This should be obvious considering the downfall of Nijisanji and its English branch after the termination of Selen Tatsuki, now Dokibird and the entire controversy that it caused and the research into Nijisanji that it triggered, but reading the comments of yesterday’s thread as well as some more news, I wanted to post this because it’s pretty informational.
AI for vtubers is a thing that exists, as there is an AI vtuber by the name of Neuro-sama, which is managed by a man whose username is Vedal, and the reason that the vtuber community doesn’t care about Neuro-sama is because Vedal isn’t trying to replace human vtubers, Neuro-sama is pretty openly just a fun project for him and the collab streams he does with human vtubers is pretty interesting just because of how he filters her.
Back to the point of the title, 910inc, formerly known as WACTOR, is recasting for the channels of their graduated vtubers, and has already done so with Mitsurugi Lia. This company is known as the black company of all black companies, as the list of their controversies before today includes, but is not limited to:
- Two of their talents attempting suicide, one of which being the original person behind the Mitsurugi Lia channel
- Putting the cost of the model on their talents and making them pay it back
- Blackmailing their talents and forcing them to perform sexual acts to pay off debts
- Doxxing one of their talents after she graduated, publishing her full name, her country and ID number in that country along with what province she lives in, in that country, via the description of her YouTube channel
Not only has WACTOR done all of this, but now it wants to do the one thing that is unacceptable in vtubing, recasting for a model, or “getting a new soul”, as it’s come to be called.
The first instance of a vtuber being recasted was pre-COVID, in the form of Brave Group’s (then called Unlimited) “Game Club” or “Game-bu”, where the four talents were replaced, because as Unlimited put it, the four were “character YouTubers”, and they started to hemorrhage subscribers because of it. Here is the story of Game Club explained better than I did.
The more notable instance is Kizuna AI, the very first vtuber, was replaced during the ‘race’ to three million YouTube subscribers between her and Gawr Gura, and was replaced with four different vtubers, as the lore of Kizuna AI is that she has a ‘voice provider’, but all in all, her replacement after leaving her original agency, upd8, and creating her own business fell completely flat and essentially stalled all growth of the channel. She eventually came back and did a final concert stream which started her current hiatus, but by then the damage was done.
Story told within various comments on these threads: https://www.reddit.com/r/VirtualYoutubers/s/XF3e9vX4Rk
https://www.reddit.com/r/kurosanji/s/NiFsmyMRs6
As much as people think that the avatar is what people latch onto, the only group that I can say for certain would even remotely accept that are Nijisisters, as they have blindly accepted what Nijisanji is and openly defend it.
To finish this post, I’ll mention a few things I saw in the thread from yesterday that I’ll respond to here.
Yeah, but if it's a woman, which a lot of them seem to be, none of them have anything worthwhile to say. Women aren't really capable of actually having good ideas. I watch Razorfist Arcade and I can at least understand why someone would want to ask him a question about a political or cultural issue as he has interesting views and well researched opinions, all while watching a cool game. But watching an anime character just kind of stand there, with a woman behind it, seems utterly pointless. I can't imagine actually caring what a woman has to say about anything, and since she's not actually doing anything itself entertaining, what's the point?
People as whole disagree with the premise that “women have nothing to say and aren’t capable of having good ideas”, which I mean if that’s what you think, I absolutely understand why you wouldn’t like vtubers because the majority of them are girls, but later on in the comment linked here, it goes on about how vtubers couldn’t care less about their audience, and I disagree mostly because of their actions, at least a lot of the bigger ones anyway.
A lot of the bigger indie vtubers make frequent appearances in-person at conventions, and for the most part, the fans of those vtubers have reported good behavior, them not being rude even if they’re just walking around, whereas several celebrities are total assholes where in real life they show disdain towards their fans, the vtubers that make IRL appearances show thanks towards their audience, knowing that they’d be nothing without their audience liking them.
The termination of Selen Tatsuki, now Dokibird in February essentially made it very clear to the vtuber community how important it was to know the PLs (past lives, the industry term for non-corporate accounts) of vtubers as a ‘life raft’, for when they graduate (leave the company on good terms), and in addition, made it very clear how to tell when a vtuber is being disingenuous, as everyone’s reactions to Dokibird’s termination laid down lines for everyone.
Vtubers in general need to put at least a portion of their real personalities into what we see on stream, otherwise what they do doesn’t work, so for the most part, I do believe vtubers at least somewhat care about their audience, most of the bigger ones anyway.
I’ll cut this post here because it’s way too long, but I just thought all this information was pretty important.
Been struggling to find a way to explain why you can't simply swap vtuber actors behind the scenes to those with no knowledge or ambivalence to it, I think I have it:
Vtuber avatars are like franchises, they can look good, crazy or weird but the important part is the talent behind it. Best example is Star Wars. Even at his worst which I would argue Attack of the Clones, George Lucas still had the talent that originally made it to maintain interest in it.
Then we go with the soul/talent swap when Disney took over and it's the same asthetic but that talent that kept the audience there is gone and they notice it's just a skinsuit now. Same with vtubers, it's why model changes are usually big events (unless your Ironmouse I swear that girl has a new one every month lol) as they reinforce yes the asthetic has changed but the original talent is still there.
This is one of the few things I wish we as gamers copied from the Vtuber fanbase. If the industry knew we would only follow the talent that made Halo 3, Cod MW2, BF3, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood etc and NOT the franchises, they'd have less incentive to think they can DEI our franchises if they keep the same asthetic.
You don't even need to think about it deeper than this. Would people accept a new Luke Skywalker if it was played by Keanu Reeves? Even if he died his hair and looked pretty close?
No they wouldn't, because there is more to acting than appearances and the lines being read.
Its why "soul" is such a big topic these days, despite the fact that people need to write essays to try and explain it. We all just know when the soul is gone or destroyed.
Honestly, I find it weird that people care about vtubers at all. I don't understand what their appeal is. I've never found that a virtual avatar or even a real person's face ever made a video more enjoyable.
i mean, an actual person's face makes sense at the end of the day, in a normal way.
a hot anime girl with huge tits and the animated behaviour of a child also makes sense if you realize most vtuber fans are perverted digital-pedophiles.
Does anyone really think this? Like, your entire essay seems predicated on this assumption but it seems completely false to begin with.
Like, the people fapping to it might think that and it might be the initial draw that gets people to watch it the first time. But otherwise its the same as literally every form of acting or streaming, its driven purely on the strength of the performance and personality behind it.
Sure, if the model is ugly or badly rigged it'll be offputting itself but that's no different than bad animation ruining strong writing/VA.
On the flipside, given the sheer amount of these Vtuber posts you've made recently, I think you might need a hobby, friend.
I already have hobbies, in fighting games and outside of games, I watch baseball, soccer and work out, I just chose a while ago that because I cannot change who the rest of my family votes for that I would check out of most of this election cycle and simply vote when I do, rather than obsess over all the bullshit the Dems are doing.
Vtubers are anime adjacent, and as long as Yagoo wants to keep doing things to insert Hololive into mainstream events ala hololive night at Dodger Stadium (which I wonder what Vin Scully would have thought of it), normies will continue to be exposed to it. I don’t think anime is at its peak in the West yet, as Western media hasn’t completely collapsed, but if/when it does, that’ll be its peak.
don't really have a dog in this fight, because I'm not really into vtubers (neither for or against, just not my thing), but you could easily expand this argument to any kind of social media brand, or hell, really any form of entertainment.
Some examples come to mind:
Splash, a movie from the eighties/nineties about a man who meets and eventually falls in love with a mermaid, starred tom hanks (I know, I know), John Candy, and an actress whom I forget the name of. the film did well enough to get a sequel, but apparently not well enough to hire back the original cast for said sequel, and it ended up being tonally almost completely different as well. I don't know if there was a splash 3, but somehow I doubt it.
The King of Random/TKOR youtube channel. When Grant Thomspon, the original creator of the channel, stepped back from the camera to focus ont he business side of things, it was mildly off-putting, although Nate was at least doing some interesting projects, it just wasn't the same as with Grant, the personality was different, the projects were different, and was just not what I personally signed up for. When grant passed away (RIP), it seemed to become a kid's channel, and I just fell off in interest. I don't know how they're doing, but they seem to still be making videos.
<insert your favorite example of pallette-swapped "new" character replacing the old here> Do you like the new and improved version, or do you want the tried and true og back?
Game Theory I don't know who else paid attention to this here, but when matthew patrick (aka MatPat) 'retired' from the game/film/food/style theory public face, it set off a conspiracy theories about what really happened(true or untrue is up to you to decide, particularly with his announcement of retirement. It didn't help that Tom, the replacement host for game theory, seems like he was more at home at the writing desk than he currently is in the recording closet. The fact that matt had sold the rights to the brand a few years ago probably doesn't help either.
I have no real take on vtubers other than noticing lots of vtuber posting here and wondering why anyone would be interested in a slightly different kind of e-celeb doing identical shit all e-celebs do, only being fantastical enough to create even more parasocialiality. Although I guess with the current fagslop entertainment, eastern-flavored anything just tastes better.
The kizuna ai thing has long been disproved as fake news. They tried to make multiple kizuna ais with different voice actresses while the real one was busy with other prijects but when that caused backlash they turned them into several different vtubers. The original never left afaik.