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INTEREST: Virtual YouTuber Views Grew to Over 1.5 Billion Views Per Month by October 2020


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Greed1914



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 4410
PostPosted: Thu Dec 17, 2020 4:12 pm Reply with quote
I'd believe it. I've been watching a lot of Hololive-EN streams, and even with just those five members, it seems like they are on almost constantly with tens of thousands of viewers at a time.
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12skippy21



Joined: 25 Nov 2008
Posts: 785
Location: York, England
PostPosted: Thu Dec 17, 2020 4:24 pm Reply with quote
I am certainly someone who simply did not get it (even a few months ago) but as the community says, all it takes is one who just ticks all the right boxes for you to fall down the hole. For me that was Mori Calliope, now I watch all the EN girls and started checking out those in VShoujo as well.

The timing though has been perfect since I am lucky to be able to work from home so can have the streams on in the background. I doubt I will be able to keep up when I am back in the office.
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Hoppy800



Joined: 09 Aug 2013
Posts: 3331
PostPosted: Thu Dec 17, 2020 4:27 pm Reply with quote
Greed1914 wrote:
I'd believe it. I've been watching a lot of Hololive-EN streams, and even with just those five members, it seems like they are on almost constantly with tens of thousands of viewers at a time.


I found that odd at first since I'm used to the 6k-8k view streams Hololive JP and more popular Nijisanji vtubers have, also Haachama has been getting good live numbers in her streams since she's been mostly streaming in English.
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Megiddo



Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Posts: 8360
Location: IL
PostPosted: Thu Dec 17, 2020 6:54 pm Reply with quote
I'm curious if this only counts views from the official channels of the Vtubers or if it also counts the views on the crazy number of videos from channels who clip and add subtitles to the Vtuber content.

It's pretty crazy to see how far Hololive has gotten in just a short few years. I was watching an old stream of the Vtuber Suisei and she was super excited because she had 100 viewers watching.
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lostrune



Joined: 09 Jun 2012
Posts: 313
PostPosted: Thu Dec 17, 2020 8:20 pm Reply with quote
All the best streamers are entertainers, and who better to do stuff that than cute anime girls. I'm not surprised they took off to dominate the interwebs. Pekora is my favorite, I love her smug, spoiled, and sometimes cruel personality.
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Yuvelir



Joined: 06 Jan 2015
Posts: 1529
PostPosted: Thu Dec 17, 2020 8:31 pm Reply with quote
OK but why is Kizuna Ai blue in those pics?
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Animegomaniac



Joined: 16 Feb 2012
Posts: 4070
PostPosted: Thu Dec 17, 2020 9:17 pm Reply with quote
Calling Vtubers fictional is a mistake waiting to be exploited. It's just avatar based hosting used for anonymity which considering stalking incidents, is probably a lot safer these days.

It only took me three videos to decide that I was a fan of Nyanners who's been making Youtube videos for 9 years but went VTuber a few months ago. But in her case, it's less that she went full performer, more like she went full id.
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Morry



Joined: 26 Jun 2016
Posts: 756
PostPosted: Thu Dec 17, 2020 10:53 pm Reply with quote
Animegomaniac wrote:
Calling Vtubers fictional


Their characters are fictional. No one watches Gura because they think she's an actual shark girl from Atlantis. It's a soft roleplay to spice up the experience.
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Q4000



Joined: 28 Dec 2006
Posts: 44
PostPosted: Fri Dec 18, 2020 3:11 am Reply with quote
Morry wrote:
Animegomaniac wrote:
Calling Vtubers fictional


Their characters are fictional. No one watches Gura because they think she's an actual shark girl from Atlantis. It's a soft roleplay to spice up the experience.


Unless there's actually a Vtuber who isn't an actual person underneath...

Anyway, what constitutes a Vtuber? I don't follow any, but I do follow a few Japanese tech tubers who use avatars and synthetic voices. Do they count?
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Animegomaniac



Joined: 16 Feb 2012
Posts: 4070
PostPosted: Fri Dec 18, 2020 10:53 am Reply with quote
Morry wrote:
Animegomaniac wrote:
Calling Vtubers fictional


Their characters are fictional. No one watches Gura because they think she's an actual shark girl from Atlantis. It's a soft roleplay to spice up the experience.


And there's already been legal struggles claiming a couple as IP because suddenly money, lots of money, is involved.
In a performance, the actor is real, the character is not; The basic question of how much is genuine and how is faked is a constant question in streaming; Starting at the base point of "It's all fictional" is curious in a business where characters get copyrights, people do not.

One video gamer streamer went Vtuber a few months ago, the only thing that changed was that she added a motion capture image of a cat girl when previously there was no image at all. So what part of that is fictional?
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KabaKabaFruit



Joined: 20 Sep 2007
Posts: 1869
Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba
PostPosted: Fri Dec 18, 2020 8:29 pm Reply with quote
Not surprising considering that I find the attitudes of anime characters in VTuber format more easily relatable as they tend to be less restrictive to arbitrary scripts and productions than anime characters designed for television and movies.

It may be pure uncanny valley but it's that kind of uncanny valley coupled with anime attraction in a real world setting that is striking a chord with viewers. I personally can say that I prefer VTuber environments over actual anime production studios because of this.

I follow Siro, Kaguya Luna, Mirai Akari, Omega Sisters, Peanuts kun, Kashiko Mari (Chanmari), and Himehina daily and it's always fun to watch their antics. Smile
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XerneasYveltal



Joined: 09 Jun 2015
Posts: 667
Location: Philippines
PostPosted: Mon Dec 21, 2020 8:53 am Reply with quote
The increasing amount of virtual YouTuber views is totes credible in my opinion.

I first heard of Kizuna AI back in 2016, but I didn't jump into the VTuber bandwagon until four years later when I watched Ninomae Ina'nis' debut livestream.

Since then, I also checked out livestreams by another hololive VTuber, and her name is Hoshimachi Suisei.

If it wasn't for her Tetris skills, I would have probably not played that game again after a very long while.
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
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Joined: 14 Aug 2006
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 21, 2020 4:59 pm Reply with quote
Animegomaniac wrote:
So what part of that is fictional?


Is the performer ON SCREEN (not simply doing the voice) an actual real live person? No? Then it's a fictional character. If the performer on screen is a real live person are they portraying their actual self or not? If not then that is a fictional character that performer is portraying. They are not real. Hatsune Miku, for a classic example, is no more real than if Jaime Foxx did a vtube channel in character as Django. Both are fictional characters.
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Shay Guy



Joined: 03 Jul 2009
Posts: 2092
PostPosted: Mon Dec 21, 2020 9:48 pm Reply with quote
Psycho 101 wrote:
Is the performer ON SCREEN (not simply doing the voice) an actual real live person? No? Then it's a fictional character. If the performer on screen is a real live person are they portraying their actual self or not? If not then that is a fictional character that performer is portraying. They are not real. Hatsune Miku, for a classic example, is no more real than if Jaime Foxx did a vtube channel in character as Django. Both are fictional characters.


I think you're overvaluing the image on screen in the context of VTubers.

Because honestly, the "persona" -- avatar, pseudonym, mythos, a few mannerisms -- is a pretty thin facade, and the meat of what people watch for is, well, the real person behind it. If "Usada Pekora" is understood to be a fictional character with a real person playing her, as fully separated as Jim Henson and Kermit, then it wouldn't make sense that so many of her viewers got so invested in her telling her mother about her job. Every so often Amano Pikamee mentions the thing about being a thunder-elemental gamer monster, but nobody cares about that in comparison to things like her tea-kettle laugh. When Gawr Gura talks about working at an animal shelter, that's not a shark-girl from Atlantis talking, that's the person behind the mic.

Hamlet can be played by Kenneth Branagh or David Tennant and he's still Hamlet. Lupin is Lupin whether Yasuo Yamada or Kanichi Kurita voices him. But there's only one Kiryu Coco. It's not her real name, and she's not actually a dragon any more than I'm an R-pentomino (my usual avatar online) or a Mario baddie, but for all intents and purposes beyond a few jokes, she's the person we mean when we talk about Kiryu Coco. Same goes for Calliope Mori or Hana Macchia. Effectively, it's a gimmick to provide a streamer with anonymity and memorability at the same time, and maybe make streams a little more fun to look at.

(Somebody who knows more about what went down with Nozomi Kasuga and upd8 last year can confirm, but my understanding was that the same principle held true there too, though upd8 didn't expect it to.)
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Megiddo



Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Posts: 8360
Location: IL
PostPosted: Mon Dec 21, 2020 11:23 pm Reply with quote
Psycho 101 wrote:
Animegomaniac wrote:
So what part of that is fictional?


Is the performer ON SCREEN (not simply doing the voice) an actual real live person? No? Then it's a fictional character. If the performer on screen is a real live person are they portraying their actual self or not? If not then that is a fictional character that performer is portraying. They are not real. Hatsune Miku, for a classic example, is no more real than if Jaime Foxx did a vtube channel in character as Django. Both are fictional characters.

Are you a fictional character who goes by Psycho 101 and is represented by a Rorschach avatar, I wonder?
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