I started doing research on the whole Selen/Dokibird situation when it was happening and made a post on here, but I didn’t really watch VTubers so I left it at that. After watching way too many video essays and going over too much content for my own good honestly, I’ve found my own understanding of why VTubers are so popular and why in my opinion, AI VTubers would absolutely fucking flop.

Independent VTubers and Corporate VTubers are very different because independent VTubers for the most part are just streamers, while corporate VTubers (or at least for the two biggest corporations, Hololive and Nijisanji) are also idols in addition to being VTubers, sing, take dance classes, learn Japanese, the whole nine yards. Hololive recently had a 3D concert (3D because their talents (or “livers” as the ‘official’ term wore rigs and then performed live as their VTubing personas) that was pretty much universally loved, and in general the whole phenomenon makes me think about how media is going to progress going forward.

One more thing about corporate VTubers is that every single one of them is under an NDA that forbids them from mentioning who they are to the general public. That’s why Dokibird had to be more subtle about telling people that this is where she was now, and the same reason why Kson can’t outright say that she was Coco Kiryu either, Henya the Genius can’t outright say she was Pikamee and the list goes on. I get why this is a thing, so talents can’t debut, half-ass their time as a corporate VTuber and then graduate (Japanese euphemism for leaving an idol group on good terms) from the corporation, say who they are and then get the exact same following, but in the case of what happened to Dokibird, it’s kind of important to at least be aware of VTubers’ “Past Lives/PLs” (the official term for their other accounts).

Lastly, I’ll just comment on some funny/interesting things I saw in my research, like Kson doing an IRL stream (she’s one of the few VTubers that also streams IRL on her VTuber account) with a Japanese pornstar, and also a gravure model feeding each other, feeling each other up and all that other shit, which nowadays is tame considering that was like 10 Twitch ‘metas’ ago. She also won a contest to be in the newest Yakuza (which is where the Kiryu in Coco Kiryu came from, and why Coco had the same birthday as Kazuma Kiryu), and shows up as a bartender, while voicing herself in both English and Japanese.

In general, most of the female Japanese VTubers who either have IRL channels or shown who they are IRL are all like 9-10/10s, while in the West it’s a mixed bag. There’s more I could say, but this is just my observations having gone really deep into VTubing as a whole while not meaning to.

Edit: Forgot to mention the whole “why AI VTubers would be a failure” thing. For the most part, it comes down to the fact that only corporations would want to use AI for VTubing, and in addition, live reactions to chat, concerts and all of the “outside of just streaming” stuff would be why it wouldn’t be able to work, plus someone has to go and run the stream and be able to react as quickly as a human so that the AI sounds human, and we aren’t there yet, it would be too damn obvious. I get the reasoning for why some of the people here think it would be appealing to the corporations, but as AI is right now, too much work for not enough reward, plus the parasocial relationship aspect just seems like it wouldn’t be as effective if it’s a corporation using AI to do things.