Weirdness: Watch an Actual Live Splatoon Squid Sisters Concert From Japan

Virtual reality/holographic Marie and Callie... this is weird but a good kind of weird.

Oh Japan. You will never cease to surprise me...
... Even though Japanese do like their squids for obvious reasons.

This is extremely cool i can't! Ah man wish I could have been there I would have screamed and dancing like an idiot I don't care how ridiculous I would look haha. This reminds me of a Gorillaz concert. with the characters on screen and the live band playing on the backside. Huge props for Nintendo to pulling this kind of things. Hope they do something similar on the West someday!

Fantastically mad. I love it

That was pretty cool. Thanks for sharing. It reminds me of the live Hatsune Miku concerts they do in Japan.

this is great!!!makes me smile.

This is insane and amazing. I don't usually do concerts, but I'd totally go to something like this.

No thanks.

I cant help but wonder what concerts in the future are going to be like. When we can make something that eventually looks 100% real, anything will be possible.

No good, I can't understand. They seem to be singing in foreign.

They weird me out enough during that opening thing.....
No way I would PAY to see that

@Ashthearcher I would definitely pay!!! I don't even own Splatoon, but I LOVE CALLIE AND MARIE

I utterly adore this nonsense!

I can understand how people can like it, but I would feel rather awkward in the audience... unless there is a huge mosh pit in front of the stage

If you can spend an hour rocking out in Club LoL then this concert is for you

While I may usually moan about things like Vocaloids, man, this looks awesome! You can't beat a good bit of Squid Sisters music!

@mateq I feel the same way. The whole thing is just really awkward and cringey. Even watching the video, I felt like I needed to go into a corner and hide to be 100% sure no one would see me watching it.

I love both Splatoon and the squid sisters but this was just painful.

That is pretty cool and reminds me of the Genki Rockets concerts.

Looked at another way, this is a chance to see and hear the Splatoon soundtrack performed by a live band... with giant Squid-People projections. I'm pretty sure it IS a live band, though I'd be interested to know how the vocals were done.

So, that makes it a little more 'authentic' than just standing in a hall, listening to pre-recorded music with accompanying pre-recorded projections and calling it a 'live' experience.

Arguably, this qualifies more as a 'live show' than most DJ sets. Not that there's anything wrong with DJ sets.

Apparently Corrin and Bayonetta are going to be demonstrated after the concert!

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1177566

Something like Gorillaz is the better way to do it - retain a live band but still focus the attention on the characters.

This is so cool! Honestly I don't think I would've actually gone to this, but still that's just amazing!

@the-madprofessor There is a live band playing the instruments though.

@DiscoGentleman What makes you think there are perverts there? :/

I would not give even 1$ to go there. What's the point :/. Creepy CGI characters with creepy people listening to them.

@mantisghost @Ashthearcher Why would you need to pay for the concert? The concert was a part of the Splatoon Koshien Finals event.

FYI, this concert was put on by Nintendo in celebration of Splatoon hitting 1 million copies sold in Japan. This game has one of the best soundtracks to come along in a while, but this concert deal is crazy. I would've gone, and I'd have my six-year-old on my shoulders, and we'd have our glow sticks and everything. I'm impressed by the holograms. Pretty killer guitar solo in one song that you didn't hear in-game though.

@the-madprofessor There is a live band playing, you can clearly see them at the side. I've been to see Gorillaz live, it was awesome but it would have been even better with projected characters like this. Instead they did a thing where they had a big screen playing "live" footage of the band stuck in the dressing room, lamenting the fact Damon Albarn was stealing the show between songs (during which the video would play). Which was fun, but not as fun as projections

This is really cute.

This is pretty awesome! I hope they show more of the live band playing on the side. Regardless of the weirdness of projection fictional character (not for everyone, I know), this is probably the only chance to hear live authentic Splatoon music.

While I can't understand Japanese (...yet) the opening seemed like a buzzkill. Really I could be at home reading through dialogue on my Wii U!

The actual concert though; incredible.

they did this to celebrate the game splatting a million units in japan. it's almost assured that they'll do this in the states for e3. for the guys of nlife, maybe if you ask them nicely, they'll do this for egx as well.

They sing better than I can. (._. )

@zool - No man, I'm pretty sure they're singing in English, that what they speak in Japan.

I guess you're required to post at least one negative comment per topic, so I get it.

This is so weird and Japanese, I love it.

It's good to see a new set of characters with personality appealing to kids.

@Sligeach You need to get over your crusade against Splatoon. You troll literally every article about it. It's pathetic.

@hefferj I said "no thanks". That's not trolling. You're the one who's pathetic.

@Action51 They speak Japanese in Japan.

You see positive criticism as negative comment. That is a bit shallow on your part.

Gaming like sport is for all ages and so a forum like this will have a range of ages.

Younger gamers are happy to to list games, fill in polls, talk about the latest Amiibo etc. Older gamers who have grown up with Nintendo are not always happy with the direction Nintendo seems to be heading and post comments about this.

This is not because they want to put Nintendo down, its because they want to see Nintendo do better, maybe change direction a bit, and get back to when they were on top of their game and not something Xbox and PS owners look down on. But something Xbox and PS owners want as a second console.

@zool Well put.

@mateq
I'd be up for that if they play the metal track lmao

Wow, some of choreography was really impressive, like in the reprise section at 13:49. I just kinda wish we'd hear a new song. I can't believe they managed to turn what is essentially 3 minutes of constantly looping music from the game into a 24 minute concert. They really need some new material; some of those transitions sounded a little thrown-together at times. Still, a great effort, and I enjoyed myself.

I think it was pretty cool how they talked to the audience, though. Has anyone done any translations? I want to hear the snarky comments Marie made that the audience was reacting to. It's too bad they don't ever speak English; it'd probably sounds really weird.

Also, I've always wondered how they synchronize stuff like this live. Is someone controlling the speed of the animations, or is the band following a timer? It didn't seem like either, like when they would play the final chord out of time, and the drummer would fill in for the last hit, which the band and the sisters both came in on. It's really impressive. I know they've done stuff like this with the vocaloid cast, so there must be professionals you hire to set this kind of thing up.

@Nicolai I was wondering the same thing about the syncing. It's funny; you often hear bands lambasted for miming along to prerecorded music on TV, but here the band is playing genuinely, and seemingly has to sync with prerecorded performers instead.

I also wonder whether the vocals were performed live and fed through some sort of vocoder, or whether they were the one prerecorded part of the music...

Also, were there any parts of the video in particular you wanted translated?

@Maxz: I mean, really the whole thing. I have no idea what they were talking about the whole time. I'm sure someone will do a full translation at some point.

@Nicolai Maybe... it'd be quite an undertaking though.

For what it's worth, here's the intro part (the bit done against the usual in-game backdrop):

Callie: How you are all doINK? [feel free to substitute for your preferred squid-based-greeting-pun] It's Inkopolis News time!
Marie: Hello! Squid Sisters here!
Callie: Today's stage, live from Japan is...
Marie: Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun... Ta-da!
〜Makuhari Messe (the convention centre hosting Niconico Tokaigi)〜
Callie: What a HUUUGE hall! I want to battle here!
Marie: In a place this size, it'd be impossible to resolve a battle in just 3 minutes.
Callie: I wonder how far everyone's come to be here...
Marie: I'm so nervous...
Callie: Oh really!? Well I'm completely fine!
Marie: ...Weren't you hyperventilating earlier?
Callie: Oh, err... that... That was just me warming up.
Marie: ...Err, right, so THAT'S how you get yourself prepared...?
Callie: ... ...Anyway, shall we make our way onto the stage?
Marie: Yeah! Let's get things fired up!
Callie: Okay, let's go for it again today!
Both: Stay fresh!

Enter Stage

So yeah, classic Squid Sisters banter.

Translating the rest of the video is more difficult (and would take quite a while even if it weren't) due to the combination of zoomed out camera, low-resolution, and Splatoon's decision to use the chunkiest font imaginable which makes more complicated characters appear like solid blocks in anything less than ideal picture quality. For example, '闘会議' ('Tokaigi', the name of the event) basically becomes '█会█', so some pieces of text get reduced to context-based guesswork.

Anyway, that's the start of it. Maybe someone with a bit more time (and/or ability) can do the rest of the video.

Still, I hope knowing the intro helps you feel more, uh, immersed in the inkredible squidsperience.

@DiscoGentleman yet, they are not perverts . . . .

@maxz

Cool! That does help, thanks.

Wow.

Well.... I don't know what to say... but... this is weirdness over 9000!... also the squid sisters (which are really cousins btw) are gigantic!!