On the surface, its just streaming. You find a "personality" you like and watch them do their thing. Except in this case they are openly playing a "character" with all the benefits that provides over basic facecam streaming. If you don't watch streamers a lot, you won't watch vtubers neither.
In reality it usually comes down to even more obsessed parasocial relationships. Its closer to a mix of the girl-produced ASMR industry with the Japanese Idol culture than anything else.
So if you never got into Idols or wierd ASMR stuff, you'd never like most vtubers. The handful of exceptions might be people who like Mori's music or the edgy memesters like Pipkin who can appeal outside those bubbles.
That is a good way to describe it, probably most streaming from personalities just isn't for me and that is part of it for sure.
I definitely see the idol culture in it, I suppose it was only a matter of time as technology has improved to make anime girls "real" to some level as I have seen they do 3d stuff too and not just stationary stuff.
Yagoo's actively trying to make vtubing go mainstream, in my eyes that's the only reason the Dodgers game is even happening, because he actively wants vtubing to become as big as possible, but that may or may not backfire, considering how many Holo models have wobbly chests that certain people may or may not complain about.
When it comes to these larger companies yes.
One of the only VTubers I watch stream is just someone who use to stream with their Webcam but found it annoying to have to worry about how they looked, so just started using a 2D/3D model. She is just being herself playing Final Fantasy 14 mostly as she always has.
On the surface, its just streaming. You find a "personality" you like and watch them do their thing. Except in this case they are openly playing a "character" with all the benefits that provides over basic facecam streaming. If you don't watch streamers a lot, you won't watch vtubers neither.
In reality it usually comes down to even more obsessed parasocial relationships. Its closer to a mix of the girl-produced ASMR industry with the Japanese Idol culture than anything else.
So if you never got into Idols or wierd ASMR stuff, you'd never like most vtubers. The handful of exceptions might be people who like Mori's music or the edgy memesters like Pipkin who can appeal outside those bubbles.
That is a good way to describe it, probably most streaming from personalities just isn't for me and that is part of it for sure.
I definitely see the idol culture in it, I suppose it was only a matter of time as technology has improved to make anime girls "real" to some level as I have seen they do 3d stuff too and not just stationary stuff.
Yagoo's actively trying to make vtubing go mainstream, in my eyes that's the only reason the Dodgers game is even happening, because he actively wants vtubing to become as big as possible, but that may or may not backfire, considering how many Holo models have wobbly chests that certain people may or may not complain about.
When it comes to these larger companies yes. One of the only VTubers I watch stream is just someone who use to stream with their Webcam but found it annoying to have to worry about how they looked, so just started using a 2D/3D model. She is just being herself playing Final Fantasy 14 mostly as she always has.