To start things off, last weekend, the first three generations of Hololive's English branch, Myth, Promise/Council and Advent held the second live concert for Hololive's English branch, Breaking Dimensions at King's Theatre in New York, to a sold out crowd of over 3,000 people. The reason that they performed at a smaller venue is because these venues are contacted six to nine months in advance, and while in Japan, V-Tubers are fully mainstream and getting larger venues is no problem, the people who own the largest venues in the US are mostly either non-anime fans or old people who don't even know what anime is, so Cover approaching James Dolan as an example to attempt to get Madison Square Garden as a venue as an example won't work unless they can show domestic interest.
The venue was sold out almost immediately once tickets were available a while back, and the line this weekend was almost two hours long, but that was mostly because the people working the venue weren't prepared to have this many people, just like the merch line at Dodger Stadium on hololive night during the July 5th game against the Milwaukee Brewers.
This is a Reddit thread of a tweet announcing things this weekend, with the setlist for both days in the comments. The concert itself went spectacularly, with one of the most memorable moments being at one point, Gawr Gura waved to the crowd and the camera panned to a little girl waving back at her. The reason this is even memorable at all is because Gura has said on stream that her inspiration for wanting to become an idol was Hatsune Miku and as you can see from the title of the post posting the image 'Hololive EN Gen 15 in the making', Gura could be this girl's inspiration. People were comparing this moment to a moment in My Hero Academia, where after All Might defeats All For One at the Kamino Ward and can feel himself losing the embers of One For All, when the camera pans to him, he says 'You can be a hero', knowing that Izuku Midoriya, the boy he passed One For All down to a year ago would be watching, with Izuku about to cry in the middle of the street.
Minato Aqua graduated from Hololive on August 28th. Direct link to the stream. Her stream broke the previous record of concurrent viewers during a graduation stream, previously set by Coco Kiryu, now Kson of VShojo, setting a new record of over 740 thousand concurrent viewers, compared to Coco's around 500 thousand concurrent viewers. She performed her final concert as well as took her time thanking everyone she's met for the past several years for the experiences and opportunities she's had. This is only the third graduation in the history of Hololive/Holostars/Cover Corp, with Coco Kiryu and Sana Tsukumo as the other two graduations instead of terminations.
In addition, Hololive will be celebrating its seventh anniversary from September 1-14. Direct link to the tweet.
Usada Pekora visited Hideo Kojima's studio today. Direct link to tweet. She replied to it, the CEO of Cover, Motoaki Tanigo, otherwise known as Yagoo, reposted it and on her sub Twitter, she said she was going to have a long, tense recording today so people have made the assumption that she will be making an appearance in Death Stranding 2 akin to Keanu Reeves' appearance in Cyberpunk 2077. I personally am hoping that was the case and believe it is, because again, V-Tubers are fully mainstream in Japan and I think the more positive exposure that V-Tubers get, the better.
Mori Calliope has reached the Billboard top 100 artists for the very first time on August 27th, hitting number 72, ahead of rapper 21 Savage among other names such as J-Cole, Imagine Dragons and Jack Harlow. I personally didn't expect her or any V-Tuber to ever reach this, but considering how good she is as an artist and the fact that Go-Getters is by far her most widely reaching song, being the ending theme of an anime that even normies have most likely seen, good job for her.
Kson recently bought one of those figurines of Coco Kiryu that you have to go and paint yourself. I just think this is moreso very funny.
Something I forgot last week is that Mint Fantome will be performing with V-Tuber charity group VFleet on the USS Hornet on October 5th. Direct link to tweet. The USS Hornet has been featured in various gacha games such as Azur Lane, so I'm not surprised, I'm just happy for Mint to be getting more opportunities.
Now onto the Nijisanji stuff. Fighting game commentator and streamer Sajam will be hosting another one of his Sajam Slams, where FGC streamers take other FGC streamers and non-FGC streamers and puts them into teams, to compete against one another over a period of time and have finals at an event. As you can see in this picture, Dokibird is on Brian_F's team, and if you see it, 'VBrightshield' is on Shine's team. 'VBrightshield' is Nijisanji EN's Victoria Brightshield, and this is the first time since the termination of Selen Tatsuki on February 5th and the chain of events after that that she and another Nijisanji V-Tuber have been in the same event.
Sajam originally didn't know about the events of the termination and why it happened. Discussion on Reddit, but after hearing about it, he talked to both because of course Nijisanji would have an issue with it, and Victoria told Sajam that Nijisanji didn't want her to have to face Dokibird or have any public interaction with Dokibird at all, and Sajam asked Dokibird if she would be fine with that, explaining if she wasn't then Nijisanji would have Victoria not participate.
The reason this is a big deal at all isn't just because of who it is, but because as Selen Tatsuki, Dokibird was Victoria's oshi (industry term for favorite V-Tuber), and Victoria only joined Nijisanji recently, as a part of Nijisanji EN's 9th wave, TTT ("These Three Troublemaking Adventurers from Another World are Actually a Comedy Troupe?!"), with the isekai-esque name being on purpose. Below will be several links to discussion and tweets about this issue, because by god does Nijisanji's existence as it is now annoy me.
This incident also confirms that Niji forbids talents from collaborating with ex-'Livers' (the term Nijisanji uses for its V-Tubers).
Discussion about Sajam trying to manage the issue: https://old.reddit.com/r/kurosanji/comments/1f2xqor/sajam_is_out_here_doing_his_best_to_make_both_of/
Discussion about the announcement the day it happened: https://old.reddit.com/r/kurosanji/comments/1f1yedf/doki_and_vivi_will_be_participating_in_the_next/
Discussion about the blacklisting: https://old.reddit.com/r/kurosanji/comments/1f2w2br/so_the_niji_forces_rules_threats_blacklists/
Discussion about Nijisanji shills on 4chan being idiots about this whole topic (the nicknames for Nijisanji shills are NDF/Nijisanji Defense Force and Nijisisters): https://old.reddit.com/r/kurosanji/comments/1f26knj/nijisisters_back_at_it_again_but_they_can_do/
Screenshot of a tweet of an FGC content creator about this: https://old.reddit.com/r/kurosanji/comments/1f41o18/how_some_of_the_fgc_view_nijifans/
More discussion about the 4chan posts: https://old.reddit.com/r/kurosanji/comments/1f2r89m/wtf_is_this_shit_trying_to_go_at_doki_again/
A bit early for this but yesterday was pretty big for the community.
Cover Corp fully released their own social media app, Holoplus yesterday, initially with zero moderation, which resulted in dozens of posts of porn of their talents' avatars, as well as posting the IRL identities of their talents, to the point where they had to shut down the creation of accounts for several hours just to clean it up, but supposedly this was the result of a brigade of anti-Hololive individuals as well as fans of other agencies such as Phase Connect, as some of the posts I personally saw were people posting pictures of talents of other agencies and saying this was their new oshi (industry term for favorite vtuber).
I think this was also Cover being naive because their subreddit is also basically unmoderated, and speaking of the subreddit here is a thread of them discussing the launch of Holoplus.
Also yesterday, Twitch Ambassador EvilToaster a 'non-binary, autistic PNGtuber', one of the main people pushing Twitch's new Drop In feature, which allows people to unpromptedly collab with others among other things (here is a FalseEyeD video where the first 5:46 is explaining the feature and its issues with vtubers, where among other things, the moment you click Knock, your camera automatically turns on if you gave your browser permission) was accused of sexual harassment by several other vtubers.
Original accusation tweet: https://x.com/ciernaVT/status/1826829230442795288
Original Google Doc of accusations: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AkdUddk6Md1xsHaE6bSchp-ceBDZlRpB4CR2_dRkgGo/preview#heading=h.z52fwydlvudu
Archive of the Google Doc: http://web.archive.org/web/20240823045836/https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AkdUddk6Md1xsHaE6bSchp-ceBDZlRpB4CR2_dRkgGo/preview#heading=h.z52fwydlvudu
4chan thread on /vt/ discussing the accusations: https://boards.4chan.org/vt/thread/83488645/eviltoaster-a-nonbinary-pngtuber-thats-well-known#p83496893
Reading this last night, in my opinion, this is partly a weird autistic person being awkward and weird, partly them being pushy as fuck, partly some of them giving conflicting signals and partly everyone involved just not being direct with one another.
By 'mainstream', I mean that Vtubers like in Japan would be on the morning talk shows, be featured in advertisements on TV, have shows about V-Tubers on TV (there is a light novel with an anime adaptation called VTuber Legend: How I Went Viral After Forgetting to Turn Off My Stream), collaborations with V-Tubers and sports teams are a common occurrence, and while we have had some of these things in the West, it's not as pervasive as it is in Japan.
In my opinion with Western media being continually ass, it's only a matter of time.
Been a few weeks since I made one of these, but I went on vacation so I didn't get to do much, but here's the highlights:
Outside of the announcement of Minato Aqua's graduation from Hololive JP, Hex Haywire of Nijisanji EN's 7th wave, XSOLEIL is graduating on August 23rd. The reason that this is notable at all is because this is the generation that debuted Zaion LanZa, now Sayu Sincronisity, who was the first termination that sparked questions about Nijisanji's practices, leading up to the termination of Selen Tatsuki, now Dokibird. In addition, he has a fanbase that's quite parasocial because a large portion of his content is based around BFE (boyfriend effect) content, which lead to among many other incidents, a fan faking their suicide in order to get attention. Ex-Nijisanji talents have popped up in his stream chats such as Michi Mochievee and Matara Kan, so many people have speculated that the previous rules preventing Nijisanji talents from publically communicating to ex-Nijisanji talents have either been relaxed, or Anycolor no longer cares about the EN branch and aren't enforcing the rules.
Nijisanji is debuting a new Japanese wave, called Speciale. This will be their fourth new wave this year when taking into account all of their branches.
Dokibird and Mint Maid performed a concert at Anime Revolution this past weekend to a maxed out crowd who had a massive line beforehand, proving even further that Nijisanji/Anycolor fumbled the bag in the way that they handled Dokibird and Mint.
Over the past several weeks, a now suspended Twitter account by the name of Vintage_Fender has been falsely reporting VTubers and their clip channels on Twitter, Twitch and Youtube, and has 'successfully' managed to take down clippers for SkyLily and SquChan among others (can't find archive links so posting the tweets to see if people can find the archive links and/or screenshots), but the VTuber he managed to do the most damage to is TaigaHolic/Bungou Taiga, who has already had a stalker dox him and threaten to kill him, but now he's been deplatformed and has already made attempts on his own life due to this before, but 'dramatubers' such as Nux Taku have spread the lies pushed by Vintage Fender.
Keekihime, the IRL content account of Kiara Takanashi of Hololive EN's 1st wave, Myth is currently in Japan for Comiket and was grabbed by a stalker of hers who has allegedly been stalking her for over 12 years. Keekihime is currently 29, which would make her either 16 or 17 when the stalking began. Keekihime's story is a long one; she is born and raised in Austria, but decided around that time that she wanted to become a Japanese idol, and auditioned for the group Tone Jewel, which she got in and was a part of for only a year or so, as an 'anti' (the industry word for haters) pretended to be the owner of one of the venues that Tone Jewel performed at, the people at her label fell for it and she had her contract terminated, which meant her work visa was also terminated and she had to move back to Austria. Then before COVID, she applied for a 'Working Holiday Visa' which is only open to 25 countries not including the United States, but COVID happened right in the middle of that VISA's duration of 1 year and she was stuck in Japan for a very long time, during that time was when Hololive announced the auditions for what would be their first English wave. Out of desperation and the want to accomplish her dreams, she applied for Hololive and here we are today, three years later with millions of subscribers on Youtube. This stalker started following her around back when she used to stream on the Japanese site Nico Nico Douga (NicoNico or NND for short), confessed his love to her, and she posted pictures of him so that people would find him and know who he is.
The Japanese police and the people running Comiket (which I'm assuming are volunteers) both told her that they couldn't do anything about it and that she would need to go to the Austrian Embassy first, hence why she posted the pictures showing his face so that there's no question who this is.
Edit: I forgot to mention the entire reason she was at Comiket was to cosplay, and the specific outfit she was cosplaying as at the time of the incident was Asuka Langley Soryu from Neon Genesis Evangelion wearing a French Maid costume.
Edit 2: Another thing I forgot is what Comiket even is. Comiket is short for Comic Market, and is a convention that started out primarily for artists to sell doujinshi. Doujinshi is more than just hentai, the word itself is just fanfiction through the medium of manga, it just happens that the largest genre of doujin so happens to be porn.
Below will be links to Reddit threads which have links to more, because separating the links is a lot of copying and pasting.
TaigaHolic/Bungou Taiga situation: https://old.reddit.com/r/VirtualYoutubers/comments/1ehbbh1/deplatforming/
https://old.reddit.com/r/kurosanji/comments/1eoypx6/rev_says_desu_talking_about_bungou_taigas/
https://old.reddit.com/r/kurosanji/comments/1eiej2h/update_to_my_update_the_guy_whos_been_mass/
Nijisanji JP's new wave 'Speciale': https://old.reddit.com/r/kurosanji/comments/1er3k39/a_new_nijisanji_jp_wave_speciale_has_announced/
Keekihime stalking situation: https://old.reddit.com/r/kurosanji/comments/1eqbk5n/cake_princess_attacked_by_old_stalker/
Discussion about the above: https://old.reddit.com/r/kurosanji/comments/1equcl8/if_the_police_cant_keep_her_safe_then_we_should/
FalseEyeD video with the first two segments being a discussion about the issue and audio of the Twitter Space she did afterwards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQXJrybs_-A
I'm not going to post the leaks in the main post mainly because it is leaks and not the full pages yet, but I didn't think I could dislike how Horikoshi took the latter portions of the manga more than I do until now. There's certain things I've seen as a part of the ending that I genuinely can't believe, but I see Horikoshi do certain things and it is what it is at this point. He's the author of this manga and all I can do is read it, but like Toriyama with Dragon Ball, a lot of his decisions with his series are flawed.
https://old.reddit.com/r/kurosanji/comments/1eeg504/reminder_anycolor_investor_meeting_in_12_hours/
https://x.com/atmp_awtai2/status/1818101540181442612?t=ybJ9Dd17a5v3jb_3jWBx5w (original Japanese questions and answers)
https://old.reddit.com/r/kurosanji/comments/1efjz0r/translated_questions_from_shareholder_meeting/ (translated questions and answers through DeepL because Twitter's auto-translate feature sucks)
https://www.reddit.com/r/kurosanji/comments/1dvs7sw/mark_your_calendars_anycolors_upcoming_general/?share_id=5qPEVMEV0-vgKcLR_TVQx (a picture of the original announcement)
Two weeks ago, Dokibird, formerly Selen Tatsuki of Nijisanji EN debuted a new model, which is essentially a blonde version of Selen, designed by the same person who designed Selen Tatsuki. Dokibird explains in this stream that part of why she went to the same artist who designed Selen was because she felt like she wasn't able to fully express herself and sometimes felt like a disappointment (which is a common thread with ex-Nijisanji Vtubers, because the company has the attitude of 'you are nothing without us').
Filian got in hot water over the fact that her model isn't a model for her, it's a model for VRchat you can buy for $50, because she had a Nendoroid announced, along with several other vtubers such as Dokibird with her original design (which she calls RetroDoki), and Fuwawa and Mococo Abyssgard (or Fuwamoco) of Hololive English's 3rd Wave, Advent. The reason that this is an issue is that the licensing agreement that you agree to upon buying the model does not approve of physical merch. You're allowed to stream and make money off of it, but you are not allowed to make physical merch.
Original tweet from the creator, Jingo.
This ended up being solved with Jingo requesting that merch sales stop, so for now, Filian's Nendoroid will not be made.
Today, Dokibird will be streaming Neopets for their 25th anniversary. The reason this is even news is that the original 'black stream' that Vox Akuma, Ike Eveland and Elira Pandora did that revealed personal information about Dokibird which was supposed to stay private between Nijisanji management and her legal team was intentionally synched with the start of a Neopets stream she had to end early in order to deal with Nijisanji's bullshit.
The Dodgers won one of the most exciting games this year 8-5, even though Ohtani went 0-5 with 3 Ks (strikeouts) on his birthday.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Hololive/comments/1dwguuc/7th_inning_stretch/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Hololive/comments/1dwmp7s/cole_sprouse_actor_of_disney_show_zack_cody/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Hololive/comments/1dwux5w/hololive_dodgers_fiasco/
The actual collab itself went perfectly, but the controversy is in the way that the merch was handled was really bad, as there was only one tent for all of the Hololive merch for the collab and the line for the event went all the way around the stadium, and was apparently the largest line for merch for a Dodgers collab in the history of the team. The line lasted for over six hours, from 5:30 PM PST until they finally stopped at 1:00 AM the next day. With Anime Expo being the same weekend, that helped boost the attendance, but I think overall the sheer enthusiasm that the line shows me is that vtubing becoming mainstream is an inevitability, and it's up to vtuber fans to identify 'tourists' and stop them from doing their bullshit.
Not only is this 4th of July weekend with events such as the July race at Daytona International Speedway among other things, in pop culture, this weekend is the weekend of Anime Expo in LA. Tomorrow will have the appearance of three of Hololive's biggest talents in Usada Pekora, Hoshimachi Suisei and Gwar Gura at the Los Angeles Dodgers vs Milwaukee Brewers baseball game at Dodger Stadium.
Dokibird, formerly Selen Tatsuki of Nijisanji EN will have a booth at Anime Expo with Hyte/iBUYPOWER, the former PC case sponsor of Nijisanji, who immediately terminated their partnership with Nijisanji upon hearing about her termination from Nijisanji and the reasons behind it. Said booth is directly across from the Nijisanji booth, assumingly because this was planned months in advance before the termination, but now it's just hilarious because a floundering agency in Nijisanji is going to be 'confronted' with the consequences of the biggest mistake in its history.
I've actually been somewhat checked out of US politics, so I'm not sure of what other celebrations are going on in terms of what the holiday means in and of itself, but in pop culture, there's NASCAR races, one of the largest anime conventions of the year, thousands upon thousands of barbecues and overall this weekend should be very good just from an entertainment perspective, assuming the Feds don't false flag.
I've mentioned it before in comments a few times, but my entire interest in the show as a whole started and ended with the fact that Mori Calliope sings the ending theme (and it's good as hell), but I didn't really have much interested in the actual setting of the show mainly because I checked out of American hero stuff with Endgame, but if any of y'all have seen what's available right now, what's your opinion on it?
Edit: posting the actual animation with the opening and ending themes for the sake of posterity:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI9rO8qebx8&pp=ygUKZ28gZ2V0dGVycw%3D%3D
