purely digital space was now something that could be enjoyed at a real venue, at a real show. It was clear that Vocaloid had grown as a genre and Kikuo had grown as an artist.

Kikuo continues to breathe new life into Vocaloid as a genre, experimenting with strange sounds and concepts. As we stepped out from the warmth of the ballroom into the cold, late summer night, the concert faded into a colorful, dreamy memory that could fit into the palms of my hands, and I knew that Vocaloid was far from a relic of the past. It was something unique, something exciting, something just weird enough, just crazy enough to work.

Article and photo by Gwen Tam