When Perfume announced that they were dropping a performance of their Nebula Romance – Part 1 cut “Ima Ima Ima” and that it would be ‘powered by NTT’, those of us who remember Perfume’s Future Experiment with DoCoMo (RIP to the official upload of that performance of “Fusion”) knew what we were gonna get. And even though Perfume did as Perfume do and we I expected, it didn’t make this performance any less thrilling to watch. Namely because it was the first time we got to see the Perfume perform “Ima Ima Ima” in full. A song which didn’t exactly set the fandom alight (or me) when it first surfaced, but has been winning fans over since the release of Perfume’s eighth studio album, Nebula Romance – Part 1. And this performance of it will undoubtedly win more over. It certainly worked its magic on me.

Some of the live VFX shots were really distracting. Especially during the first run of the chorus, where it was a bit too messy and felt like it was interrupting a routine which had me captivated. But once the VFX shots switched to the wireframes of the Mr. Mic Show, it worked a lot better, because it looked cleaner and we could still see Perfume pretty clearly performing the routine. Sometimes the Rhizomatiks team (the creative wizards behind the VFX) have a tendency to go overboard, as they also did with Perfume’s debut performance of “Story” at SXSW in 2015—which utilised this same technology of real time image manipulation and camera tracking in virtual spaces, to render what look like post production shots into a live performance in real-time. It’s a very cool thing. And it’s nice to see that the Rhizomatiks still use this creative tech with Perfume every now and then, as I believe they also used it for Perfume’s POP FES performances too.

But as cool as the visual trickery was, the star of this performance was the choreography. Mikiko was in her Samantha Thavasa with this one. Perfume’s routines have been a bit hit and miss over the past few years. But we always end up with one routine every three or four songs which hit. “Polygon Wave”. Hit. “Spinning World”. Hit. “Ima Ima Ima”. Absolute hit.

Mikiko has been pulling bits and pieces from older Perfume routines to make new ones for quite a while. And it’s something Perfume were asked about in an interview, and they seemed oblivious to it. But I guess Perfume aren’t looking at the routines the way that we do, so it isn’t so obvious to them when they do old moves. But Mikiko is definitely pulling in movements from older routines. And also not so old routines, as I caught a “Polygon Wave”-like move in the routine for “Ima Ima Ima”. In the context of this performance specifically, which was preceded by a run through of some of Perfume’s songs and poses identified with them, and Perfume celebrating their 20+ year anniversary—a routine comprised of moments from some of Perfume’s other routines made sense.

And in a cool surprise, we also got to see a snippet of the music video for “Cosmic Treat” and what looked like a film teaser.

We’ve not yet had a music video for a song off of Nebula Romance – Part 1 which features Perfume, so it’s cool to know one will be on the way. Perfume has developed a thing for releasing a music video weeks before an album release which shares the same visuals as the album cover the song is from. LEVEL3 had “1mm”. Plasma had “Spinning World”. And Nebula Romance – Part 1 is getting “Cosmic Treat”. So expect the full music video to drop a couple of weeks before the physical release of the album.

As for the film style teaser, I’m intrigued. Will we be getting a short film for the album? Are they shots from a music video. Are they from a visual shot for the Nebula Romance – Episode 1 Tour?

It’s cool to see that the characters and the Mr. Mic Show from the Nebula Romance – Part 1 album covers will play a larger part in the narrative for the visuals of this album (and hopefully the tour), aside from just being a visual choice of seemingly random things with no connection.