Final Task Part I: Introduction and Research

As for my final task, I chose Vtubers as a topic. Firstly the idea was to put an already existing character to the career path of a Vtuber and as the practical part make clips of "best moments" from their stream that would also fit their personality. But as I delved deeper into the world of vtubers, it started to feel wrong to use an already existing character, so I adjusted my path a bit and decided to produce a Vtuber of my own.

I wasn't all that familiar with Vtubers before this autumn, but what drew me in was when I somehow came across these two fan made animations based on voice clips from a Vtuber called Korone Inugami. 

With no clue about what it was about, I got interested in what was this based on. So I went on to watch some clips of her streams, and even though never really been that much into watching streamers, there was something that drew me in to watch more. But still to this day, I haven't yet watched any actual streams live, and mostly just kept to watching only parts of the streams. 

For this task I took a deeper look into where it all started and how it has progressed and found its way all around the world by taking off from Japan. 

- RESEARCH -

Firstly, the important thing: what is a Vtuber?

The term Vtuber, is a shortened version of the words Virtual YouTuber. Vtubers are online entertainers who use computer graphics-generated avatars, which are often anime inspired, as the Wikipedia (2019?) definition states. In a way they are voice actors, as they often play a character instead of only masking their real identity behind an avatar.

The first Vtuber

Ami Yamato and Kizuna AI

The concept itself is not entirely new, since it could be argued that Ami Yamato, who has a very Pixar-esque avatar, an UK-based vlogger "living" in London back in 2011 was the first one. Although, her content had more similarities with real life vloggers, rather than the Vtubers we see today. Barbie also made her vlogging debut in 2015. (Chen, 2020. Lufkin, 2018.)

But where the actual term and the scene as a whole took off, was when Kizuna AI made her debut in 2016. And even her content isn't quite exactly what we mostly see today, since it was preproduced instead of streaming. 

Taking the (virtual) world by storm

Kizuna AI took off well, with 200,000 subscribers in December 2017 and passed the two million subscriber count only less than a year after (BBC, 2018). As of today, she is not too far from three million subscribers. This year especially has been extremely good for Vtubers. For example: 5 English-speaking Vtubers, who are working under a company called Hololive Production (a Vtuber talent agency), debuted only on September 12th-13th 2020, already made it to the top ranking lists with their subscriber counts.

• Gawr Gura | 2nd | 1.56 million subscribers
• Mori Calliope | 13th | 763k subscribers
• Watson Amelia | 15th | 724k subscribers
• Ninomae Ina'nis | 26th | 582k subscribers
• Takanashi Kiara | 28th | 562k subscribers

Subscriber counts as of Dec 6th. (Vtuber Ranking, 2020.)

Source: hololive

A lot of the Vtubers have also made their way into the real world, for example Kizuna AI was made into a culture ambassador of the Japan National Tourism Organisation. Another example is Kaguya Luna, who broke a Guinness World Record and collaborated with Nissin Foods, doing a publicity stunt to promote their noodles. The stunt was to attach a phone to a helium balloon with her stream on it, and it reached an altitude of 30 km above sea level, and thus breaking the previous record of 18.42 km. (He, 2020.)  

There's also a very apparent rise in searches for Vtuber according to Google Trends even worldwide. (Google, 2020).

Source: Google Trends

So what sort of content a Vtuber streams and what's the appeal?

Vtubers have a fairly great variety of content; just chatting with their fans, playing video games, dancing, singing, challenges, drawing, and collaborating with other Vtuber and regular YouTubers as well. The personality of a Vtuber plays a huge role in their content, so often what they like dictates a lot of the content they stream. Some Vtubers even produce high quality music of their own as well within their Vtuber persona. 

According to an article published by BBC (Lufkin, 2018), a Reddit user on the Virtual YouTuber subreddit stated the following: "I would say that the biggest contributor to the rise of virtual YouTube is the huge audience outside Japan who normally have interest for Japanese media and culture, such as anime". On this quote, I personally very much agree. With the already existing interest towards these kinds of characters, it's not a big surprise Vtubers are reaching quite massive audiences. It seems that the avatars are what initially draw people in, then the personality, often light-hearted and cute, sometimes shitposting-like content keeps them entertained. Their content has spawned a whole lot of memes, which is also one way of falling into the rabbit hole, myself included. Catchphrases and one-liners very prevalent, as well as their each own personal way of greeting the fans when the stream starts. These are something that can be seen typed in the chat by the fans as well. Vtubers and the community as a whole is very hard to describe with words only, so here's a couple videos that give a better idea of what it can be. 

Despite the absurdities, the whole phenomenon could sometimes even be described with the word "wholesome". Many fans seem to really adore these 2D and 3D anime avatars, and find some solace and a small escape from reality in them. To me, the Vtuber trend as a whole comes off very positive, supportive and genuinely fun and entertaining (assuming it's your cup of tea).

In an article, Sean Newgent also suggests that part of the appeal is also the mystery of who are the people behind those avatars. It also provides a certain advantage for aspiring content creators; for some it might be easier to present themselves through an avatar and providing more protection for your personal identity. (Newgent, 2020). Projekt Melody said the following about the advantages of having an avatar: "Safety aside, having a virtual avatar is helpful. You might want to be an online entertainer, like a streamer, which is great. But you might also worry about your appearance, since getting made-up every day can be a chore. Having the ability to slip into a virtual avatar is very convenient. Also, it's not usually a discussed topic, but a virtual persona is helpful when you have physical limitations, because it takes stress of the body." (Chen, 2020). 

Of course, like anything else, vtubing is not without its problems. As an example: a Vtuber called Kusunoki Sio announced taking a hiatus due to people trying to hack her Twitter and YouTube accounts, find out where she lives and sending e-mails with pictures identifying the real person behind the avatar. (Loveridge, 2020). Polygon's article also states that a mask provides privacy only to a certain extent. Especially famous Vtubers get personally identified and are objected to gossip and scrutiny. These harrasment campaigns have taken even unbelievably huge measures, biggest one stemming from a stream where Taiwan was portrayed as its own country, riled up the Chinese audience whom of some are firm believers of the One China policy. Despite such massive scale harassment, most of the community resists on invading the virtual stars's personal identities beyond what they themselves choose to share. (Chen, 2020).

There's a whole lot more I could've gotten into and kind of wanted, but at the same time I wanted to keep the content condensed to only a certain part of the phenomenon. Overall, this was a very interesting and an extremely vast topic to get into, so at some points it was easy to lose focus and derail for a while, and some of the notes I had got cut because it didn't feel like they'd really serve a good enough purpose for the outcome I was trying to go for. My YouTube recommendations are now just full of Vtuber clips. And when I say full, it means there's nothing else there as of now. And in a way, I don't mind. Because for me personally, a lot of the content has worked as a great stress reliever and given some good laughs.

Sources:

Virtual YouTuber. Wikipedia. 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_YouTuber

James Chen. The Vtuber takeover of 2020. Polygon. 2020. https://www.polygon.com/2020/11/30/21726800/hololive-vtuber-projekt-melody-kizuna-ai-calliope-mori-vshojo-youtube-earnings

Bryan Lufkin. The virtual vloggerst taking over YouTube. BBC. 2018. https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20181002-the-virtual-vloggers-taking-over-youtube

Vtuber Ranking. 2020. https://virtual-youtuber.userlocal.jp/document/ranking

James He. Vtubers: why do these streamers look like anime characters and why are they so popular?. Happy Media. 2020.  https://happymag.tv/why-vtubers-are-so-popular/

Google Trends. 2020. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2017-11-08%202020-12-08&q=vtuber

Sean Newgent. The rise of Vtubers The wave of the future or a flash in the pan?. 2020. https://www.kgun9.com/entertainment/the-rise-of-vtubers-the-wave-of-the-future-or-a-flash-in-the-pan

Lynzee Loveridge. VTuber Kusunoki Sio Announces Hiatus Due to Harrasnment. Anime News Network. 2020. https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2020-08-29/vtuber-kusunoki-sio-announces-hiatus-due-to-harassment/.163131