This Week in Anime

The Corp-orification of Kizuna Ai

Steve
Well, Nick, it's the year 2050, so it's time for us to upload our consciousnesses into our government-mandated VTuber avatars. Have you decided which two-toned hair color scheme you're going with?

Amen. Just give me a couple more minutes to linger on my singular poster and table accouterment, as you know I am wont to do. Praise be to Ai.

Kizuna no Allele is a strange duck for all those reasons and more. Its circumstances are the most interesting thing about it, and we could fill a whole column with all the head-scratching choices and creative decisions that molded it. In fact, we are going to fill a column with that.

Also, by a purely objective measure, more songs! That's one of the funniest things because these tie-ins typically showcase at least enough tracks to fill an extended play. That makes sense even on a purely business level. After all, you're trying to advertise the legitimacy of whatever idol group the anime is hawking. Here, it's a plot point that everyone should compete with the same song.

If you're going to define what a VTuber is, on the most abstract level, it's someone who uses a virtual avatar for their online videos. In practice, naturally, it's an ecosystem with a lot of variety, diversity, and variability in audience reach and content. It's a growing entertainment industry with many novel facets that could easily lend themselves to a unique story. And Kizuna no Allele goes out of its way to avoid nearly all of that.

That one example you just described is more authentic than anything in the show. I only follow a couple of streamers semi-regularly, and that's all most of them are: streamers. They're online personalities with a particular niche and/or the gift of gab. The funny anime person plays a video game, chat makes the lowest common denominator comments, and everyone has a hearty chuckle. That's kinda the ideal.

Not that I'm aware of, no. Although I'll bet you dollars to donuts that some web3 cryptopunk tech bro is salivating at the idea of reserving a plot of Decentraland for his prospective VTuber academy. He will raise $100 million of venture capital money and be bailed out by the government exactly four months later.

That's probably the most awkward thing about Allele: the mythologizing and near-deification of Kizuna Ai. She's not the protagonist because, in real life virtual life, she's been on indefinite hiatus since last February. And that's incorporated as a plot element in the show, where Ai's been missing for several years. But what we get instead is a heroine who spends every spare moment gushing over her oshi.

Which, I don't know; if I were Kizuna Ai, I'd be super embarrassed by this.

So the story behind that is even a little stranger than straight-up replacement. The company line is that Ai's voice actress has always been the same, which may be true. But they did try to create a bunch of different spin-off Ais who looked more or less the same but clearly had different VAs. They've since gotten more distinct character designs and now operate independently from Ai Prime, but they're still tied back to the Kizuna Ai brand. This is a weird move that you can tell is weird because no other VTuber agency has tried it.

It also reinforces the core idea that Kizuna Ai is, above all, an IP, not a person. That's a pretty important distinction.

Nick, I just want to say I'm thrilled you're committed to making jokes for the septuagenarians in our audience. I know they appreciate it when they read our column in between their episodes of Matlock.

Allele certainly does have that grimy matte finish of a product that's been handled by boardrooms full of ill-fitting suits. At least, I can't think of anyone else who would consider this riveting dialogue.

And, again, almost none of the information it provides is relevant to actual VTubing. Like, it's important to understand copyright, but that's more to do with making sure whatever agency you sign to doesn't screw you over. There are much more basic elements of streaming and public performance that an anime could, theoretically, use to craft a zero-to-hero narrative. But the show has glossed over most of them in favor of empty platitudes and stuffy corporate speak.

There's an easy way to solve that, too: lean into the jank! Why isn't this show a comedy? When Kizuna Ai started, most of her videos were short gags or riffing on audience questions. There were even bits that made fun of the janky mocap. This kind of stuff gave Ai a footing in this virtual space. She wasn't an esteemed idol renowned for her music. She was the funny YouTube anime girl. There's nothing wrong with that.

It is like watching Sideshow Bob navigate a lawn full of rakes, the way Allele keeps banging up against controversial topics. I'm sympathetic to the (non-managerial) people behind Kizuna Ai because the first VTuber to strike big would inevitably invite controversy. But lauding the "security" of NFTs in 2023 is an unforced error of the highest caliber.

I mean, you can't even be mad at it with how badly the speculative bubble around NFTs has burst. I assume the scene is now entirely grifters buying and reselling to other grifters. It's just yet another baffling expenditure of runtime that could have been better used for almost anything else.

It's rakes all the way down, I'm telling ya.

Similarly funny/unfortunate, the ED is sung by #kzn, who is billed as the AI version of Ai. From what I can tell, it's just a proprietary musical voice bank based on Ai's seiyuu, a la Miku. However, it's probably sophisticated enough to be included in the conversation with those videos of Biden playing Team Fortress 2.

The thing is, if you want to make an authentic anime about VTubing as a practice—as an art—you have to dig into the uglier parts. Show business is a world made up of contradictions. But if you're an anime produced by a committee with a vested interest in keeping the backrooms on lock, you can't do anything but put the most delicate of scratches on the surface. It's all veneer and no substance.

What I'm saying is we need a VTuber version of Oshi no Ko.

The secret third, best, and truest option would be to set up a room in VRChat, toss in all your actors, and hit record. Then you'd get Virtual-san Looking, a nigh-unwatchable mess for anybody unfamiliar with its stars. But that's also why it captures the scene's core, in-joke-laden, shitposty appeal better than anything in Allele.

Ultimately, Kizuna no Allele could only ever be out of touch. Kizuna Ai blazed a trail in 2017, but the scene has moved on since then. Livestreaming is king now, and agencies like Hololive and Nijisanji thrive off their vast arrays of loud and colorful personalities with even louder and more colorful avatars. They don't rely on just one golden goose. That is the wind blowing Kizuna no Allele sails since it's introducing a new crop of VTubers, like Miracle, under Ai's agency. However, it still has the same problem. It's still all about Ai. And Ai isn't a fun internet personality anymore. She's a brand that managers are desperately trying to resuscitate.

This comically oversized text prompt is the only thing I'll be smashing.