Recently, I was invited to check out an online concert, New Generation LIVE 2020, by Lantis and Purple One Star. Now if you do some quick Googling (like I did), you’ll quickly find out that these 2 companies are big media producers. They have a hand in a good amount of anime songs, one of which is from Love Live, but they also have a very long list of artists, both popular and up-and-coming.

Learning of these things, my expectations around what kind of concert I’m in for begin to form. Will it be full of anime songs? Am I going to recognize most of them? Will I be introduced to artists I’ve never heard of before? These questions were soon answered as I watched the stream.

A livestream that had a ticket required to attend, priced at around 2000 JPY. This was a surprise to me since I’m used to watching people sing over the internet for free. So I’ll also be viewing this while evaluating if it is indeed worth that price tag. Perhaps the production quality would be just that good. Or maybe the convenience of watching made the payment worthwhile. All this is what I’m about to find out as I received the link to access the site.

Considering that this event was not marketed outside of Japan, one shouldn’t expect to have lingual aids like English subtitles or translations readily available. So when I was directed to the site, it was of course only in Japanese. But with my meager understanding of the Japanese language, along with a built-in translator on my browser, accessing the livestream was pretty easy. All I had to do was be there at the right time (spoiler: I wasn’t).

Honestly, you’ll want to have a bit of understanding for Japanese if you really want to know what they’re talking about in interviews, but if you’re there just for the music, I think that’s fine.

So, one thing we forgot to consider was the fact that Japan was on a different timezone from us, leading us to miss the livestream completely. That’s one thing you’ll have to remember if you’re viewing from outside of Japan. Fortunately, the livestream would be archived and be accessible for anyone who bought a ticket to it for about a week. This is a pretty neat feature to have in case you miss the schedule, or the internet just wasn’t agreeable at the time it was live.

When I got to watching the archive I was immediately blown away by the people that presented. We have big names such as Furihata Ai, Tatatsuki Kanako, and Nishiyama Koutaro who all have considerable careers not only in singing, but also in anime and games. With them is Horiuchi Marina, who known as a singer, voice actress and idol. They are followed by prominent YouTube personalities like MindaRyn and the vtuber Higuchi Kaede. And finally some newer names like ARCANA Project and Sakuma Takao, who also put out a great perfrormance. So we received a healthy mix of new and established talents through the show, giving us new and familiar song numbers to enjoy.

Each act would quickly start once their turn was up, perform a few songs, then proceed to be interviewed by the host of the show, giving us an opportunity to get to know them a little more. Afterwards the next performer would immediately start. Everything finished up in a little over two hours.

Honestly, you’ll want to have a bit of understanding for Japanese if you really want to know what they’re talking about in interviews, but if you’re there just for the music, I think that’s fine. Because the production completely blew me away. Not only was the video quality great, being in HD, nice and clear, but the audio quality was crisp and well-balanced. If you’ve ever attended a convention or concert, you’d probably know why I think this is a big deal. All too often there’d be issues like the lead-singer getting overpowered by drums, or some technical difficulty would abruptly stop the show. Well, this concert had none of that, and I think that’s huge. The show stays within schedule which demonstrates huge respect for your time as the viewer. It was clear that each performance had immense preparation for it. Form the performance, to the lighting, and even how the cameras moved around to give us interesting angles to feature everyone that went on stage.

Usually, I would treat a livestream as something that I didn’t have to watch. I would leave it on another monitor or phone and catch up with other work I needed to get done. But there are shows that clearly have a lot of effort put into them, where they get things polished down to the last detail. These shows are the ones that demand your attention because of their sheer quality, and this New Generation Live 2020 show is one of them. I would certainly want to attend (and be on time!) for the next one if ever.

These shows are the ones that demand your attention because of their sheer quality, and this New Generation Live 2020 show is one of them.

Needless to say, to be shown this amount of quality in the span of two hours I believe is well-worth the 2000 JPY ticket price. I think we can all admit that we’ve dropped that much and more on less worthy things, so I’m glad this one was a more enjoyable use of money. I think after reviewing New Generation LIVE 2020, by Lantis and Purple One Star, this would be either a great viewing experience for friends with similar interests, or be another reason to learn Japanese again.

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