Never said I was immune to the craze

Two years ago, I dedicated a post to what was then a more recent upswing in Japanese pop culture spreading far and wide: the virtual youtuber, VTuber for short. Sometime later, about a month, around the same time as the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III 2023 and how loved and adored that game’s campaign was, I watched two videos about the game. The first one was by The Act Man, chastising the game for such a sorry excuse of a presentation and structure. The second was a Vtuber reacting to that Act Man video. This one, specifically:

Channel: SmugAlana

The VTuber in the thumbnail of the above video is one I watch regularly and I’ll get to those soon, but she’s not the first one I began watching. Sometime, after my first venture in the Army around November 2021, a Japanese VTuber who was recent to the Anglophone world showed up in my YouTube recommended feed. This Japan-based VTuber is known as Kamizuki Naki, an independent English-speaking VTuber who debuted a few weeks before I had discovered her.

I was aware of VTubers, but didn’t pay them much mind. 98% of the time in 2022, I had been too focused on trying to return to the Army, and much of my content consumption was redirected elsewhere. By 2023, after one recruiter gave me the red light (and I started this blog hoping to achieve a career in writing), I started watching more and more VTubers. Kamizuki was one of the regulars, but with more and more VTubers debuting from different parts of the world, what began as a largely Japanese phenomenon had followed the footsteps of animanga and taken the world by storm, so much so that a little shark girl sung Take Me Out to the Ball Game at a Dodgers game.

She now lives as a cat-shark named Sameko Saba because she couldn’t keep the model

As I’ve said before in that post two years ago, I’ve accepted VTubers as another arm of Japanese culture sinking its hooks into the world, and a fine addition at that. I admit I was a bit apprehensive when they became popular due to no one having a lot to do in 2020, but over the years, with my viewership being taken up by the Trash Taste podcast and their individual and combined collaborations with VTubers like Ironmouse, Mori Calliope, Rainhoe, Haruka Karibu and others, I was gradually exposed to more VTubers like them. Eventually, I have built a rotating reportoire of VTubers that I regularly come back to and check on. I’m quite sparing with the subscription button and with a lot of VTubers being more active on Twitch than YouTube because that platform is more live streamer friendly, so the VTubers I follow and the VTubers I’m subscribed to don’t always overlap. But when they do, they show up on my feed regularly. Then again, YouTube’s recommended system sometimes overpowers its subscription system, so if you’re subscribed to a bunch of channels and your favorites get drowned out by the others, you’re bound to miss a few of them.

Around 2016 when Joey of The Anime Man/Trash Taste fame starred with Kizuna AI, the Queen Mother of All VTubers and Virtual Content, it was done by way of her titular agency, which is standard fare in many VTuber circles. Many of the famous ones like the aforementioned Gawr Gura, Mori Calliope, Kurone, Oozora Subara, Takanashi Kiara and many more tend to be tied to Japan-based talent agencies, the two largest being VShojo and Hololive and the former of these falling into controversy over donations and revenue owed to and withheld from Ironmouse, who genuinely needed the money to cover a serious medical condition.

Channel: Ironmouse

In solidarity with Ironmouse this year, many other VTubers called it quits and went independent or got scooped up by different agencies.

Suffice it to say, VTubing is as expensive as being a regular YouTuber or other such content creator when all the expenses are added up. Designing a unique model, rigging it to react to your movements, dedicating assets to the animations, in some cases dedicating a webpage to your content; many VTubers do align with agencies, but not all do. Some are able to do it independently like Kamizuki Naki and SmugAlana. Others adopt VTuber models for commentary, as is the case with Rev Says Desu and Hero Hei, both content creators who were previously faceless voices on their own respective channels, recently adopting VTuber models.

Now let’s break this down just a bit: a content creator represented by a large company uses an idealized and heavily designed persona to entertain masses of fans. Sounds a lot like idols, doesn’t it? Well, there is a connection between VTubers and idol culture and my opinions on the latter as one of several reasons for avoiding the series Oshi no Ko (the other being that series’ fanbase). With how corrosive behind the scenes actual idols’ personal lives can be due to the control they tend to surrender to the agencies, the sacrifices demanded to be seen as this Pygmalion-esque husk for worship makes the business of idols unappealing. VTubers have similar issues with inside toxicity at times, but in its own unique way that doesn’t always involve the agency or the individual VTuber in question.

So why do I flock to VTubers more? I don’t watch a lot of agency-associated VTubers, so I can’t say what I’ve seen of them, but the independents thankfully seem to have more control over their personal affairs and finances. There also seems to be less pressure to fake a persona with the intricately-designed model being the stand-in, not to mention these characters have their own associated lore. There’s an elevated level of creativity to VTubers, but with only the viewer/audience perspective to look at, I’m definitely missing a few salient points that expose the complexities of VTuber culture.

For as carefree as the community looks, a carefully crafted image needs to be presented to give off the illusion. As for the controversy side, this is also a unique issue that VTubers grapple with be it from their own audience, themselves, fellow VTubers, or their agencies. One such VTuber, Sinder, had a brazier lit beneath her feet for badmouthing and double-crossing VTubers Bao the Whale, Buffpup, and Silvervale after these three bent over backwards to help get her on her feet, as well as hiding a secret relationship with her manager and fellow VTuber Red/REDACTED. In an attempt to alleviate the heat, she published an encyclopedia of sorts contextualizing everything and the short version of it is Sinder’s unreasonable at best and downright psychopathic at worst. The controversy is why I know about her and this video by Evanit0 breaks down the follow-up to this betrayal of hers:

Channel: Evanit0

All the power to those who can separate art from artist I suppose

I’m not an expert on all things VTuber nor am I privy to every controversy to arise from the medium, but between VShojo imploding on itself and Sinder backstabbing fellow VTubers, these controversies arose accidentally. They both fully intended to do harm, but VShojo wasn’t counting on Ironmouse to blow the lid, nor was Sinder accounting on the other VTubers to fire back on their own platforms. If you’re gonna threaten someone, make sure they can’t fight back.

But a lot of that arose by accident. It’s rare for something to arouse intended controversy and I was made aware of one such group whose stated mission purpose is to achieve that. Another SmugAlana reaction, this time to YouTube channel, RoyaltyIsHere, to the indie VTuber group, VTards, and with a name like that, the associated “talents” were swinging at the fences. Waking up and choosing absolute violence.

It’s times like these I wish I had the Discord-style unique emojis/emoticons

The short version is that five VTubers formed a group with the goal of going against the grain of what was considered politically correct, i.e. an edgy forum welcome on the internet in the late 1990s or early 2000s when the general attitude was f[keyboard]k authority, f[drum roll]k the man, as a result of the whole grunge era fighting back against the consumer age of decades past. And I’d welcome more of that, but the controversy that swamped the group since debut had to do not just with their deliberate attempts to arouse controversy but mostly in what they believed.

I promise I’m not s[neighing]ting you when I say that one of them held neo-Nazi beliefs, larping as Hatsune Miku’s evil twin: Nachisu Miku. Along with another member allegedly commission loli art of Anya Forger from Spy X Family, only more disturbingly erotic.

Side note: Emoticons are an artform that need to return; I’m honestly not certain if these Google-searched images are effective for a topic like this

Regrettably or fortunately depending on how your wheels turn, the group was short-lived. Soon after Royalty’s video, the group had fallen apart. There are VTubers who arouse controversy without meaning to. SmugAlana, whom I mentioned plenty here, does so simply because she grew up speaking Russian to her family, leading to the absolutely false assessment (on Reddit and Twitter) that she’s a shill for Putin’s Russia. Call me biased because I’m subbed to her, but I don’t recall any reverence or pride in Putin’s government. After Alana comes Leaflit & Asari, a mother-daughter VTuber duo, mostly run by the daughter, Leaflit. The two are Japanese-Americans from California who’ve since relocated to Butt-Kiss, Texas (I think), and while SmugAlana tends to cover whatever crosses her feed, politics notwithstanding, Leaflit does have a clear slant covering current events. The lion’s share of her content is some kind of political-babble, which I say requires a specific type of mindset. If you live on the internet, move out. This shouldn’t be treated as a hotel and I shouldn’t have to explain why.

But seriously, even if you lean one way politically, exposing yourself to multiple points of view can broaden your worldview. I bring this up because the permanent internet residents regularly attempt to target Leaflit & Asari for harassment with erroneous connections to the American far-right. Yeah, I’ve taken the piss out of this corner of the internet on this blog before and the only thing I take seriously about them is that they take their own convictions very seriously. But like their enemies who fled to South America after World War II (they don’t know they exist on Twitter), or who they think are their enemies (they think they’re a laughingstock, all things considered), this part of the internet isn’t worth committing to memory.

An even more politically active, current events VTuber, with a crazy associated lore, Kirsche Verstahl. She also courts controversy, half the time for content like Rev Says Desu and the other half because her detractors, more or less, lie through their teeth about her. I don’t follow her as closely as the other two or however many I named here or before, but nonetheless, Kirsche, Leaflit, SmugAlana and others who’ve incited unnecessary controversy are all the proof you need to know that their detractors and haters don’t watch them whatsoever, merely parroting lies about them. A time-honored tradition of lying about someone you hate because your desire to see them fail can only get so strong.

If nature birthed the concept of hatred, humanity made it an art form a million times over

All in all, VTubers are another arm of the idol industry with its unique rules and controversies and myriad of personalities. While not under the same limitations put on idol groups like, for instance, AKB48, thanks to the fantasy angle of the VTuber model, different circumstances surround the individual VTuber and associations they fall under. There’s tons of variety in who you choose to view on a regular basis. There is one more VTuber I wanna recommend before I close this post out: Scarle Yonaguni.

https://www.twitch.tv/scarleyonaguni

https://youtube.com/@scarleyonaguni?si=537-iDpDPfe9sVGc

Like I said, many of these VTubers stream more on Twitch than they upload individually produced videos. Find them there if you can spare the hours.

Also, you may notice that the overwhelming majority of these VTubers are female and tend to have massive boobs for their models. Male VTubers are often and sadly lacking in the audience count. After nearly a decade, it’s still a majority female-creator/male-viewer space with no obvious signs that the tides are changing save for NuxTaku, Rev Says Desu, and Hero Hei who are some of the only male VTubers I can name.