holoAN Room Hosts Watch Sakura Miko’s Second Live, Blooming Parade, With Viewers

HOLOLIVE — The hosts of holoAN room on Monday led a watch-along of Sakura Miko’s second solo concert, Blooming Parade, with viewers pressing play together from the 32:30 mark of the concert archive. The stream ran 149 minutes. One host had already seen the concert and passed along comments from the live’s production team; the other was seeing it for the first time and had stayed off social media beforehand to avoid spoilers.

Before the start, the hosts read out the concept notes. Where the first live had Miko carried along by her fans, they said, the second was meant to show her leading them, and the production team described how she met with staff repeatedly to shape the show. The hosts muted their background music, synced to a countdown and started the concert from its opening, with the first song giving way to a Miko-led call-and-response on the second.

“It feels like we’re walking through Miko’s life together with her.” — holoAN room hosts, after the main set ended

They followed the show through its free-viewing portion, which ran to the fourth song and included Miko riding a trolley past a marching band and brass players in costume. They then covered a medley of dance numbers, a dance battle between Miko and herself in her first-live outfit, and a change into the dress from the concert’s key visual. On a stage newly decked with flowers and chandeliers, she came down a staircase from an upper level. The hosts said the staging of the song “Your Petal” reflected her struggles and led into a Cinderella-style story to close the main set.

The hosts said the encore ran about five minutes of calls before Miko returned, and they passed on the producers’ note that her performance of Awa Bright Parade showed her love for Hololive. In the double encore, the trolley went up toward the venue’s highest seats at her request, they said, and live goods were fired from cannons. Both hosts cried through much of the encore, and they rewound at the end to check a detail of Miko’s nails.

Chat joined the calls from the second song onward and filled with applause emoji and cherry blossoms through the finale. The hosts closed by calling out “otsumiko,” the fans’ sign-off for Miko, with viewers, and said they would listen to her songs on the way home.