Interest

Virtual YouTuber Agency hololive Announces 'Graduation' of China Talent

The hololive Virtual YouTuber (VTuber) agency's head company Cover Corp announced that its China-based talent would "graduate" from the company over the next seven weeks. The hololive CN VTubers Civia, Artia, Yogiri, Doris, and Rosalyn will begin exiting the company on November 18.

Cover Corp did not elaborate on cause of the graduation. Previously, VTubers Civia and Artia announced on a Twitch livestream that the hololive CN group would be parting ways with Cover Corp to become independent VTubers, but that statement was retracted by Artia on October 28.

In September, the Japanese hololive VTubers Akai Haato and Kiryu Coco were suspended from streaming activities for three weeks due to "inappropriate remarks" and "unauthorized disclosure of YouTube channel analytics" they made in a livestream.

Kiryu Coco and Akai Haato's livestreams originally included a segment where they revealed their channel's viewership demographics. Akai Haato's livestream was set to private at the time of this article's writing, while the video archive of Kiryu Coco's livestream has been cut at the 2:47 mark. Comments on the video infer that during the six minutes of deleted footage, Coco commented on her channel's viewership demographics by region. YouTube Analytics lists Taiwan and China as separate regions.

Proponents of the One-China principle seek reunification between Taiwan and China under the same sovereign state. This stance is opposed by supporters of the Taiwan independence movement, who seek to establish a Taiwanese identity separate from China.

The first generation of hololive CN debuted on the Chinese video streaming service bilibili in October 2019, and the second generation debuted in April this year. Altogether, six VTubers debuted before hololive CN was disbanded.

Cover Corp was founded in 2016, and the first generation of hololive performers debuted in 2018. Over 50 Virtual YouTubers currently belong to hololive; according to the agency's English website, it has around 4.4 million fans on YouTube and 4 million on bilibili. The talents perform using intricate 2D and 3D avatars provided by the company. hololive English debuted in September.

Update: Text has been edited for clarity.

Source: Cover Corp