Fans and cosplayers gathered together at the Dolby Theater on May 1 to experience Chinese video game company HoYoverse’s (also known as miHoYo) first HoYoFair fan concert tour outside of Asia.
HoYoFair is a unique showcase where HoYoverse commissions artists and singers to produce creative content, such as music and animations for their IPs. This allows for the creation of unique new fan content that is supported by the company itself. Whether it is a head cannon or lore accurate, silly or sad, HoYoFair allows creatives to make content by fans for the fans.
In addition to their stop in Los Angeles, they also have other United States stops, including Dallas and New York, along with performances in Europe in Paris, Berlin and London.
“I think it’s such a lovely concept to do fan-made songs. I feel like this is a great opportunity for a bunch of fans to branch out to other fans, and it’s also a great opportunity for the company to interact with their fans as well,” said Alissa Xu, an attendee who was cosplaying The Herta from the video game “Honkai Star Rail.”
The first HoYoFair took place in 2021 to celebrate the first anniversary of the release of their game “Genshin Impact.” It has since become a recurring online event every year. Although the event initially revolved around “Genshin Impact,” over the years, with new game releases from the company, they began making content for their other games, such as “Honkai: Star Rail” and “Zenless Zone Zero.”
Despite not being the first concert the company has held in the United States (they held a concert for “Genshin Impact” and “Melodies of an Endless Journey” in 2023), HoYoFair is still a new offline event for Western fans to experience. Many offline events, such as concerts, are still mainly held in China and surrounding Asian countries.
“I was fiending for a concert ticket. I love it when they have little events here and do collabs because they’re always in Japan, they’re always in Shanghai. Come on, let’s play in Los Angeles,” said Pinetree Lin, a current art student attending the concert.
As audience members made their way into the venue, they were first greeted with a goodie bag filled with concert-exclusive merchandise of the IPs they were showcasing for the performance. After getting the goodie bag, audience members were encouraged to take pictures at the photo op area and get extra goodies for following the event on Instagram.
The concert was split up into four main sections by the different HoYoverse IPs. The first section was “Genshin Impact,” followed by “Zenless Zone Zero,” “Honkai Star Rail” and finally “Honkai Impact 3rd.” The singers came on stage and performed with a corresponding animation on the screen behind them.
The concert’s lineup was packed with performers such as Chogakusei, Issey, Riley Costello, NORISTRY and KiAme, performing songs like “MoeChakkaFire,” “The Diagnosis” and “Dr. Ratio’s Metaphysics of Bathing.” The concert was many of the artists’ first times performing and visiting America.
The show went smoothly, with audience members cheering loudly when they recognized the songs, screaming in excitement when they saw their favorite characters on screen, laughing at the goofy songs and animation and going quiet for the sadder songs. Audience members who brought light sticks waved them to the beat of the songs, while those who didn’t use their phone’s flash to wave and sometimes clapped along.
It was a collaborative experience with the performers dancing along with the animations of the songs, throwing things to the audience members and the audience singing along and dancing with them.
“My personal thoughts are that this concert is like a photobook,” audience member Anthony Kim said. “We’re bringing all these memories all together in one single place, and we get to enjoy everything.”