This is what it’s like to watch a CGI hologram in concert

In 2016, even holograms get encores.

On Saturday afternoon at the Hammerstein Ballroom, Hatsune Miku, a Japanese animated character with a massive global following, performed at least four songs after her main set was finished. I didn’t stick around for a fifth. But over 1,000 people did.

It’s worth noting that Celine Dion, who is a real person, usually gets two encores during her popular Vegas show. 200 million albums sold, two encores. Bon quantité, Celine.

Miku is a hologram touring the US, but she’s nothing like the ballyhooed Whitney Houston and Biggie Smalls projections that are threatening the well-being of the planet.

There is no woman named Miku who died in a plane crash and is now being resurrected as a bunch of pixels so her music can live on. She is a CGI creation called a “vocaloid” — a Sailor Moon lookalike with a synthesized voice who croons J-pop tunes. Her creators envisioned her as the pop star of the future.

Well, the future is bright — too bright if you are hungover or prone to seizures.

Many, many people are intensely drawn to Hatsune. I stared at them curiously during the show more than the creature, itself, trying to figure out why they’d come. The audience paid $75 a pop to stand and watch a movie, after all, albeit accompanied by a very charismatic live band. And yet whenever Miku would finish a song, they absolutely lost their s–t.

At 4 p.m. there was already a line for the 8 p.m. show snaking around the block, in 88-degree heat. The future is bright — too bright if you are hungover or prone to seizures.

The majority of the matinee crowd appeared to be in their twenties, donning Miku t-shirts and enough pairs of glasses to stock a LensCrafters. Some wore bright robin’s egg blue wigs that mimicked the character’s locks.