Tech Over Tea - #66 Deep Dive Into Vtuber History | Solo

Episode Date: June 2, 2021

I've been watching vtubers since basically day one of vtubers existing, all the back when Kizuna Ai started making videos. I've watch the scene evolve and I had never expected the industry to grow as large as it has. ==========Support The Channel========== ► Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/brodierobertson ► Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/BrodieRobertsonVideo ► Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/3d5gykF ► Other Methods: https://cointr.ee/brodierobertson =========Video Platforms========== 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBq5p-xOla8xhnrbhu8AIAg =========Audio Release========= 🎵 RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/149fd51c/podcast/rss 🎵 Apple Podcast:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-over-tea/id1501727953 🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3IfFpfzlLo7OPsEnl4gbdM 🎵 Google Podcast: https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8xNDlmZDUxYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw== 🎵 Anchor: https://anchor.fm/tech-over-tea ==========Social Media========== 🎤 Discord:https://discord.gg/PkMRVn9 🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/TechOverTeaShow 📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techovertea/ 🌐 Mastodon:https://mastodon.social/web/accounts/1093345 ==========Credits========== 🎨 Channel Art: All my art has was created by Supercozman https://twitter.com/Supercozman https://www.instagram.com/supercozman_draws/ DISCLOSURE: Wherever possible I use referral links, which means if you click one of the links in this video or description and make a purchase we may receive a small commission or other compensation.

After an incredibly rough start, hello, good day, good evening, I am as always your host, Brodie Robertson, and today we are back for episode 66 of Tech of a T. If you want to go find out why the start was so rough, go watch the soundcheck that'll be available the day after this comes out. If you listen, actually no, if you listen to the audio version, the day before it comes out, if you listen to the Odyssey version, the day after it comes out over on Odyssey, where I do the sound check. Yeah, I'm just going to forget that all of that actually happened, and we're going to start with the actual planned topic, rather than technical difficulties. So, you may have noticed the title, and what I'm actually doing today is actually kind of weird. So, I've never done a podcast where I theme the entire thing around a specific topic. So normally you've probably seen the podcast. It's based around whatever I come up with. Usually it's going to be like a bit of anime, a bit of gaming,

bit of VTubers, bit of everything. But I thought for once, why don't I just go and theme an entire episode around just one specific topic and just see how it goes. I don't know just go and theme an entire episode around just one specific topic and just see how it goes. I don't know if I'm going to do more of these in the future or if it's going to completely fall on its face and be an absolute train wreck. It could be the greatest thing I've ever made and make this channel

explode. I have no idea. All I know is that there's a lot of other podcasts that like to theme an episode around a topic, and I thought, hey, why don't I give it a shot? And it's not like I'm an expert in many things, but when it comes to weeb trash, I think that's something I can say that I'm fairly well-versed in, even if it's not exactly the best use of my time. So today we're going to be theming this entire episode around VTubers, not just the concept

of VTubers. I want to do a bit of a, I guess a rundown of how we got to where we are. So going through the history of VTubers, looking at where we're at right now, and even talking a bit about where I think the industry is going to go in the future, because it's here to stay like there's at this point i don't think v tubing is going to be something that just fades into the ether is something that was like oh yeah that's a thing that people did for a little bit and then just stopped i think that with how prolific v tubing has become at this point i think it's really here

to stay with the future of online content. Whether it's going to be as big as it is right now for the rest of time, I can't say. I don't have a time machine. That would be really cool though. So all I can say is based on the trajectory we've come so far and

how much momentum is behind VTubing and all of the interesting stuff that's been happening lately, I think that VTubing and all of the interesting stuff that's been happening lately. I think that VTubing is definitely going to be a big part of not just the content for YouTube going forward. I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing a shift in content on... Obviously, we see it on Twitch as well, but outside of the long-form content or the video-form content we normally see on these platforms,

I think there might even be a take-off in the short the short form content which actually is one of the reasons why i decided to make this so it's a random random side tangent i'll get into like the the main topic in a bit but the reason i decided to make this is i saw a a short on youtube by hanamakiya. Hanamakiya is a member of Nijisanji ID, I'm going to say. I'm pretty sure. Give me one second. I want to fact check because I know there's going to be someone

who watches this who's just a massive, massive VTuber simp who's going to correct me on anything I get wrong. Yes, Nijisanji ID. I actually have the VT vtuber wiki open here so i might come back to this every so often anyway i'll check it out if you want to see uh if you want to dig really deep into the history of vtubing and vtubing in general anyway i saw a youtube short by hanamakiya and it was a very simple short And it was just Hanamakiya saying,

Who painted the Mona Lisa? And then in the most adorable voice ever, because it's Hanamakiya saying, Da Vinci. And that's why we're here today. Because VTubing is going to continue being super popular because of adorable things like this. If you're not a massive weeb like I am,

maybe you don't understand why that's adorable. But just go look at the short where Hanamakiya says Davinki and it is adorable. Anyway, let's get into the main thing. I was planning, if I had done this a bit later, to actually wear some trashy VTuber merch. So I ordered the... What was uh balls i think it was the

nyanus pullover hoodie and the iron mouse zip up hoodie when they did a uh a sale over on shark robot that's the um the store they use for the shoujo merch sales it was just a pre-order thing so you can't actually get them anymore uh geez okay due to high volume orders up to four weeks shipping all right okay well that's gonna explain why i don't have my merch yet uh it's supposed to be here at some point hopefully it gets here during winter because you know it's a jumper uh but it's not here yet so you have to deal with me looking i don't know like I came from a punk concert or something because that's how I dress all the time

this isn't just how I dress like for my videos and for live streams this is just what I wear all of the time anyway let's go all the way back to the start let's go back how many years are we going back actually so I'm not didn't do any research.

I'm just going to go off my memory. How many years back do we have to go to find the start of Kizuna Ai? It's got to be at least five years at this point. Let's go see when Ai-chan did her first ever video. Do not play that. I don't. It's a Pepsi Max ad. Definitely don't play that. I don't want to's a Pepsi Max ad. Definitely don't play that.

I don't want to get copyright struck by Pepsi Max. Uploads. All videos. How do we go... How do we sort? How do I sort your videos? Ai-chan. Why can I not sort your videos in reverse?

Actually, if we can just look up Ai-chan first video, can't I? Yeah, that'll work. First. First episode. There we go. Okay, so four years ago. I thought it was actually longer than that. Wow, okay. Four years ago, this is when everything started.

When, out of nowhere... Actually, is that... Is it... Hmm, yeah. Four years ago, we'll say. Pretty sure that... Is it... Hmm, yeah, four years ago, we'll say. Pretty sure that's the first... Yeah, no, this is the first ever video. Yeah. Don't see a wall worth that.

We're out of nowhere. We had this anime girl talking to us. Just absolutely out of nowhere. So before this point, I don't think the concept of v tubing even existed i think i'm i'm unless there was someone unless this is like the doom case where there were other fps games and no one cared about them i'm pretty sure that keys and i was the first v tuber that existed and i remember there being like articles from even like thege at the time coming out. Like,

mainstream... Here you go. Actually, it's actually five years but YouTube counts years weirdly. Anyway, even from mainstream outlets talking about how there is this anime girl on YouTube just being an anime girl on YouTube.

Because before that point, I don't think people realized how good facial tracking had really gotten, how good mocap had actually become. Because I don't think anyone realized doing something like this was actually really possible on the budget you could have

for a web series. But Kizuna Ai showed up on the scene and she was sort of just doing like these little skit videos basically like oh here's like uh i'm gonna do the q a i'm gonna do like hey just just random little skit videos so popular at the time i'm gonna play some like a game i'm gonna do some challenge or something like that but all of it what was making it different was the fact that it was being done in like a virtual space rather than like all of it, what was making it different was the fact that it was being done in like a virtual space Rather than like all of the channels that existed at the time where everyone was doing IRL stuff or they were doing stuff in a game

This was someone who was in a virtual space Doing things that you in some cases couldn't do in the real world Like I remember there was one where she like climbed into a giant bowl of, I think there was one where she, like, climbed into a giant bowl of... I think it was, like, a giant pot of milk or... I don't know. It was a giant pot of something. I don't remember the exact details. And it was just this new form of content that no one had seen at the time.

Now, I could probably do an entire episode just on the history of Keys in the Eye. Because initially, iCharm was like this individual thing. Maybe there was a staff member working alongside her. But it wasn't this massive, massive industry that it was or that it has become now. Because I think it was maybe a year ago. A year ago sounds better. Maybe two years ago. Where there was a bit of a shift

in the way that iChan's channel was being run. So prior to that point, you just had Keys in her Eye and she had her second and third, I think it was second and third channel, where you had Keys in her Eye doing her main skit stuff. Then you had some music stuff, which may have actually been on the main channel at the time and then you had the gaming channel where she did like you know gaming

content the sort of gaming content that everyone else does you have a little webcam in the corner and you play a game which actually sort of that style of content is still sort of stuck around with the way that um v tubing is being done, but we'll get into that in a bit. So there came a point where they brought in extra talents to play the other Kizuna AI characters. So you had the Kizuna AI for Kizuna AI games and Kizuna AI for the singing channel and then the main Kizuna AI. And there was a news article that came out a while back where people were thinking that the main Ai-chan was going to be replaced. And that's sort of what it looked like at the time because the main voice actress for Kizuna Ai

was sort of taking a more of a management role. But since then, I believe she has come back to actually fulfill her role as Kizuna Ai, maintaining that sort of continuity i guess but the problem that people had at the time was that even though vtubing had by that point because this was still two years ago where vtubing was still not the size it is now but still fairly well established you'd never seen more of like a a corporate approach to VTubing where

obviously you did have like Hololive at the time, but if a Hololive member, you know, couldn't continue, that member would be replaced. There wasn't a time up until that point where you would even consider the fact that there would be a VTuber where they actually changed the personality behind the VTuber. That just wasn't something that anyone had really considered so it was a big controversy at the time since then though they've sort of dealt with that in a pretty decent way where the extra personalities for Aichan have sort of been split off into extra characters so rather than having these different versions of Aichan they've become I guess their own characters under the banner of, I don't remember

what the company that operates Ai-chan is. What is it? Is it UT? It's UT something. UTG or something like that? UT8? I can't remember what the company was called.

It is a do-do-do-do I can't remember what the company was called it is come on give me an answer wiki give me something something here UDP UPD8 I know those are you in there somewhere hmm and UPD8. UPD8. I knew there was a U in there somewhere. Hmm. And they sort of...

Because of, I guess, because of the success of Hololive at the time and other VTuber groups that were forming, they decided to take the similar approach to them where rather than, you know, as I was saying, having all of these voices where it clearly wasn't popular because the first time they actually brought in the different although the first time they actually acknowledged the fact there were different voices for i-chan that was probably

the according to the wiki at least the least uh sorry the most disliked video on i-chan's channel which makes sense because it because it was a massive change and people don't like change. Since then, I don't know how World Love Chan, which is one of the personalities at IP, have actually been doing. But because the company, like every other company right

now, wants to expand into China, they also made a Chinese variant of iChan as well, called Aige. I don't know really anything about about her because she only operates on billy billy which is a chinese streaming site and a chinese video site and only speaks in mandarin so i've never had any opportunity to actually watch her content but it's probably pretty good i don't know if they decide unless unless she's not even operating anymore

but as I said don't watch eye gear, anyway besides that I think what Ai-chan did was sort of, while not really perfecting the way that VTubing was going to be done in the years going forward

did set a stage where people could actually start, you know, approaching this content and sort of had a framework to actually work from and gave people the idea that actually doing this was something that was possible. Now, iChan was the first VTuber and was also the, at the time, the first 3D VTuber. And was also the. At the time. The first 3D VTuber.

Now 3D VTubers. Sort of. Don't get as much attention anymore. Because making a good 3D model. Is incredibly difficult. But there are still plenty of 3D VTubers. Which sort of takes us into like the. I guess.

The next set of VTubers after. The people who sort of. The people who sort of set the stage. Like the, I guess, the next set of VTubers after, the people who sort of set the stage for the next set of where VTubing was going to go. So this is when people started expanding in the JP space. I don't think there was any EN VTubers at the time, but there may have been some little ones that were starting to pop up. I know people like Natsume Moe have been around for a really long time. When did Moe start actually operating? Let's find out. Uh, okay, thank you. Natsume, uh, Natsu, can I spell? Natsume Moe. Can I spell? Natsume Moe.

Sorry, Natsume. My bad. Ignore the fact that I've no idea what I'm saying. Natsume Moe. 2018, so two years after. So she still has been around for quite a while, just nowhere near as long as Aichan. But at the time,

VTubes that I was a big fan of then was like Kaguya Luna, Mirai Akari. Those were the mainubers that I was a big fan of then was like Kaguya Luna, Mirai Akari. Those were the main ones that I was watching. A bit after that, people like Pinky Pop Hepburn also showed up. And there were hundreds of other VTubers appearing. But still nowhere near the level of VTubers that you're seeing nowadays. But the thing with the JP VTuber space.

So at the time, all of the big VTubers were in the jp space the problem with jp vtubers is the same problem with watching anime if you want to appeal to people outside of japan there needs to be some way for people to actually watch that content and this is where we start seeing like while the content was fun itself like you could still watch like a midi arcady video by itself and still have fun with it. But the thing that actually made them appeal outside of Japan is the fact that a small community of people

who actually knew Japanese and knew English started appearing. The same sort of people who made it possible in the early days to actually watch any anime and that was the subbers. Basically what defined if your channel was actually going to do well was if the subbers got interested in your channel.

While you could obviously become a big channel in the JP space, having the ability to market yourself into an English audience obviously is going to give you a much better shot to actually become a big channel. And early on, the way subbing worked is that this was before YouTube removed this feature, people could submit community subtitles to a video

and then the channel could decide, hey, do I want these subtitles? And most of the time they would say yes, and the popular VTubers like iChan obviously at the time, who was still, I believe at the time, was still the biggest VTuber, Mirai Akari. Kaguya Luna.

All got subs within like a day or two. Of like the time their content came out. But in a lot of cases. It still took. For like the less popular content. Or the really long videos. Like occasionally Ai-chan would do like a. 30 minute or an hour video.

This is when. People were sort of testing the waters with doing VTubing and live streaming at the same time, which was a whole nother thing that we're going to get into. But the things that were longer like that just didn't really get subbed or got subbed way later. So a lot of people just didn't get to see that content. didn't really get subbed or got subbed way later. So a lot of people just didn't get to see that content.

And even so, though, I still think, yeah, a lot of the, especially the Mirai Arcade stuff and Aichan, because a lot of it was also, I guess it was like physical humor. They would both definitely do physical humor videos, which still do translate past languages. Plus, regardless, they're still adorable. And if you know a little bit of Japanese, you can at least follow along enough to have fun with it. But that's when they started also doing some collaboration, doing normal YouTuber stuff. And that sort of just kept going on for quite a while.

Sometime in the mix, I don't know who the first ENVTuber was, but at some point in the mix, ENVTubers started to appear. And... I... Okay. I'm gonna say something that's probably not controversial whatsoever, but the original ENVTubing

was absolute garbage. I don't know what was going on back then. I think it's the same thing with like early anime dubbing where the people doing the voices were trying to sound like they were Japanese. Like not putting on like a Japanese accent. I don't mean that. I mean trying to sound like, you know,

they have the really high-pitched voices of like an anime character and trying to do only the cutesy stuff because at the time like no one had really done, you know, like what Callie is doing now. I'll get into Callie in a bit, but no one had really done like the, you know, being an actual person sort of thing. Everyone at the time was still very much playing a character maybe the character was relatively similar to the way they were in real life but they were still playing this character like Aichan obviously was playing the character of being like a super intelligent AI uh Mirai Akari was playing like the the perf the i guess attempting to be a perfect idol but sort of being the ditzy character and kaguya luna i don't know how to describe what she was doing

uh i guess the best way to describe her is like a precursor to people like uh kureji ori like in the in the hololive id side there's a character or there's there's a character There's a character, a girl, a person, a VTuber, we'll go with that, who has a little bit too much energy. I think that's, if you know what she's like, then understanding what Luna is like is fairly easy as well.

But, the thing about the EN VTubers, even though they were really cringey, and I personally didn't like what they were doing at the time, I still think they played a really big part in making it so VTubing could actually appeal outside of Japan. And I'm sure there were people like in Southeast Asia and also in China and other places like that also starting to do the I guess do the

not EMV tube, do like the non-JPV tubing and trying to make it appeal to their audience even if the way they were doing it just didn't make sense at the time, but that's sort of what always happens with the first gen of anything, like even

early iCchan stuff is way different to what she's doing now. Like, very early stuff. Actually, if we go over to her channel again, the very early stuff she was doing was, as I said, the very skit comedy stuff. But nowadays, I'm pretty sure she's actually doing

a lot of what, like, the other channels are doing as well. Yeah, so while she is still doing the skit comedy stuff, she's also doing the occasional livestream content as well. And livestreaming is where... I guess where VTubing is right now, but we'll get into that topic in a bit. So the first generation of anything is always a big train wreck and there's always going to be improvements upon it as people continue to i guess

perfect their crafting and you need to keep working on it and people try out new things see what works and eventually you end up getting something that's actually kind of decent now at this time i'd sort of taken a bit of a break from vtubing um i just didn't really not from beach from watching vtubes i wasn't i wasn't vtubing that would be a whole nother story um i sort of took a break from watching vtubers i just didn't really have i guess i didn't really have much of an appeal to them because subbing at the time was very much slowing down and the main VTubes I cared about were on the GP side.

Because I didn't know about Hololive at this point. I don't think... When did Hololive start actually? I think this would have been in like 2018, 2019 or so. When did Hololive start? 2019. So this would have been just before just before... Oh, sorry. That's Hololive start. 2019. So this would have been just before...

Just before... Oh, sorry. That's Holostars. Where's Hololive? That is the third generation. Maybe it's a bit further back. When did Fubuki start? Give me an answer.

2018. Okay. Okay, so yeah. I would have stopped watching around when Hololive first gen was starting. And this is where we started to see... Actually, no, before that, something big got me back into VTubers. And that was that there was a VTuber anime that came out. This was a really weird one because I didn't realize that VTubers had grown this much.

I thought it was still this really niche thing. I didn't realize that VTubers had like grown this much. I thought it was still like this really sort of niche thing. And maybe it was still gaining popularity in Japan. But like still not really being that crazy. Let's see. Here we go. This I think is what was one of those early things that sort of got a lot more attention on VTubers. So, here it is. It is Virtuosan wa Miteru.

And Aichan sang the opening for this one. The song is actually a banger. I highly recommend listening to the opening. And this sort of got me interested in, like, the whole weird scene of VTubers outside of, like, the cute anime girls. Because I didn't even realize that, like, there were any male VTubers at the time. Also, there was a dude who had, like, a horse head, and there was a gorilla. Uh, and, like, a

a really weird-looking peanut thing. I don't know. VTubers, it sort of got weird in the time that I stopped watching them. People were starting to experiment with stuff and seeing what was actually sort of, what was actually sort of, what was actually going to be possible with VTubing.

And also, uh, the original member of Hololive was also a, um, a member of this, of this anime, but I didn't actually know about Hololive at that point. I didn't know about Nijisanji.

I didn't know about any of that. I didn't know there were holo, I didn't know there were like VTuber groups that existed existed i thought everyone was just doing indie stuff still at this point and that's when stuff sort of started to change because i got myself back into vtubers i started watching people like akari again i chan again and i sort of kept doing that for a while coming back and forth for a while and then and then i discovered where the industry had sort of shifted to and that was towards live streaming live streaming was the big shift that happened with vtubers and that was the thing that sort of set off the i guess the exponential growth that

we're seeing today the thing about live streaming is you can produce a lot of content that you didn't have to specifically plan so say some funny event happens like you accidentally show your desktop or oh look i died in this game i rage quit this is when the live streaming started happening because when the live stream is there when the live stream again when the live streaming started happening because when the live stream is there when the live stream again when the live streaming started happening this is when there was a sort of shift in the way that people approach their characters so up until this point because everyone was doing like the video stuff maintaining a character on like a you know a five minute video a 10 minute video spill water over myself isn't really that difficult

now try keep that same thing up for 2 hours, 3 hours in the case of Korone doing like over 24 hour streams because she's insane try keep up a character that's not similar to your regular

personality for that long. Streaming VTubers is when you started to see people actually not just using this VTuber character to, you know, do funny stuff they wouldn't be able to do in the real world, but do stuff that they wouldn't feel comfortable doing online if they had to show their face. do stuff that they wouldn't feel comfortable doing online if they had to show their face. This was a way for people who were kind of shy online to start doing really fun content. Like take Matsuri for example. She had... I don't even know how to describe like some of the content she's done. Like when she does like of her early collabs with Luna, for example, or when she does

honestly anything she does. Or with some of, what's her name? There's a girl in Nijisanji that she's a big simp for. I'm forgetting the name of. But anyway. This gives them an opportunity to

I guess really be themselves if they want to be. Not just have to play a character. Not just have to be, oh, I'm a cutesy anime girl. I'm gonna be a cutesy anime girl. That's where you also started to see a shift in, like, also the style. Because people started to be, I guess, more true to the way they really were. People were no longer just doing, hey, I'm a cutesy anime girl. There are still, obviously, those VTubers that do exist. Toki no Sora is a great example of that. But not everyone was sticking with the perfect idol.

You're getting those people you know like uh like matsuri like luna who in some cases were like actively actively pushing the boundaries of what could be done in a live stream or you had like the infamous this is actually what got me really into Hololive. There was an infamous clip of Sakura Miko playing GTA 5. Just look up GTA 5

Miko and you'll find it. There is a scene in GTA 5 with a certain rhythmic phrase that I'm not going to say because I'll get myself yeeted off the internet. But that video

went viral and that is where I personally found Hololive. And I've also personally found Clippers. This is the big thing that happened with live streaming as well. Not just the fact yeah people were doing long form content and being themselves the fact that because of that long form content and the interesting clips that were happening

or the interesting scenes that were happening people were starting to clip that content so youtube unlike twitch doesn't have like a built-in clipping feature where you can link the content back to the person's channel but it seemed like because of the established relationship that existed with the subbers people were more than happy to clip the content and still advertise the original creator of it they weren't trying to claim that that was their stuff or trying to make a lot of people weren't even running ads or trying to make any money off of it they were just you know trying to bring these things to the people because honestly like subbing and clipping or i guess subbing an entire live

stream is just not feasible especially because in a lot of cases like um people like a lot of the hololive girls especially stream every day and subbing a five or a six hour stream every day is just not possible. Unless you have, like, a massive team of people, it's just not gonna happen. But when you go and clip some, like, funny moment, when you just clip a funny moment, it's the exact same thing as subbing, like, a five, ten minute video. So, the same thing from earlier could keep happening, but now... now sort of more distributed. Rather than all being focused on, hey, I'm writing subs for Keys in the Eye's channel, I upload them, we're done here. It's now like, hey, I could just start a channel and start clipping this stuff and start showing people what these Vtubers actually are doing. And that was, I think, what really spiked up the growth it still it still

didn't lead to the spike we see now but it certainly did spike it up the other thing you see happen with the streaming vtubers because things like youtube have super chats people get really excited to throw money at people when other people are throwing money. There are super chat wars. People are trying to up, I guess over tip each other or there are people who try to have conversations

in the super chats just ignoring what's happening in the stream. There was one clip I saw recently where I think it was on Ina's stream where some of the people were doing super chats to play tic-tac-toe on Ina's forehead because she has a massive

forehead. I'll show you her picture of Ina. Ina is adorable. She is a member of the Hololive English side. Nina mai Ina-nis. You can't really see it with her old avatar, but

her bangs here cover a massive forehead. So when she got a new costume that didn't have the massive bangs, there was a massive forehead in the way. Anyway, the super chatting was also bringing tons and tons of money into the industry

and when, obviously, tons of money start coming to an industry you're gonna have people sort of trying it out people who didn't think there was really any way you could really succeed in it or people who just had other commitments and couldn't really dedicate the time if they didn't think there was gonna be i guess i guess some return they could actually make on it like obviously if you're gonna be doing something like live streaming at the site you're not gonna make any money off of it but you still want to have at least I think ultimately you still want there to be a possibility that people are going to see what you're doing even if that doesn't directly relate to money

I don't think there's any artist out there who really wants to be in a situation where no one would ever want to see their content i think even the most like diehard creativity is for the sake of creativity i think even those people wouldn't want to make something that no one is ever going to care to see i think there's always going to be at least a part of your brain that does sort of focus on that. But by having

this live streaming it was showing that yeah, you actually not just at the size of Hololive, but even small VTubers could actually reasonably focus a lot of time on this

now this is when I also started to see another type of VTuber showing up and that was the Twitch VTuber now the difference between a Twitch VTuber and a YouTube VTuber is kind of the same difference between somebody who streams on YouTube and someone who streams on Twitch

the Twitch culture is really weird I don't understand is kind of the same difference between somebody who streams on YouTube and someone who streams on Twitch. The Twitch culture is really weird. I don't understand it myself, but the way Twitch is, is it's a very different landscape. And the way people talk on Twitch, the way people interact in chat, is very different from the way that people do it on YouTube. Like, you know, on YouTube, spamming isn't exactly, um, isn't exactly an accepted practice. It's sort of getting more accepted in live streams.

But Twitch, like, you want to have a bunch of people spamming pog emotes? Like, that's an entirely normal thing. Or spamming, like, a wall of pepes? Like, no one's going to really have any problem with that, assuming you're not just doing it when, like, it doesn't make any sense.

If you're just joining in on the fun and walla pepes, like, that's just how Twitch works. But, the thing you started to see, especially with the EN side on Twitch, is that they really didn't

even care remotely about the fake idol stuff. There was no... i guess no um i guess no semblance of care about about that so you had people just straight up swearing like i do in live stream like fuck this fuck that some people talking about like especially nowadays we have like feel like vebe talking about like getting rammed and talking about uh like, especially nowadays, we have people like Veibay talking about getting rammed, and talking about Annie, how she wants to get

screwed by Veibay, and all of this other just what would have been, a few years ago, completely unthinkable, because at the time, the early VTubers sort of did take that idle approach. Now, that idle approach has just been sort of taken away, I guess. It's just been sort of taken away i guess it's just been

there there's still those vtubers who do sort of still take the like idle approach but you don't have to be is the point i'm making here if you want to be like a really lewd vtuber like that's that's a completely normal and completely accepted thing nowadays and i'm i'm kind of happy it is because it means we get people, one, why am I doing this with my thumb? We get people, one, being true to themselves and two, doing really whatever they want. Like, if they don't want to be

true to themselves, they can be like a massive arsehole if they want to be and it still is going to have some sort of audience there because they can they don't have the same level of restrictions. Now that doesn't mean that all VTubers. Don't have those restrictions.

Which will take us into Hololive. But I'll. When it comes to the indie space. The indie space is. It's sort of like if you take. Like independent live streaming. And you take away the fact. that someone will know who you are, you sort of allow people to truly do whatever they want.

That doesn't mean that no one's going to know who you are. And there is actually like a big open secret in the VTuber world. But I sort of want to go through, I guess go through what Hololive really really started out to be and what it's actually become now I think one second open VTuber secret here we go that there we go I can I can spell so Hololive initially started with basically just one member. So we get all the way back to Hololive, the start of Hololive, where you had Hololive, I guess they're calling it Gen Zero now,

at least that's what people are calling it themselves. Right at the start, Toki no Sora, even though even though Hololive was still just one member at the time there was still a company being formed there, and you had the other people come over, some of whom were created for Hololive I believe Roboco and Azuki

were created for Hololive, I could be mistaken there give me one second, I think maybe yeah no, okay Could be mistaken there. Give me one second. I think. Maybe. Yeah no. Okay. Yep she was created for Hololive.

But I know Miko and Suisei. Did come from being. I believe they were both independent VTubers. Prior to being in Hololive. Yep. She transferred into Hololive. And Suisei. Also transferred into Hololive uh yep she transferred into hololive and cc also transferred into hololive she used to be i actually used to have a 3d model um but since then has had a 2d model looks considerably better but you still have a couple of people who do use 2D models. Tokinosoda and Roboco being the main

big ones that actually do. I didn't even talk about 2D VTubers, did I? I just sort of skipped past that. I said I was going to talk about it and just completely forgot to do so. We're talking about Hololive sort of does take us into 2D VTubers because that's sort of where I

discovered the main way 2D VTubing is being done way 2D VTubing is being done. 2D VTubing is being done. While there are other approaches to it, Live2D is the main approach. And I knew when I heard about Live2D, I knew there was going to be something big that happened with it. Anyway, Hololive started off as a bunch of individual people who started... Who, I guess, got either brought into Hololive or had their character created for Hololive started off as a bunch of individual people who started, who I guess got either brought into Hololive or had the character created for Hololive. And not that long after, I would say, you started going through the generations of Hololive, as well as the sort of side stuff they were doing as well, where they had like Hololive gamers.

And since then, there's been five generations of Hololive. since then there's been five generations of Hololive but Hololive JP isn't the only Hololive that does exist um because obviously it's going to be very popular in the

Japanese space but Hololive has sort of expanded out of that and I don't know why Indonesia is the first place they expanded to so JP was the first place they expanded to. So, JP was the first branch they had. Then they went to Indonesia. When did

Risu start? It couldn't have been that long ago, I would say. 2020? Hold up! Risu's only been streaming for a year? Okay. Sure. Where was i going with this right yeah they expanded into indonesia for some reason why they didn't do south like general like southeast asia like i've heard a couple people ask about

i'm not really sure about but indonesia is the way it went then they eventually went into en actually no sorry china happened before en um and then en did happen but the way hololive structured itself has actually made it really easy for them to onboard new talents so while we while in the early days we had things like you know Aichan stuff where there was a big controversy about bringing in new versions of Aichan because Hololive has sort of established

that every single person in Hololive or I guess that cover the owners of Hololive have established for Hololive that every single person in Hololive is their own different character and there have been people that have retired, like Hitomi Kurisu, who I don't think ever actually

streamed, or Allo, who did stream once and there was big controversy about things she said before being in Hololive because it was during a test stream for her Hololive model. Yeah. People can come and go from Hololive as cover needs them to. It's not like they have to maintain

Hey, look, here's Fubuki. We need to maintain the Fubuki character. If Fubuki needs to eventually stop being a VTuber, Fubuki can stop being a VTuber and then they can bring more people on. Fubuki can stop being a VTuber and then they can bring more people on but the other nice thing about having all of these different characters is the fact that you have all of these different characters I know it sounds obvious

but you have all of these different people who are all completely different personalities while they might all look like just cute Cyanome girls if you watch even one stream of any of them who are all completely different personalities, while they might all look like just cutesy anime girls, if you watch even one stream of any of them, you would understand very quickly that they are all completely different people. Let's take someone random, like Adushia, for example.

Most of the time, she seems like this just cutesy girl who's going to be like, oh, let's do some fun stuff. blah blah let's do let's be cute and adorable and then you just comment up you just comment anything like bored flat anything about her chest and she will freak out and i don't know if this is like a character or if she just actually is freaking out either way way, it's hilarious. And people who love her absolutely love the freakouts and try to bait them as much as they can.

Or you go watch, say, who's another one we can talk about? Luna, for example, who... I'll get into, like, the open secret, but she is, I'm pretty sure, the oldest real member of Hololive. Her bit is that she is zero years old and she will always be zero years old. Every year she does, every year she's going to be doing

a birthday stream like everyone else in Hololive and she will continue to be zero years old. And like because she's supposed to be zero, she pretends like she doesn't know about a lot of times she'll stream with Matsuri and Matsuri likes to make a lot of sex jokes and she'll like pretend like she doesn't understand what's going on and since then

she's sort of changed the way she's approaching it um but she still sort of leans back in that character a lot or you have like coco who uh i coco's a weird one. She has, like, an intense love for the Yakuza games. Especially the... Who's the main character of Yakuza? I don't remember. Who she claims is her boyfriend constantly. And because Coco actually does know English, she's one of the people that sort of introduced

the concept of English swearing into the JP side commonly in her, especially in her meme review livestream series, just saying motherfucker like it doesn't matter at all surprisingly, management

has no problem with this whatsoever or you have Tokuyami Towa who her character is like Surprisingly, management has no problem with this whatsoever. Or you have Tokiyami Towa, who... Her character is supposed to be... Is it an archangel or a demon? I can't remember. No, I don't want to see the picture. I'm pretty sure... No, let me see Towa's thing. She is a devil.

Sorry, devil. There we go. She is a devil. Sorry, devil. There we go. She is a devil, but she is the most adorable thing on the planet. And the point I'm getting at here is that everyone in Hololive is their own, like, person. They're their own...

My stutter is so bad. They are their own individual characters. Their own personality. And there's going to be someone in Hololive. That sort of appeals to what you enjoy. Like if you don't enjoy people who are loud all the time. You probably won't enjoy Matsuri.

Because she likes to scream into the microphone. So maybe someone like Okayu would be better. Because she's always like really tired and probably because she streams about as much as korone does um and she's like more chill and there will be someone in this in this massive collection of characters not just on the jp side but growing on the on the Indonesia side and now the English side as well, there will be this, there will be a character in here that sort of appeals to what you enjoy. But I, I was actually surprised when the ID side came out. I wasn't really sure what was going to

happen, because prior to that point, there wasn't any... I don't think any... Because the other big company at the time was Nijisanji. Yeah, it was Nijisanji. I think they were the biggest company at the time, besides Hololive. I don't think they'd launched their ID branch at the time, so I wasn't sure what was going to happen with an ID VTuber. Were they going to be speaking

Indonesian the entire time? Were they going to speak Japanese? Were they going to speak English? Turns out all of them speak fluent English and mainly speak English. Depending on who you're watching, they might switch back and forth. No Oli doesn't know Japanese

that well, so she doesn't go into Japanese that much unless she's there with someone who knows even less Japanese, like Amelia Watson. But turns out they all just spoke English. So we sort of got the English side before the English side even happened, which was strange. It was sort of like testing the waters

with an English branch of Hololive before it even happened. But when the English branch happened this year... Actually, no. We'll wait in the English branch. Let me get into China for a bit. So the Chinese side was a really weird side. So they mainly streamed on Bilibili.

Because Bilibili is the popular streaming site in China. It's the popular video site in China just generally. And because they were on Bilibili. And I guess Bilibili just doesn't pay out as well. And because they're on Bilibili. They also didn't have that big of a channel. And even the bigger ones like Artia. who's quite big outside of Bilibili, she actually sort of pioneered the idea of Hololive members streaming on Twitch.

Even then, they were still fairly small. And after some internal controversy that happened, eventually the Chinese side was dissolved, which was really sad because a lot of them actually were really good. Personally, I was a big fan of Artia, but Sifia was also a lot of fun as well. I don't think I'd watched

much of the others, because they weren't very popular, they didn't really have that many people actually subbing them, and unlike the ID side, they mainly spoke Mandarin. artia could speak relatively fluent english i'm not gonna say it's perfect like occasionally she would pronounce stuff in a weird way or forget words but enough where she could do a live stream in english so

not perfectly fluent but enough to be good enough but before we get into the inside another thing there's also the hollow stars side so hollow live was the all-female side of um cover corpse vtubers and they decided to test out at some point what would happen if we did male vtubers which for obvious reasons male vtubers are never really as popular. Like it sort of makes sense. Like the majority of people who watch anime. And are into VTubers. Are dudes.

And. Unless. Like. Sure. Like a lot of their content is fun. But. If you give me the option of watching. Someone like.

Luna. Or you give me the option of watching like like Luna or you give me the option of watching like oh I don't know Astell for some for example I'm probably gonna go with Luna even though Astell does have fun content and when he uh he streams with um with Ollie he's still a lot of fun cute anime girls are always gonna win over the the cute anime boys that's just how it goes they do make really good content i really respect the the work they do it's just that their content is always it's always going to be smaller maybe at some point you're going to see a bit like a really really big male vtube like someone in like the million sub range but i think we're still

very far away from that point. And by the time that actually does happen. I think the female side is going to become even bigger. Like people like Fubuki and Gura are going to be massive channels. By the point that actually happens. I don't think there will ever be a point. Where male VTubers actually do take over. But that doesn't mean that you know. There are no male VTubers actually do takeover. But that doesn't mean that, you know,

there are no male VTubers actually do well. Like, WooHooLad is someone on the, someone who's doing EN stuff. He decided to, you know, do the big brain approach, which is, hey, how do I get views if I'm a male VTuber? I know. I use a female VTuber? I know. I use a female model. Boom.

Profit. He sort of exploded by doing VTuber news. So he sort of took a different approach from the Clippers. The Clippers sort of started taking off because they were taking the content of the Hololive, Nijisanji VTubers, and showing that to people that just didn't feel like watching a stream, or couldn't read, uh, or couldn't speak Japanese, and didn't understand what was going on, and then they would sub it, um, he took the approach of, okay, I can just talk about VTubers while being a VTuber, talk about people in Hololive

or Nijisanji or anyone like that, and just be that news coverage that didn't really exist at the time. Since then, some of the anime channels have picked up on VTuber stuff, but, and WooHooLad's no longer doing the news stuff, from what I understand, he's just doing general livestreaming. But,

there were still male VTubers that did do fairly well. And I do think a lot of these are... A lot of male VTubers that did do fairly well. And I do think a lot of these are... A lot of male VTubers are fun. There's also staff members who occasionally stream as well. Like A-chan. A-chan is the most likely to be in a livestream. She's actually done a couple of streams.

I think she did one with Matsuri. And she's actually done a couple of streams i think she did one with matsuri and she's actually done a couple of streams by herself as well usually though she will be like doing the management on like sort of streams or doing the management for whatever event is happening she's usually not doing her own stuff even though a-chan is actually adorable and i kind of wish she did start doing the VTubing stuff herself. Rather than just being like, oh yeah. I've got a model that actually looks really good now. She actually got a new model recently. And just like not really doing much.

Just sad. Like I really wish she did do more. Because she is actually adorable. And everyone I know who knows about a chan thinks she's adorable as well so i don't know she joined because she was like her name's a chan so it's a play on um eugene air so friend a she is just like one of sora's friends who decided to join in on hololive to like be there to support Sora basically she joined cover to

be the support for Sora which I think is actually really sweet and makes her honestly a really good friend to her and I I don't know I appreciate what she does even if even if she's still not still not live streaming like

I wish she should and then we have we have the even if she's still not live streaming like I wish she should. And then we have the thing that just blew up the industry, and that is Hololive English or Hololive Myth. When the Hololive Myth came out, holy shit, I didn't think that it was going to be that popular. I was like, okay, well, we've seen EN VTubers before. Well, it can't be that crazy, can it?

No one, not a single VTuber in the world, had hit a million subs yet. That's because the EN side hadn't happened yet. Bubiki and Kodone were both getting fairly close. I think at the time when EN started. They might have been like 800, 900,000 subs. Maybe. Yeah.

I think 800, 900,000 subs. Then. I think. Yeah. Callie was the first one to debut. And I think Callie was sort of mocking the existing idea around ENVTubers, because most of, obviously she was nervous, but most of the early part of her stream,

she was just like being very jittery occasionally, like weird anime laughs, and being just a very weird unit in general, and just someone that if she kept like that, no one would have enjoyed. But then she released her first song. And that is when everything changed. That was when she released the music video for Shitsudeshimasu ga Shinde Kudasai.

Or Please Rip is the shortened English name. And holy shit. While there had been musical talents in Hololive previously, you had... Actually, most people in Hololive can sing because they are supposed to be idols. Even if Amelia Watson is very bad at singing. Even though we have Suisei, who has a gorgeous voice,

or you have Fubuki, who's also amazing at singing, Matsuri, amazing at singing. even though we have suisei who has a gorgeous voice or you have fubuki who's also amazing at singing matsuri amazing at singing basically everyone here are amazing at singing we hadn't had someone who was a rapper and we hadn't had someone who was not only a rapper but also a big fan of uh big fan of american gangster rap and this i wish i could play of American Gangster Rap. This I wish I could play I wish I could play Callie's first song but I highly recommend you go and listen to it

because if you still like, if you're not really sure what VTubers can be like Callie sort of gives you the idea that yeah, VTubers can be anything. Like, just like regular streamers or regular creators, being a VTuber doesn't limit you to, like, the sort of content you can make.

You can be literally anything you want. Hmm. Because, yeah, before that point, she was trying to be that cutesy character. And then the song came out, and it was just like, fuck, fuck this fuck that fuck everything okay okay that's what we're doing is it okay um and that was when i i really really started enjoying callie's content i ended up watching kiara's live stream the following day I believe I missed Ina's livestream I love Ina, she's adorable Gouda is when

the internet started to explode though because Gouda yeah, Gouda is a special person, Gouda is she knows how the internet works. Same with Amelia Watson. Now, I'm surprised Amelia didn't

explode as much as Gouda did, because she also understands the internet. The other girls here, while, you know, having online presences, um, aren't living, breathing shit posters. These two, on the other hand truly understand

how to like get people's attention on the internet but i think amelia's stream was the last stream so obviously the hype was sort of dying down by the time we got there good i sort of picked it back up because she has a godly voice and the way the singing in her first livestream was absolutely amazing. Even though it wasn't an original song, it was really unexpected how well she could sing. Because while

we all knew the JP side were good singers, we weren't really sure if it was going to be the same on the EN side as well. Everyone here is a good singer, except Amelia and also except for that one time where Ina sang Unravel, the Tokyo Ghoul opening. Please go watch that. It's so good.

It's so amazing. But because of how well the debut of the EN side went, I think that's what really. Sparked the new. The new.

Fueled excitement. In VTubing. Because now there was Hololive English. It wasn't just oh there was some English VTubers. Hololive. The biggest VTubing company in the world. That had multiple creators. Closing in on a million subs.

Now they had an English branch. And that's when the race sort of started to begin. Because people worked out people worked out who Gura was. I don't want to get, actually no,

we'll get into the open secret. Yeah. So people worked out who Goodall was. People have worked out who previous VTubers were as well. And this is what the open secret is. While it's not exactly permitted in any of the official channels or really just... It's not really a... I guess...

It's not really a... I guess... It's not really an accepted thing officially. Everyone knows who the personalities behind the VTubers are. While they don't ever announce it, or while they don't ever make anything official about it,

in some cases, it's really obvious. Like, if you have, say, a very distinctive voice, in the case of Callie, for example, who is Demon Dice, people start to work out connections like that, because there's a lot of people who spend fucking all their time on the internet, start digging into who you are, even though, honestly, it is a bit weird that people do dig into people's history that much.

It was something that was basically bound to happen. But people worked out who Callie was. I think it took a while for people to work out who Ina was, because she didn't have much of a presence. I think she was just mainly an art streamer, or maybe just an artist or something. Because she's amazing at drawing. And we knew she was just, like, mainly an art streamer? Or maybe, like, just an artist or something?

Because she's amazing at drawing. And we knew she was doing art stuff, like, outside of VTubing. Kiara is a cosplayer called Kikihime, who's had some really sketchy stuff happen in the past to her, who I kind of feel bad for. I'm not going to get into that. That's a very dark story in some places um but amelia watson was uh suchio wo suchio wo was a twitch streamer

uh and also was vtubing at some point wasn't super popular but had a lot of clips that got like sort of semi-viral uh and just really just really dumb shit if you just go onto youtube and look up such yo where you'll find some really weird stuff where over time i don't know how many times she dyed her hair but it seems like she dyed her hair like every 20 seconds because every time i see a clip of her it is something different uh well if i if you go if you go to youtube looking up looking up such yolo scrolling down just a little bit you just have this clip this is a quite a famous quite a famous clip um quite a famous clip um but gooda who is gooda well gooda was a another very very very big youtube like this wasn't hey look we just brought on someone who you know had some sort of online personality who sort of knew how to do the live streaming thing who knew you know how to do the live streaming thing, who knew, you know, how to be on the internet.

No, this was Senzawa. They had gone and hired Senzawa into Hololive English. Now, prior to being in Hololive English, she did have a big channel. But you probably know who Senzawa is, even if you don't know who Senzawa is. Uh, because she was the one who made the Okidoki Boomer song. Um, you know, the, the, the Bernie girl clip that went around on TikTok back when the election was half, I think it was, yeah, would have been the most recent, was it the most recent election? Yeah, most recent election. Maybe, yeah, it would have been.

Where Bernie was still on the trail and there was a clip of a girl dancing around to a song that was going Okidoki Boomer. Yeah, she sang that song and she didn't just sing that song. No, no, no. She also sang the song for when Belle Delphine

came back to YouTube. Once again, obviously cannot play that one because it's Belle Delphine. But she has countless other songs that you've probably heard. Some really weird shit. Also apparently turned a coffee faster into a bad rap yeah that did happen got very drunk and sang country road

got so drunk that during the middle of the song she vomited yeah that's a thing that happened but as we can see here Senzawa knows how the internet works every single video on this channel

has tons of views the only channel with less than a million or the only video with less than a million of views is this one here and this one here, even though that one probably should have more it's a really weird video um so

you bring an absolute shit poster into Hololive english and sachio wo being amelia watson also another shit poster someone who had an online following already i think when she joined she was a uh gooder she was at like 700 000 on the senzawa channel people found out and the race i said the race the race the race. The race to a million subs. Gura started at zero. Within, I think, maybe two weeks, she had caught up and was neck and neck with Korone and Fubuki

and just flew past them. I don't know how big her channel is now. I think it's still the biggest channel. Yeah, 2.74 million. Not that long ago. Not that long ago, a million was a crazy number. Now 2.74. That's fucking insane.

But there was a lot of weird controversy with Goethe as well because VT v tubing had obviously taken off now and it was getting a lot of attention on the inside and because gooder has a loli model there were weird units on the internet who are obsessed with saying that anyone who liked gooder would like liked children which was the fucking dumbest thing i'd ever heard but the problem is that you were fucking with a shit poster and gura knew how exactly to deal with trolls online the answer was you troll them back you don't apologize you don't you know cry about it no no no you just fully accept that it's happening and be like, haha, yes I am baby. Where, where?

That was a really good thumbnail. I don't remember on what video it was where she just completely made fun of this and it was honestly hilarious. But every single VTuber is like that. Where there is this open secret that everyone knows who they are. There's a lot of people on the case now trying to work out who everyone is.

I think everyone's sort of been worked out. Some, like Coco, because she has a very, very, very distinctive voice, are really obvious. Coco has a channel... What was her name? Coco... I'm trying to forget. I'm trying to remember what her other channel was.

Give me the answer, YouTube. Yeah, here we go. I can see the picture. Are you going to link to her channel uh-huh um what the fuck was her name why am i forgetting uh case on there we go case on case on was also a cosplayer and also a live streamer um the thing that initially made people find out, even though it was really fucking obvious because if you listen to Coco's voice

there's not many people in the world that sound like Coco. Even though it was really obvious, yeah, I actually used one of the Coco assets during a Kason livestream. This is one of the other weird things. A lot of the people who do have fairly decent online presences still actually stream and make videos under their other presence.

Kason being a really good example, but Kali under Demon Dice still does do a lot of stuff. I don't think that Amelia operates under Sachiowow anymore, and Senzawa didn't upload anyway. She uploaded, like, once every six months, so no one really noticed that she was missing in the first place.

But it's so weird that I see people actually operating under both of them. But, especially in cases where it's really fucking obvious. Like, everyone, or Kikihime as well, she's also still doing stuff where, uh, I think she's still doing some cosplay stuff, actually. everyone... Oh, like, Kikihime as well. She's also still doing stuff where... I think she's still doing some cosplay stuff, actually. And still doing, like, cosplay shoots.

Because it's supposed to be a secret. That's the thing. Like, it's supposed to be a secret that people don't know. Like, while the talents can't talk about it because it's a part of their contract not to talk about it, everyone else can just openly say, like,

oh, yeah, here is who all of these people are. It's fine. Everyone knows. It's all good. But I think it sort of brings more attention to them as well. By people actually knowing who your previous personality was, those older fans of you can still come back and actually enjoy your stuff. That actually leads you back into the thing about Luna, where I was saying Luna is actually the oldest member,

which is sort of her, like her, her joke about being the youngest member where she's her character that she's zero years old, but I'm pretty sure that she's in her forties judging by her previous, um, her previous personality. Yeah.

I'm pretty sure she's in her 40s. Not like a big deal. She's a great VTuber regardless. But I think that there are people who go a bit too far with it. Like in the case of Kigahime, where they're digging up old controversies that happened with her as well.

And really weird shit that happened with her as well and like really really weird shit that happened in her past like where there was like um actually I'll get into a little bit of it where there was a um for some reason don't don't ask why it's Japan Japan does weird things uh

she did like a cosplay wrestling thing and the guy she was wrestling was like really creepy about it. I don't know why that was a thing that happened. But digging up stuff like that. That just doesn't need to be dug up. It's one thing to say. Hey look.

Callie made videos under the name Demon Dice. Or hey look. Gura is Senzawa. It's another thing to be doing stuff like that. I highly recommend going and watching some of the later music videos that Callie actually did there under Demon Dice where she was doing some stuff IRL.

A lot of that stuff is actually really fun. And also go back and listen to her first EP, American Psychidor, which is great. It's the fucking best thing ever because of this one song, Gang Gang Kawaii, which is an interesting track, to say the least. You can probably work out there's a bit of a weird song, judging by the name, Gang Gang Kawaii,

but it's nowhere near not as weird. But it's nowhere near as weird. No, it's definitely as weird. It's nowhere near as... It's way more weird than you're expecting. There we go. I got there eventually. I don't really care much about the JP side. Because I don't really care about JP YouTubers. I don't watch JP stuff for the most part.

But the EN side does at least get me interested. And does sort of get me interested to see who's going to show up in Hololive EN second generation. Because I know that a lot of the big EN VTubers. There's no more Senzao's who are going to just join Hololive English. If an established VTuber does join, they will be found out instantly, and I wonder who it'll be.

I know the girls that I like to enjoy don't have any interest in doing it, because the problem with going into Hololive, because it's not working the same way it used to in the past, where they would transfer people like Suisei or Miko into Hololive. Now, if you're going to join

Hololive, you're going to have a whole new character, and when you have a whole new character, obviously cover is going to have a lot of control over what can really be done. While they do give the girls a lot of freedom in what they can do, there's still obviously going to be, you know, the restrictions

on how their costume can be designed and things like that. We'll see. I'm very excited because I think there was a singing branch of Hololive EN that was announced a while back. I don't know what's happening with that, but there hasn't

really been a proper second generation that's gonna happen when it does though i i will be i will be on the ball i missed out watching the debut streams for hololive id second generation and i missed out on two of the live streams for en first generation um but i'll be there for second gen. I'll make sure I'm there for second gen. The nice thing about the JPV tubers, though, is the fact they're in Australia.

Except for Matsuri, because Matsuri streams at fucking stupid times. But the girls who stream at, like, a reasonable time, like, midday, in Australia, in South Australia specifically, there's, like, an hour time difference between Japan and here, so

it works out really nice to actually watch those streams when I actually want to. But I did talk about Twitch and YouTube, but I didn't talk about the big problem that exists between them,

and that is that there's this really weird feud that exists between the Twitch And that is that there's this really weird feud that exists between the Twitch side and the YouTube side where for some reason, I don't think there's any hostility on the Twitch side. I think the Twitch side is doing Twitch things. They don't really care about anything besides what happens on Twitch.

But the YouTube side, for some reason, I've seen a lot of people in both Twitter threads and YouTube comments and the fan discord and the Reddit. I said both, and I listed out four things. In all of those things, where they're sort of saying that working with the Twitch VTubers sort of corrupts the way that the YouTube VTubers act. Because on Twitch, a lot of people act really strange. Right now, you have the Hot Tub streams, and generally Twitch streamers

just do really weird shit. Very different to what happens on the YouTube side. Because YouTube is sort of usually related to what goes on your channel. Twitch just whatever goes, really. Any of like the variety streamers just do weird shit. And that's what the, because the like the Twitch VTubers sort of are established on Twitch,

they do the same thing. So there's a lot of people worried that by having the Twitch and the YouTube VTubers sort of start collaborating together, there's going to be some sort of corruption of the way that the YouTube VTubers sort of start collaborating together, there's going to be some sort of corruption of the way that the YouTube VTubers act. And especially in the way, like, they speak. Um, even though, I don't know

why there's any problem with that on the EN side, because watch some of, like, Kali's stuff. While it's nowhere near as, like, Veibay or Nyaners, it's still like, pretty explicit in a lot of like, Kali's stuff. While it's nowhere near as, like, Veibay or Nyanas, it's still, like, pretty explicit in a lot of cases. Kali tries not to swear as much.

Kiara, on the other hand, she claims to not want to swear as much, and then she does anyway. But because, like, the big twitch um the big twitch vtuber group right now is vishojo it's it's very different vishojo

started from a group of girls who actually give no fucks while like the youtube side because they are being more true to themselves can you know say more than they would have in the past the v show joe side acts as if like they are like constantly in 18 plus chat and say literally anything stuff that stuff that honestly would get them age-gated on YouTube in an instant.

And I think they probably do get age-gated on Twitch, but Twitch is a bit weirder about that, where it's not as big of a deal, I guess. I don't really know how Twitch works. But because, like, yeah, Vshojo, especially, especially Vshojo, because of that, there are people worried that, like, you know, you're going to have Kiara, for example, start acting like Nyanas, which would be hilarious. But I can sort of get the concern. I just don't think there's any reason to have any hostility there.

It's not like by having these people work together, their personalities are just going to completely change and they're going to become an entirely different person. I don't think that makes any sense as a concern. I can get it though, if that makes sense. I don't think it makes sense, but I can understand why you would be concerned from the perspective of someone who likes the content the way it is. But like with what happened in the past with iChan, people are afraid of change, and

any change that could potentially happen is always going to worry some portion of the community. But when the Twitch stuff started happening, because clipping was already established there, they didn't really have the same teething issues

with getting it sort of accepted. One of the problems with clippers early on is that Cover wasn't really sure how to approach them. Do we DMCA them? Do we not? Do we take them as free promotion? What's actually happening here ultimately they'd let them do whatever they want they even got a part of their website talking about clipping policy because they they understand that the clippers are how they grow outside of the japanese

audience and i'm so happy that they worked that out quicker than gaming companies worked it out for you know live streaming games or doing Let's Plays. Because that took a while to happen. They realized pretty much straight away that, yeah, Clippers are going to be what you need to actually grow in this audience. And I'm happy about it. But, hmm. I did talk a bit about the Shoujo there.

And I want to talk a bit about a couple of the Shoujo girls. So Nyanas has sort of existed in many forms for a very long time. Nyanas has been on YouTube for years. Way before she was doing VTuber stuff. Let's go sort. Wow, the sort button's back now. Here you go nianas has been doing stuff on on youtube for 10 years minimum and she had another channel prior to this i don't know how long she's been on youtube but i wouldn't be surprised if she's been here since like

the day it started even though like early days she's doing very different stuff um yeah she's always sort of had like a a an anime avatar so her going into the world of vtubing sort of makes sense like she's always had like hey look here's this this pink cat girl that represents who i am when she started vtub, it sort of made sense that, yeah, she's going to, you know, make a VTuber model of that. But I didn't discover Nyandas until fairly recently, I think. Okay, recently relative to how long she's been around.

I think when it was a song cover. I discovered her on. I believe. Yeah when she did the cover of. Men's Not Hot. I guess parody. I guess kind of. It's a cover parody. She changed like a little bit of the lyrics.

Most of it is exactly the same though. Where it's Nyan's Not Hot. And it's great. I love it. But when she started VTubing, I sort of instantly fell in love with what she was doing. She started as a Twitch VTuber. Since then, she did realise,

the thing that a lot of other Twitch streamers have realised as well, that Twitch is horrible for growth. So since then, she has been uploading clips on YouTube and being very successful, has the money for an editor, unlike someone recording a video right now. So she actually gets good clips being made and gets clips being made fairly frequently. And I highly recommend going and watching these clips if you don't know

what nyanas are going to be like before you jump into a live stream go watch like nyanas wants unbeat bicycle i think that's a good a good representation of what nyanas really is that is yeah that's probably the best one to go with or uh nyanas rates your toilets is also a good one i reckon but honestly anything nyanas has ever done is always going is also a good one I reckon. But honestly anything Nyanus has ever done is always gonna be a fun one to go with. So Nyanus was the first one I discovered in V-Shojo. I discovered her before V-Shojo started because they started fairly recently I believe. Like within the last year. I'm pretty sure they started after Hololive ID Gen 1.

Let's see. Does the VTuber wiki have anything on the shoujo? Wow, it does. Crazy. It's started... Oh, sorry. It was started by gunrun who worked at twitch for seven years it was started back in 2020 okay okay okay now that makes sense right so yeah i discovered um yeah it was way before b shoujo then probably like a year or so

um then i discovered iron mouse now iron mouse is the most precious the most precious thing on the planet even though she's a bit of a gremlin um and likes to scream into the microphone like certain like certain other uh certain other certain other VTubers and is as lewd or leuder than Nyanas is. Enough to definitely keep up with her. Iron Mouse is

Iron Mouse shows that you don't have to even be someone who is in a good place in life to be a good VTuber. So this isn't like anyone digging into her past. Iron Mouse, this is actually how I discovered her. Let's see if I can find the video. Here we go. Back when she had the model she had for quite a while, the first time I ever heard about Iron Mouse was when she talked about her health condition

which is a really weird way to discover someone but she is bedridden with many many diseases that basically mean she can't really get out of bed for much of the day she has to get plasma donations

and honestly she's just not in a at the time at least was not in a really healthy place in life obviously you can't really recover from that but because of how successful she's been she's at least be able to you know keep tripping at a pace where she can remain as healthy as someone in her position can really be. And in this clip, I think it was this one here, she was trying to get herself a better bed. She doesn't like to talk about her bed as her bed, though, because she's always in her bed, and it makes her depressed to talk about it like that.

So she calls it her workspace, and she was trying to afford a new bed, and she wanted $2,000, and someone just donated $2,000, like straight up paid for the entire thing. And then when that happened, people just kept pouring donations in, and I think she cried during this as well.

As I said, while she is a absolute gremlin and likes to scream into the fucking microphone there are those times where where she is absolutely fucking precious and i i really recommend watching iron mouse stuff there's a reason why I bought an Iron Mouser hoodie, and I also bought a Nyanas hoodie, because I genuinely love the work they're doing. Recently, Iron Mouser's actually been doing a lot

of stuff with SeadogVA. SeadogVA, the British voice actor that's now hosting Trash Taste taste that was my attempt at a british accent it sounded like an australian attempt to do a british accent surprising that isn't it um but yeah she's been doing a lot of co-op stuff with c-dog va gonna be doing i think she's doing some apex legends with them as well or considering doing it um and there's obviously

been because look this what happens when a guy and a girl stream together there's always going to be people uh shipping them and they've sort of gotten like really close over the past like i guess past couple of months um early on they were like real both of them were really nervous to talk to each other like they'd only talked over Twitter before Mousy was like she kind of freaked out the first time they actually talked. Connor CdogVA also freaked out as well

and it was precious. Since then though like Connor's, there's clips I'll see if I can find one CdogVA CdogVA clips um i'll see if i can find one uh cdogva here we go this is a great name for a clip um okay no there was there was a clip called cdogva bullies the disabled girl um but they just like straight up bully each other at this point

they are actually like kind of best of friends and i love it it they're they're both they're both gremlins iron mouse is is peak gremlin but i i love the i we came, we came from, we came from absolute cringe to, to what we see now with, with Iron Mouse, uh, collabing with, with IRL streamers. That's the other thing that didn't happen early on. That's only been happening really in the past year or so, I would say. We are seeing VTubers not just being, you know their own little vtuber circle there's been a lot of people reaching out and actually um and actually trying to collab with you know people one one early example was with uh moist critical uh charlie is a massive weeb and he did some stuff

with NuxTarku. I think NuxTarku is probably the most popular male VTuber. How big is Nux's channel? Yeah, Nux's channel is biggest male VTuber. But he did stuff prior to being a VTuber.

So he was a big YouTuber and then became a vtuber uh because it sort of makes sense he did anime stuff and you know uh yeah anyway what was i saying right i was distracted by a thumbnail i thought i'm gonna i'm gonna have to censor that thumbnail. Just, yeah. Anyway. Where was I now? Right. People and VTubers collabing. And there's been like a, I know there's a live stream on Twitch who does like a VTuber interview series.

I guess would be the best way to put it. VTuber podcast, sort of whatever. I think that's the direction the stuff's going to start happening in the future, because it's all well and good for VTubers to exist in their own little space, but I think as they gain

more popularity, there's going to be more VTubers reaching out to actual people and reaching out, and actual people reaching out to VTubers as well, and sort of just having them become a general part of the, I guess general part of the online creator space, rather than their own little thing. It's not a bad thing that they are their own little thing,

but I think that there's going to be more interesting, more interesting sort of interactions if that does happen because there are like some funny interactions that can happen between uh mousy and connor because you have a human and you have a gremlin or you have a vtuber um where i will be the best way to put it? Especially in cases where the V-Tuber model breaks. There's been cases where, for some reason, Iron Mouse's eyes just disappear. And he's very cursed.

And while that would still be funny if you had two V-Tubers there, it becomes kind of extra funny by having the actual person be there alongside it. And just seeing their... While you can have a pretty extensive facial reaction with a VTuber model,

especially with the iPhone tracking now that a lot of girls are using, having an actual person there, seeing an actual reaction there is very different, I think is a good way to put it um and then and then and then everything changed um then then we had a vtuber which i'm sure people outside of the VTuber space have probably heard of.

There is a person by the name of Project Melody. Now, Project Melody... Oh. Project Melody is a very strange case. Um... So. very strange case. Um. So. Project Melody is an American virtual streamer often referred to as an H-Girl

or a Hentai Girl. Her initial streaming platform is Chatterbait. So, she was the... Why no one had done this before, I don't understand. She decided that she was going to be the first camgirl streamer, and this was- This was such a, um, such an- Such an insane idea insane idea that when it happened it broke the internet and

like with anything that happens like this uh people think that it's going to destroy everything that already exists and it's gonna destroy the world and everything's gonna go crazy it didn't obviously happen um melody does her streams on on chatterbait she does her streams on twitch now obviously different sort of content where uh you know one site she can't get naked um for obvious reasons i didn't know niana's was her 2d illustrator oh that's awesome oh i didn't know niana's was that good at drawing makes sense um zodiac sign cancer yes she is a bit of cancer isn't she um anyway yeah melody broke the internet when that happened and for obvious reasons was the biggest the biggest streamer on the platform for a while uh eventually

she went over to do stuff on youtube was a bit too lewd for youtube got a channel banned a couple of times same with twitch she was banned from twitch a couple of times as well and eventually she did end up joining the shoujo and she was sort of like the perfect girl for Vishojo. Because everyone in Vishojo was really lewd. And... And then you had... And then you had like an actual cam girl join alongside them as well. Product Melody originally gained fame as the first adult virtual streamer. That is a thing that happened.

On March 12th, she was temporarily banned from Twitch. Yeah. That did happen. Oh, yeah. She was banned from Twitch after DMC claimed after her original designer

or 3D... Sorry, her original 3D modeler decided to try to DMCA claim her, even though she actually owned or 3D, sorry, her original 3D modeler, um, decided to, like, try to DMCA claim her, even though she actually owned full rights to the, um, to the model. But, weird history aside, Melody's stuff

is actually really good when she's not, like, when she's actually doing stuff on Twitch. She's just a funny person. Like, everyone in Vshojo, even the ones that I watch super often, I think are all really, really entertaining. Like Zentrea. Zentrea's gimmick is...

She's also the first person to do this as well. Her gimmick is that she doesn't speak. She does text-to-speech. Why does she do text-to-speech? I don't know. It works, though. Everyone loves it. Apricot

Fruit was a art streamer prior to being in the show, Joe, I think. I could be... Yeah, art streamer. Or she did stuff on Pixiv, at least. Pretty sure she was an art streamer, though. Silver Veil... I can't remember what she did prior to

the show, Joe. Let's see. Click on Silver Veil. She was just an independent streamer, but I couldn't remember what she did beforehand. I think she was just a general streamer. Veibé is the newest member,

who's precious and incredibly lewd at the same time. Hime Hajime started as a fucking joke. Hime Hajime started as a fucking joke Hime Hajime is um the only person in the entire Vtubing world who doesn't really um

who doesn't really hide who she actually is um so hide who she actually is. Um. So. Pretty obvious if you ever watch anything she's done or if you go to her creator's channel.

Um. Let's see if we can find the video. Let's see. Uh. Is the video still here? Yeah, here it is. Uh. Sidesnap. I auditioned to become a real life waifu. is the video still here? Yeah, here it is. Uh, side snap. I auditioned to become a real life waifu.

Um, yeah, it's, it's Sydney. It's, it's, it's Sydney. It, it, um, it is the one and only, uh, Giggux wife. Why is she a VTuber? Don't question it. Just let it happen.

It's something that exists now. I don't watch her that often, but what I've seen, she's entertaining because it is Sydney and I like Sydney stuff. There's just too many VTubers to watch everyone that comes out. And where was I even going with this?

Vishoujo's great, that's what I have to say. Vishoujo is the pinnacle right now of ENVTubers and I am very excited to finally get my hoodie at some point Vishoujo I was really worried

what was going to happen with Vishoujo but it seems like right now Vishoujo is sort of only a positive thing. The problem with, like, Hololive is there's been some instances where people have had to stop doing what they want to do because they have to sort of, sort of have to work with the fact they're in a company. So you can't play, like, certain games and things like that. You can't say certain things.

Especially on the Chinese side. Or being in Hololive in general. You can't really say anything about China. Because they have got a lot of assets in China. Not as bad now. But there was a big controversy when Coco played... Actually, what a... What a... There was a controversy when Coco

played one game that I forgot the name of. I watched this live. I don't know how management let her play this. But she also said some stuff in a stream. What's the game called? Is it Save? It's called Mr. President. How management let Coco play

Mr. President is a very strange very strange very strange thing that indeed basically had to save Trump from being killed by terrorists

anyway, it's a game that existed, and some other stuff that happened, because in that game there was like a section where there was a massive Chinese flag which is not okay for her to be joking around with, because

China doesn't like that I don't remember what the initial controversy around her with China was, because that was are joking around with. Because Chyna doesn't like that. I don't remember what the initial controversy around her with Chyna was, because that was part of it. But that wasn't the thing that set off the controversy. I can't remember. I can probably find it if I wanted to. But... The point I was getting to was that

Vishoujo, even though they are still a company hasn't put limits on their Vtubers like Hololive does they're a very, very common, it's a very common occasion for like, you know someone to announce they're going to play a game

and then within a couple of days, them basically having to cancel the stream because management said like we can't get okay to play this game because they always want to have it makes sense why because they don't want to get copyright strikes they always want to have explicit permission from the company to be allowed to do something so every time they play a game the company that develops that game has said yes yes, you are allowed to play this. While it's not essential, they want to make sure they're covering their bases

so if the company does change their mind and say, hey, we don't exactly want this game to be streamed, they can say, well, you're not really in a position to say that without going through our legal team, basically. Vishoujo doesn't have the same problem. Mainly because Vishoujo does also operate on Twitch. And Twitch also generally doesn't really care about laws. Which is why there are streamers who are still playing copyrighted music.

Even if they really shouldn't be. Yeah. I'm happy with Vishoujo though. And I'm happy with V-Shojo though and I'm happy with what's actually been announced recently. So there's been some announcements of a collaboration happening between Hololive English

and V-Shojo and I am so, so excited. So what we know so far is that Kiara and Veibay are going to be clabbing which is going to be the ludic stream that hololive has ever done and they have matsuri um but veibay is a whole nother level matsuri is bad ve. Veibé... Yeah, actually, you know what? I'm gonna look up a... I'm gonna... I'm gonna look up Veibé and then a certain word. Um...

Yeah. Come party with Veibé. Veibé, I'll suck your... Uh, and I'm 100% sure she actually does say, I'll suck your dick there. your uh and i'm 100 sure she actually does say i'll suck your dick there veibay begs to suck and choke on his what yep dicks where yep chat come inside my mouth yeah uh vei gets on his knees yep veibay has masturbation idea yeah this is going to be an interesting stream and I don't know if Hololive Management is really going to be ready for it. I presume they understand

what they're getting into, but I don't know if they really know what is actually going to happen when you do see Kiara, especially. Kiara is Kiara is one of the looter members of the inside openly like everyone else sort of like tries to be like oh ha ha ha jokes

no kiara is like kelly sleep with me um so having them together is going to be strange. Very, very strange. And because Iron Mouse is possibly the worst person in the entire world at keeping secrets, if you want a secret to be made public, tell it to Iron Mouse. It's almost confirmed that she'll be doing a stream with Callie. Now, when Kiara announced that she's going to be doing a stream with some Vishojo members, she did say there's going to be

two of them. So we don't know who exactly is going to be working with her besides Ve. People have been speculating it might be Nyanas. Nyanas would make sense, because I'm pretty sure she is the biggest member of V-Shojo.

But it could be Fruit. It could be Silver. It probably isn't Silver. It probably isn't Sydney. My guess is they're going to go with the biggest members. So Nyanas and Vebe with Kiara and then um

who'd I say? Callie and Iron Mouse. And I don't know what's gonna happen. I genuinely don't. Because Kiara Kiara just sort of does whatever. Callie still is trying to maintain like a weird sort of half character sometimes when she feels like it.

Like she'll come up with her character and then drop it after 20 minutes. I don't know if she can keep up a character with Iron Mouse though. Like I don't know if it's going to happen. And I don't know what they can do. If it's going to be like a music stream. If it's going to be a chat stream. A gaming stream. Or anything like that.

I have no idea. could actually now that i think about it uh it could actually be um so kiara does a series called holo talk and holo talk is basically like she does like... She does a podcast with... Various VTubers. It's always been members of... Of Hololive. I could see her doing a member... A video...

The words. A... A episode of Holotalk. Because it says she mainly brings Japanese hololive talents on maybe that mainly could mean she would be able to bring

like a Vishoujo member on like, I don't know is that what's going to happen? I genuinely don't know, I have no idea I don't know if it's going to happen on YouTube, if it's going to happen on Twitch it could happen anywhere really Genuinely don't know. I have no idea. I don't know if it's going to happen on YouTube. If it's going to happen on Twitch. It could happen anywhere really.

I'm very excited for it to happen. And I. I don't know what's going to happen. There's going to be clips. And the clips will be glorious. Especially on the Callie Ironmouth side. Because Callie. I don't know if she's going to be a... I'm sure they've

talked to each other and they've watched each other's content. I don't know if Callie can handle Iron Mouse. She seems like a lot of a person to handle. But I'm excited. I'm excited and I think

ultimately, as long as it's gonna be fun, that's really all that matters. Also, there's a collaboration happening between Ai-chan and Nyanas. It was actually gonna be a concert. Okay, so

they actually did a... Oh, the concert did happen? Oh, the concert did happen. It happened four weeks ago. Okay, well, I completely missed it then. They did a live concert. Holy shit, that already happened. I missed it. That's how big this has got. Like, concerts happening.

This is crazy. And they did play Amogus because everyone played Amogus a month ago. Now no one's ever heard of it. Except the Zoomers. Except the Zoomers who only know Amogus exists. I'm actually

sad I missed this. I'll go back and watch some of the clips of it then. But yeah. Concert like concerts like actual real world concerts that are like what's what's like that that's how insane the Ian side's got now like the Ian side early on was way way smaller than the JP side but like Ian's bigger now. Ian is just bigger than the JP side. And it shows when stuff like this happens.

I think because we are getting close to the end, I sort of want to talk about some of my favourite VTubers right now. So I watch mainly clips because I don't really have time to sit down and watch entire livestreams. That's just not what I do. I have other things have time to, you know, sit down and watch entire live streams,

that's just not what I do, I have other things I want to do, like, you know, this podcast, or my own live streams, or anything else, finding time to sit down and just watch, watch upwards of a four-hour live stream, in some cases, just isn't my thing, especially in cases where, like, there's, there's always someone live streaming, like, let's check my subs right now, is anybody live right now, who is live, uh, I'm not seeing anybody live right now, okay, okay, maybe I'm wrong, maybe some, maybe no one is live, at least no one I'm subbed to is live, uh, no, no one I'm subbed to is live, but someone in Hololive will be live right now. And because there's always someone

live, there's literally not enough time in the day to watch everyone. So, right now, on the EN side, for people in a group, I'm watching a lot of Nyanas and Mousy stuff, mainly Mousy. Because I do like Connor as well,

and having Connor and Mousy together, you know. Kill two birds with one stone. I like both their content. Bring them together. I like both their content extra more. Extra more? We'll go with extra more. Sure, why not? Um, and Mousy has gotten, like, new models

recently. She gets a lot of new character models. And, yeah, like, new models recently. She gets a lot of new character models. And, yeah, her new model's adorable. So, I'm watching a lot of Mousy stuff. I love Mousy. I love Nyanas. But when it comes to the indie stuff, I've been watching a lot of clips of Juniper and Snuffy.

Now, these girls are like... get along really well with the Vishojo girls. I wouldn't be surprised if at some point they actually join Vishojo. I'm surprised they haven't already. Snuffy is a raccoon girl.

And she actually has a... Wait, when did she make this YouTube channel? This is very... Nope, don't start playing audio. That was very loud. Alright, sure. When did she start this? She's had a...

Oh, okay. So, yes. Snuffy actually had a model prior to the Raccoon Mill. She's actually had the channel for a year. She knew what she was doing from the start, I guess. I just did not realise she even had a channel. She doesn't upload to...

Yeah, she doesn't upload to it that often. Probably because she doesn't have an editor. Or at least doesn't want to pay an editor that much. But Snuffy... Snuffy is the one who sort of introduced the idea of iPhone face reading. So the iPhone is a very evil device

that captures all your data, but what it does do is it's got really good facial tracking. It can track lots of points of your face. It can produce a really in-depth model of your face or really in-depth mapping of your face, a good way to put it. And when you take that mapping and then make a model based around having that mapping,

you can make a really, really, really interesting... Let's see. You can make a really interesting way of showing off personality, is a good way to put it. Showing off... Showing off how you like to act.

So I'm going to show you a brief bit of a clip. I don't think audio matters, but she's showing off her mouth tracking here. Also she has hand tracking as well. Which is also a bit janky. But the mouth tracking. It actually tracks exactly where her mouth is located. And because the model is actually made. Around having this tracking.

She can show a lot more. A lot more emotion in her face than would have actually been possible with you know the the other ways that people approach this because usually when you just use face rig and you just do stuff with um with your GPU and a webcam there's only so much that that tech can really do at this point that hasn't really hit the level that the iPhone can do. really do at this point that hasn't really hit the level that the iPhone can do. I think it's only the iPhone 11, and if you're watching this later, the iPhone 11 and newer. It'll eventually come to the Android side and come to PCs as well, but iPhones are the way of the future when it comes to face tracking. Assuming you have a model actually made with it in mind.

If you don't, then you don't get any advantages from it. Now, as for the Hololive side, on the EN side, I am a really big fan of Kali and Ina. I don't watch a ton of Gura because she's sort of a lot to handle. Yeah. I occasionally watch a Gura stream she's sort of a lot to handle. Yeah. I occasionally watch a Gouda stream, but she's a lot to handle, so I can't watch too much of her. It

drains your energy when you watch a lot of her, is a good way to put it. And then for the JP side, it's so difficult. Actually, no, ID. We'll go ID first because that's easier. I'm a big fan of Disu because she's an adorable squirrel girl. And she's sort of got like this running gag where she has like these DLC voices.

So she normally has like a really cutesy voice. But I guess it's her actual voice is a much deeper voice and occasionally she'll switch between them and do fun stuff like that and i'm guessing she must have some sort of voice acting training because she's actually quite good at voice acting besides that she's done some voicing of games that um like during her live streams that don't have voice acting and it's it's really. So I'm guessing she might have some sort of training. But I don't know anything about her past. And then on the second generation.

I'm a big fan of Oli. I haven't watched a ton of Dane or Anya. But from what I've seen. They're adorable. It's just Oli. Oli is adorable. And Oli is also going to be. This is also going to be a first for Hololive. Oli is going to And Oli is also going to be a... Potentially, this is also going to be a first for Hololive.

Oli is going to potentially be collabing with Connor at some point. Connor's sort of become like this dude who just... Collaborates with all of the VTubers. I don't know how it happened. I don't know how it wasn't like Charlie or anyone like that. But Connor is just the guy who is apparently the go-to for people that, or for, like, people who just do IRL stuff that collabs with VTubers. Now, when we get to the

JP side, I have no fucking clue. I have no clue who I could even possibly pick on the Hololive JP side, because there's just so many of them, and they're all so good. I really don't know.

It's... This felt like a really long two hours. Usually I do a podcast where I actually think about stuff. Usually it's just random shit. Anyway. VTuber Wiki. That's what I was trying to get back to. I forgot the website I wanted. VTuber Wiki. That's what I was trying to get back to. I was trying to forget. I forgot the website I wanted.

VTuber Wiki. HoroDaibu. This is just a knife. It's all good. Don't worry about it. This is just a knife from work. Here we go. Hololive.

There's just so, so, so many. Like, I love Soda's stuff. I love Doboko. I love Mika. I love Suisei. Ozki I wasn't a big fan of until she got her new model. And then everyone else here. Like, I've seen clips of them that I enjoy. Like, I can't pick anyone

on the JP side that I don't like. I think if I was to pick a least favorite, it would probably be Flare. But I still like Flare. I just don't watch that much of her stuff. I honestly don't know who I would say is my favorite right now.

Yeah, I... It's very hard to pick. It would be a tough battle between Coco, Fubuki, Korone, Subaru, Fubuki, Matsuri, C.C.

There's too many for me to create a short list. All I'll say is they're all great. As I said earlier, they're all really great. Now, as for Nijisanji, I don't watch that much Nijisanji. The only person in Nijisanji I'm actually a big fan of is Hanamakiya, who sort of was the start of this

entire thing we were talking about. So, Hanamakiya, she's great, and I highly recommend her content, but if you want the best makia con the best best hanamakiya content

go look at any of the stuff that she did when she was streaming with her dad uh because this is so fucking great I don't know if she's done anything with him in a while.

At least anything that's gotten clipped. But yeah, she just streams with her dad occasionally, which is fucking hilarious. So, there was one time where she was just there chatting and her dad

was just playing Doom. Like, she wasn't even doing anything. She was just there chatting and her dad was just playing Doom. Like, she wasn't even doing anything. She was just there being adorable. Or she was playing this game, the game that I forgot the name of because no one cares anymore. Fall Guys, that one. Fall Guys with her dad.

I don't know. I think what makes Hana's stuff really good is she's adorable by herself but like especially adorable when her dad pops along as well I don't know fun stuff

and they only started streaming together like fairly recently like a year ago, she was like, yes, when I hit 25k subs, I will bring my dad on the livestream. And everyone loved it. So it just kept happening over and over and over and over again. Yeah. I don't know. Vtubers are just fun and if you don't watch them i highly recommend them

and you know maybe maybe it's not for you maybe maybe youtube is not for you maybe you don't you don't exactly like the um the the anime style but i think if you have any sort of... Even if you don't have a care of anime, I think there's still going to be a personality there that still appeals to what you... to what you sort of look for in a streamer. Because, yeah, not everyone is going to be that cutesy anime girl. Some people are going to be like, you know, Melody, and is a cam girl. Or some people are going to be like you know melody and it's a cam

girl or some people are going to be like callie and like gangster rap or some people are gonna like fubuki and uh when people keep asking her in super chats to marry her she's gonna be like no we're just friends only friends and just friend zones everyone and has friend zoned thousands of dollars. There will always be someone in the VTuber world that appeals to you. And with all of the VTubers that have been showing up recently, because of the boom that's happened

with the boom of EN, there's been a lot of new indie VTubers. There's going to be someone there that catches your attention. And I feel like, as time goes on, there's going to be a lot of people who just do the vtubing thing as a way that they can sort of be themselves i don't think vtubing is always going to be that thing that thing that grabs attention i think at the point now the vtuber market is so flooded that being a vtuber isn't enough to get attention you can be a vtuber now and have

like 500 subs that's not that strange um but i think there's still going to be a lot of people doing vtuber stuff going into the future because it does let you be yourself if you are the sort of person who wants to you know say things that wouldn't normally make sense to say on camera that might be a bit embarrassing or might be a bit weird to have your face directly attached to i think in cases like that a lot of people are going to keep doing the v2 stuff and it's only growing we haven't seen en second generation hololive yet and when that happens it's going to be crazy. Hololive's also got Hololive

Alternative in the works, which I don't know what Hololive Alternative is. So far, they've just released a promotional video. Highly, highly recommend watching it. Yeah. The future of VTubers is exciting.

And I I for one am really interested to see where it goes and I for one will be watching it as it goes I partially am learning Japanese because I want to watch JP VTubers I'm also partially learning Japanese because I just want to learn Japanese

but I would be lying if I said that the future of VTubers didn't have some sort of connection to it. But because there is such an English audience that does exist now, a lot of people on the JP side have been going out of their way to actually learn English and try to communicate with their English audience because they know that there is millions of people out there who could potentially be enjoying vtubers who

weren't watching your content because they just didn't understand what you were saying but if you can bring those people in with the ability to speak english i think that more and more people can understand the appeal that vtubers actually do have and i think that is a good place to end this off. We've been doing this for two hours. I don't know how this went. I'm going to have to go back and look at it after the fact, but I think this was an interesting episode,

at least from my perspective. This sort of gave me a way to sort of reflect back on what I've seen in the past, sort of do a brief history overview and understand how we sort of got to where we are. Because I I've sort of been watching this

as it's been going, but it seemed like it's happened so quickly that I didn't really have any way to piece the events together. But I think this, I don't't know maybe you guys didn't enjoy it maybe doing like more random stuff makes more sense but i like the idea of experimenting with the way the podcast works and i would like to do more stuff like this in the future maybe not on on. Maybe on like you know. The history of something. Or like going over like the story of Kingdom Hearts. And how like fucking nonsensical that is.

Or going just maybe even talking about Linux. Just doing two hours just on my Linux experience. Or on gaming or anything like that. I think doing themed episodes like that. Actually will be a lot of fun. They won't be every episode. Because they, in some cases, take more to plan. But I think they'll still be fun as a way to break up the content that I'm doing. So I think that's going to be pretty much everything.

I don't think I'm going to do a shout out today because I think we can sort of establish or we can sort of treat everything I've done thus far as a shoutout for everyone that I've mentioned. All of the VTubers I've brought up in this episode, I think are absolutely worth your time. I don't think I've mentioned anyone who is a bad VTuber. I don't know of any VTubers who I care to think about who are bad VTubers. So, I think that's going to be pretty much everything for me. Before I go. I would like to thank my supporters.

So a special thank you to. I didn't bring my list up. Yoakim. Donald. Logan. I'm tired. Andrew. Nathan.

David. Carl. Will. Brandon. Chica. Bento. Jamie. Joseph.

Josh. Mitchell. Peter. The 70s. Thoreau. Tony. Tushar. And all of my $2 supporters. If you'd like to support my work,

there'll be links down below to all of my things. I've also got this podcast available. It's an audio version available literally anywhere. The video version is available on YouTube and Odyssey. I have a main channel, Brodie Robertson Plays, where I don't talk about VTubers, but I talk about Linux. And I have a gaming channel

where I'm effectively just an AniTuber. I just talk about anime all the time there. But I play video games, a lot of weeb trash. We're going to be playing new games soon, like maybe this. Maybe some NepNep. Maybe some Kingdom Hearts. I don't know.

I'll work it out when we get there. So, that's Brody with some plays. In case he didn't say it, I don't remember. Yeah. That's everything for me. And I think we're going to end it. Anything else to say? I've got, actually, surprisingly, actually, one thing before the end.

I actually went over all my topics. I didn't think that would happen. I don't know how it happened but it did that's going to be everything for me and I'm out