Armed with anime avatars, Japan bids to conquer the metaverse - The Japan Times

At Japan’s latest CEATEC tech show, everything aged seemed caller again.

For 1 thing, the nation’s premier gadgets and exertion showcase was backmost aft a pandemic hiatus. For another, the astir fashionable booth looked similar it was teleported from the aboriginal 1990s — legions of precocious schoolhouse students were queuing for clip connected a virtual world headset providing the illusion of climbing neon-colored walls successful a phantasy space. The quality this clip astir was branding: It’s present the metaverse.

Japan could summation an borderline successful this burgeoning tract of immersive online worlds fixed the popularity of anime characters and virtual idols successful the nation: Witness the roar successful fictional, avatar-style YouTube celebrities specified arsenic virtual singers Hatsune Miku oregon Kizuna AI, each with hundreds of thousands of followers. Metaverse promoters consciousness this affinity for integer representations augurs good for the future.