I previously tried to treat Hololive concerts as live, and had so many problematic details.
After changing my perspective to pre-recorded, everything makes 100% more sense.
The in-between speeches sound very much like they are talking to a camera trying to get a good cut, not like they are having the one chance to talk to the audience, there's no that kind of tension. In some youtube 3D lives, the cuts between songs are pretty much impossibly fast, it's clearly recording, for example:
https://youtu.be/88APiRAcQcc?t=824Matsuri has answered the question as well, this was after one of the big paid concerts, she doesn't deny it and completely dodges the question with bunch of convoluted explanations because she doesn't want to lie. If the concerts were live, she would have absolutely no problem answering with straight face. Though then she lies about the vocal recordings, you just can't sing this cleanly while dancing. Also, anyone who's played Beat Saber would understand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZWHQPEpABMMost importantly, the concerts are way too hassle-free, especially the latest one's camerawork and precise framing is basically very high quality post-production. Also, 15 dancers on stage at once? In your dreams.
Some past concerts on youtube may have been live or partially live, or just less produced, in the mindset of doing maybe just 1-3 tries, to get rid of the risk of technical difficulties. Whenever the members talked about the day of the concert, they actually talked about the day of recording, which in their mind is the "live". Since it's not heavily post-produced, it's close enough that they can immerse themselves in that lie. Link Your Wish was a large project, recorded separately, hence no exciting talks about the live experience, lying about that would be just too tough.
Some of the past youtube concerts are also made to stutter intentionally by using bad lighting in the mocap, or lagging the computer, because people would think "no way they would air recording this bad". It's small price for the illusion. A few times there have been notices about "some parts are pre-recorded due to covid", and it makes zero difference to the content. Other times, even when there are flaws that reveal it's recorded, there's no notice of it being recording.
In Link Your Wish Day1 (didn't watch Day 2 yet), Gura's dancing felt really out of place, it was too professional, smooth and not aligned to Gura's personality at all, and especially the initial appearance was clearly lip-synced awkwardly on some pro dancer. I don't watch Gura but for people who do, it's probably easy to tell by how she talks/doesn't talk about it, similar to how you would analyze that Matsuri clip, requires a bit of psychological mindset. This is the first time I've suspected using different dancer.
As a former classical pianist, I know very well how performing on stage works, psychologically and practically. Hololive concerts have all that real stuff missing.
I know this leaves mixed feelings, like what's the point? And that's part of the tactic. Because it would be just too hard to believe they would cheat you like this. Other people in their subconscious already know and have accepted it.
