【 XR INDUSTRY EVENT 】XR Track｜Sanrio Virtual Festival Project: Co-Creating with Creators Showcase
．Panelists
- XR Project Coordinator, Digital Business Development Department, Sanrio Co., Ltd.｜SUGIURA Rin
- Director of A Wonderful Thing to Realize｜Christopher Lane DAVIS
- Director of Wish Upon a Lustrous Dream ｜Yan-K
．Moderator
CinemaLeap Executive Producer, Immersive Journey Contents Producer & Director, Beyond the Frame Festival Director
｜MACHIBA Katsutoshi
SUGIURA Rin
Sanrio is actively pushing forward various initiatives in the XR domain. The "Sanrio Virtual Festival," originally a limited-time event, officially transitioned into a permanent virtual world last December . "Virtual Sanrio Puroland" serves as an extension of the physical theme park's concept and worldview, providing a 24/7, year-round space that transcends geographical boundaries and distance while fostering a vibrant community.
Held twice a year, the festival features its main event in February and a second showcase in the summer. Having been held five times since launching in 2021, the festival continues to grow in scale annually. This year’s event featured performances by virtual artists, creators, and Sanrio characters, attracting a broad audience ranging from Sanrio fans to regular users of virtual worlds.
The festival features two core highlights: the Parade and Artist Performance. For the Parade, creators craft original storylines or invite Sanrio characters to make guest appearances, delivering a rich variety of acts that blend musical theater, gaming, and interactive elements. The Artist Performance segment adopts a concert format, seamlessly weaving together particle effects, scene changes, and Sanrio IP crossovers. Through these diverse initiatives, Sanrio has forged partnerships with creators and companies at the forefront of the VR industry. These cross-disciplinary collaborations have expanded their reach beyond core fans to VR animation enthusiasts and active VRChat users alike.
The Sanrio Virtual Festival has also partnered with four XR-related organizations to launch the "XR Festival Asia" collaborative project. By connecting with international film festivals and XR groups around the globe, it opens up global opportunities for creators and their works. This positions the platform not just as an entertainment hub, but as an empowering stage where creators can challenge themselves, express their vision, and find a sense of belonging and their place in the community. The goal is not only to help Japanese creators reach international audiences, but also to invite global talent to co-create all-new experiences. The festival will continue next year and is currently selecting its lineup, actively encouraging more international creators to participate and create their original works alongside iconic IPs.
Yan-K
The storyline of Wish Upon a Lustrous Dream is set in a parallel universe separate from the Sanrio universe. This was done because "J" is an original character; placing him there makes audiences less likely to wonder why an unfamiliar figure is appearing alongside established Sanrio characters.
The creative team behind the project met on VRChat and includes members from around the world. To leverage the platform's innate strength in encouraging social connection, the experience was designed as a cooperative multiplayer adventure. To ensure a consistent experience regardless of party size, the team dedicated significant effort to fine-tuning dynamic difficulty scaling and timing adjustments, ensuring the level of challenge adapts dynamically as the story unfolds to provide a consistent experience for every player.
While the theme of Wish Upon a Lustrous Dream centers on the pressure creators and artists face, Yan-K noted that he didn't experience that same pressure during production. However, the narrative draws on his experiences. In the early stages of his journey, Yan-K struggled with impostor syndrome and felt inadequate. Through this story, he hopes to share these experiences and inspire other creators to overcome similar challenges.
Christopher Lane DAVIS
With over 20 years of experience in music production, Davis draws inspiration for his work from childhood trauma. His background has allowed him to choreograph his own stage performances and produce visual content. His breakthrough work, Gumball Dreams, was his first major piece showcased in Taiwan. Last year, Uncanny Alley: A New Day, which won the XR Immersive Award at the Kaohsiung Film Festival, went on to win the Emmy Award for Outstanding Emerging Media Program.
In his first year collaborating with Sanrio, Davis created a piece heavily infused with Sanrio elements. By the second year, he began reducing the presence of character IPs to infuse more of his personal style. Inspired by an interview at last year’s Kaohsiung Film Festival, his work this year returns to a more mature and slightly darker tone reminiscent of his style from a decade ago. Working with Sanrio led him to realize that this creative journey could serve to reimagine his past performance, The Road to Down. This new production will be deeply autobiographical, serving as a culmination and "grand finale" of his work over the years and distilling these highlights into a mixed AR experience.
In the piece, Davis's virtual avatar appears in both white and black versions, forming a symmetrical, yin-yang-like motif. The work stages a dialogue between the two, recreating conversations he had with his therapist. This dynamic represents an exchange between his mature present-day self and his younger self who was trapped in pain at the time, demonstrating that there is no divide between the true self and the virtual avatar.
Sanrio’s Vision for Supporting Creators and Original Content
Machiba noted that over the past five years, the Sanrio Virtual Festival has welcomed over 10 million total visits. Through continuous partnerships with international film festivals, it has evolved into a global platform. Sanrio actively co-creates with artists, collaborating with talented creators from overseas while exploring diverse possibilities. Beyond showcasing its own IPs, Sanrio also brings original creator works that do not feature Sanrio IPs to international film festivals as official productions. What is the intention or goal behind this approach?
Sugiura explained that the foundational premise of Virtual Sanrio Puroland is to serve as a platform that empowers creators. If creators love Sanrio and want to feature character IPs, Sanrio provides full support; if they prefer to create freely, they are equally welcome. Sanrio refrains from dictating creative design and works alongside creators as a supportive partner.
Has collaborating with Sanrio had a different impact or led to new discoveries compared to past experiences?
Davis shared that his target audience is queer youth, and platforms like VRChat and Sanrio events serve as exceptionally inclusive, queer-friendly spaces for people of all gender identities. His work not only reaches these communities but has also been presented on an international platform. At the core of his performance lies "language and text." Through bilingual English and Japanese subtitles, VR allows text to be placed and displayed in ways that are impossible in the physical world.
Reflecting on his first time collaborating with a corporation as large as Sanrio, Yan-K shared that he encountered many unfamiliar workflows and overlooked details during the planning stage. While Sanrio IPs are household names, few people realize that behind these characters lie rich, fully developed backstories and worldviews. Conducting in-depth research on Sanrio character backgrounds during pre-production became an unexpected highlight of the creative process.
What kind of platform does Sanrio aim to build, and what are creators' expectations for it?
Sugiura noted that plans for the platform’s future are currently under discussion to continue the “Sanrio Virtual Festival” over the long term. Looking ahead, we may expect to see a space where creators can showcase different aspects of their creativity. Sanrio works closely with creators to explore how its characters can be best represented in ways that complement each creator's unique strengths and creative vision
Having participated in the Sanrio Virtual Festival five times in a row, Yan-K expressed strong appreciation for how the platform showcases work from artists around the world, hoping to see the event expand even further in the future.
Davis plans to refine his current work further, using it as a foundation to continue exploring and experimenting with ways to bring higher levels of interactivity to his performances
