Pixellated sensation has millions of fans
TOKYO: Japanese teenage pop sensation Miku Hatsune of smittens fans, a string of tops hits and an image entirely unblemished by drug use, scandals or celebrity meltdowns.
She doesn't demand six figurerecording contracts, always shows up on time tantrums and won''t break a sweat during a two-hour concert. Too good to be true? Yes and no.
Miku Hatsune is a 3-D computer animation.
The collaborative brainchildof software developers, a manga comic artist and a vast digital fan community, the virtual singer from outer space has become one of the hottest stars on the J-pop scene.
Next month she's giving her debut US concert, the Mikunopolis show on July 2 at the Anime Expo 2011 in Los Angeles.
Miku may not tecnically be real, but that didn't stop several thousand fans, most of them young men, from flocking to her latest live gig in Tokyo, where the android star enthralled her audience from an onstage screen.
"We can see her herbut we can't touch her. We think she is a true idol, the purest kind of idol," gushed 21-year-old literature student Keisuke Umeda, decked out in a Miku T-shirt and a range of her merchandise.
"She's so cute, and she danced so well," nodded his girlfriend Azusa Fushimi,20, a design student dressed in a self-made Miku outfit for the ocassion.
Below the strobe light, TV cameras and disco balls, fans were jabbing the air with glow-sticks even before showed up. An excited roar rippled through the crowd when she burst onto stage as a cloud of pixels that morphed into the shape of a galactic manga vixen with thigh-high boots and an impossibly short miniskirt.
The programmers who created Miku aare vague about her persona, but very specific about her stats - the teenage pop queen is 158cm tall and weight a dainty 42kg.
![]() |
| Digital New World: Miku was a collaborative result of software developers, a comic artist and a vast fan community. |
