Why Should Anyone Pay Attention to Vtubers?
An end-of-year retrospective on why the weird cartoon streamers are important
Hi all, welcome to the last newsletter of the year! We’re taking next week off as I start a new day job, but I plan to be back the following week, hopefully with some news about some new content the likes of which this newsletter’s never seen before! -- but no promises.
Best wishes for everyone and swift deliverance from Hellworld in the coming year!
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Why do Virtual YouTubers matter?
I’ve been asking myself that question for a little bit now. I ended up starting a newsletter that, while not about vtubers exclusively, ends up touching upon them more often than not. Of course there’s the general novelty value, but that alone wouldn’t have been enough to get me to start looking at this stuff closely nor would the fandom be skyrocketing to the heights it’s reached in just two years.
There’s something deeper at play. Some actual fundamental shifts, or at least the potential for such a shift, to the fandom mode of production. I tried to get at what those things might actually be.
User-generated anime content
It’s hard to imagine today, but there used to be a time when it was hard to get your hands on anything remotely related to anime. The so-called “anime aesthetic” was a rare commodity relegated to the Japanimation section at Sam Goody or the odd issue of Animerica or Newtype USA you could find in the magazine rack.
These days the anime aesthetic is everywhere. Artists from all over the world wield elements of it in their work, videogames increasingly appropriate it, and it’s easier to get access to a wellspring of on-demand anime almost anywhere on Earth. Even franchises that aren’t necessarily anime inspired like League of Legends, Apex Legends, Avatar the Last Airbender, and any number of Korean, Chinese, and Western comic series’ integrate elements of anime/manga style, especially when it comes to the level of time and attention spent on character designs and subsequent character goods.
In that sense vtubers are just an expression of an ongoing trend, but where the form distinguishes itself is in the nature of the content creation itself. A lot of the ideas for and execution of vtuber content is up to the livers themselves. Even agencies with dozens of livers in their stables seem to leave much of the content planning, including scheduling collaborations, time and frequency, and activities, to the individual performer. The result is a dizzying variety of content types and styles sometimes even among peers in one agency. A liver might spend most of their streaming hours during the week grinding through Minecraft and whatever trendy game of the month only to switch over to an impromptu karaoke marathon at the end of the week. Others like the infamous Kagura Mea might focus on audience interaction with unstructured Q&A sessions about the pros and cons of Pornhub content or chaotic 3D collaborations involving sessions of Twister that immediately turn catastrophic. Still others like Mayuzumi Kai might have elaborate intertextual backstories that weave in real world past events, relationships with other livers, and completely fictional lore that may or may not be teased out in streams or obscure tertiary materials. That so much of it is coming from the minds of individual creatives and producers and not C-level steering committees at a media conglomerate makes this a vital and exciting scene for anyone interested not just in unfettered creativity, but new modes of expressing creativity altogether.
A genuinely new form
OK neither streaming nor idols are anything new, but hear me out. One of my hobby horses is the idea that anime shows and movies are becoming increasingly peripheral to the act of “experiencing” anime. I haven’t really nailed down a solid definition for what experiencing anime means, but it’s less about any specific media or format and more about discrete aspects like character designs, character goods, moé, anisong, etc. etc.
While far from every vtuber design is inspired by anime, the ones that are tend to be among the most popular, especially vtubers from agency-owned groups like Hololive, Nijisanji, Activ8, and now VShojo. And the kind of content they’re putting out -- see above for a handful of examples -- is like nothing you could ever expect from your garden variety TV anime or weekly anthology manga. Where else are you going to get the sheer variety, the cocktail of ironic surrealist humor, the level of interactivity, or anarchic energy?
Moreover, vtubers are a new iteration unto the profession (is it still ridiculous to use that term here?) of streaming. The absence of a real name or a real face leads to an almost mysterious kind of interplay between the elements of the character presented to us on the screen and in the anonymous performer’s voice and aspects of the performer’s own personal life and experiences. Over time many vtuber personas seem to grow into a fusion of the character and the performer. That fusion, and the audience’s willingness to accept and even become part of it in some ways, is a thing that’s hard to find happening in any other medium right now.
Swimming against the anti-privacy current
Ever since the 2000s the trajectory of internet culture has moved inexorably towards more and more disclosure. There’s almost a tacit expectation that YouTubers and Twitch streamers will have a facecam set up or do a “face reveal” at some point regardless of whether seeing the host’s mug adds anything meaningful to the content they’re creating. If you want any kind of mainstream clout on social media you’re expected to use your full name as your handle and selfie as your avatar lest you be some kind of weirdo. For older Millennials who came of age during the nascence of internet culture, when , this has all been a seismic and mostly unwelcome shift.
Simply put vtubers are one of the most significant moves against that tide that’s popped up in recent memory. I’m convinced part of the novelty value that’s propelled the form’s growth this year is just how out of step it is with the era’s various interlocking social credit systems. Whether or not it signals the start of a pendulum shifting back the other direction it’s a small reminder that everything doesn’t inevitably move in one direction. People acting individually can still affect the world outside their own heads in tiny ways. Working in concert with each other they can offer true alternatives, followed and supported by millions, to regimes corporations have spent billions to make you believe are inescapable.
Track of the Week
Yussef Dayes X Alfa Mist - Love Is The Message ft. Mansur Brown & Rocco Palladino
Incredible bass tone and chorus pedaled guitar. Yussuf Dayes’ syncopated drums chatter across the entirety of the track cushioned by floating chimes emanating from Alfa Mist’s Rhodes piano. It is, as they say, a vibe.