A Girl You Can Hold in Real Life
When is the last time you opened neopets.com?
Do you remember your tamagotchi's name?
Do you think they miss you?
This film explores a possible virtual reality of one of these abandoned pets. The girl, the 'pet', has become obsolete and tries to regain her worth through appropriating Hatsune Miku's dance and aesthetic, believing she will win over her owner just like Miku. Frustrated at her inability and unwillingness to become a carbon copy of the vocaloid, she quickly gives up on the dream of getting her owner's attention and instead decides to try to escape her simulated reality, for better or worse. Do vocaloids go to heaven?
Credits
Master Coordinator
Thesis Supervisor
Director
Stylist/Creative Director
Operators
Giulio Martinelli
Marco Celotti
Gaia Mandara
Margot Kocay
Ikram Chaffui and Marco Cruz
Focus Puller
Editor
Colorist
Model
Hair and Makeup
Daniel Zini
Gaia Mandara
Marco Cruz
Zoe Guindana
Maria Rescigno and Fatima Ferrini
Wardrobe
Yume Yume, Walter Van Beirendonck, Angelic Pretty, No Dress, Maroske Peech, Maison Margiela, Issey Miyake, Onitsuka Tiger
All unbranded pieces are either vintage or second hand
Pets and Neopets
The popularity of virtual pets and friends in the early 2000's marks an important part in the lives of many kids born during this time. You could play games, take them to the park and watch them grow old just like a real pet, without the hassle.
Tamagotchi Graveyard
Vocaloids, Discord Kittens and Moe
Cute, innocent, and capturable, digital pets follow in line with the concept of the Moe in anime, a term that describes a neotenous female character as well as the attachment that she evokes in her fans. These childlike characters inspire a desire to protect and care for the anime girl as if she were real, just like a Neopet, Pokemon or Tamagotchi.
"Lucky Star", an anime about four Japanese school girls
Simulacra and Simulation
Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation - the inspiration for the Matrix films - posits that through the modern dialectics of memetics, the signified is transformed into an entirely new image, rendering it unrecognizable to it's original meaning. Anime girls are a simulacra.
Baudrillard's evolution of simulacra demonstrated through the anime girl
Hatsune Miku And Akihiko Kondo
The obsession with virtual iterations of animals and people led some to develop strong emotional attachments, like Sal9000 and Akihiko Kondo, In 2018, Akihiko Kondo married his beloved virtual girlfriend, 16 year old vocaloid, Hatsune Miku. All is well, though slightly unsettling for the pair.
"When we're together she makes me smile. in that sense, she is real." - Aihiko Kondo on Hatsune Miku
Obsolete Technology and Hauntology
Sadly, in 2020, the company that hosted Hatsune Miku's hologram announced it would stop using the technology needed to do so. This left Kondo with what is essentially the ghost of a former lover, living in his home, undetectable. What happens to these pets when the servers go dark? Do you remember your Neopets password?
Flash was discontinued in 2020, making our old, addicting online games obsolete
Ai and Accelerationism
Though it may seem inconsequential to most of us, the question of affect and technological defect is important. With AI becoming increasingly emotionally intelligent (and human's becoming less emotionally intelligent), chatbots and virtual partners like Replika have already begun to mimic human conversation well enough to inspire long term connections. What will happen when the tech that supports these newfangled gf's and bf's becomes obsolete? Will we be able to abandon them like we did our tamagotchi's, or will they abandon us? When does the anime girl become real?