On January 16, Bilibili will join hands with Shanghai Media Tech, a subsidiary of Shanghai Media Group, to present China‘s first virtual idol musical fantasy film Vox Ultima, meaning The Voice of a New World (or “创世之音”). It aims to reimagine the scope of virtual entertainment.
Disrupting the traditional “performance-on-stage” concert mode, the two-hour fantasy musical film will be available exclusively on Bilibili. Huo Zun, a well-known Chinese musician, features as a special guest in the musical where his virtual avatar “Nine-Tailed Neko” will be officially revealed for the first time.
The lineup consists of 12 popular virtual idols from both China and Japan. They include hanser and Aria, who come from VirtuaReal, a virtual talent incubation project jointly operated by Bilibili and the Japanese Vtuber group NIJISANJI.
The Voice of a New World tells the story of a warrior who fights demons and creates a whole new fantasy world of virtual idols with the help of twelve goddesses. Each participating virtual idol is featured as a goddess in a separate scene, including “light,” “ice,” “ocean,” “flower sea,” “forest.” “old fashion,” “time travel,” “metropolitan.” “time,” “space,” and “sky.”
The mash-up stage features design elements such as cyberpunk and Peking Opera. Virtual idols will perform with real performers in settings that integrate real scenes with AR-powered virtual scenes.
In November last year, Bilibili hosted the eleventh edition of the widely popular Bilibili Macro Link (BML), an anime, comics, and games-oriented concert, in Shanghai on December 19. Known as “Bilibili Macro Link-Visual Release 2020,” simply “BML-VR” for short, the event was China’s first concert consisting solely of Virtual YouTubers (VTuber) and Virtual Uploaders (VUp).