The collaboration video between Crypton Future Media’s Vocaloid Hatsune Miku and game developer Square Enix designer Tetsuya Nomura that premiered at Hatsune Miku art exhibition “Universal Positivity”@Wallplay (Oct.9th-Oct. 19th), as a part of HATSUNE MIKU EXPO 2014 in New York, has been revealed. The video was produced by Visual Arts, Visual Works, the CG movie production department of Square Enix.











So real, she looks almost like a living human.

Familiar Square Enix style graphics and the Hatsune Miku of her fan’s imaginations overlap in the unsettling video.

Japanese message boards are already caught up in a whirlwind of debate: “They overdid the realism”, “I mean, if she was real this is probably how she’d look”, “She looks like a cosplayer to me”.

Now it seems that Hatsune Miku has reached a point where the term “virtual idol” is no longer sufficient to describe her. She exists in a realm we cannot comprehend, her appearance continually changing with the wishes of the people who imagine her. It’s almost as if she’s hinting at the future of 4-D.

Neither virtual, nor real.

Something that can’t be called simply “virtual reality”; the new real.

The era of Hatsune Miku has arrived.