VTubing: How a Japanese Phenomenon Is Going Worldwide
tokyodev.com88 points by pwim 12 hours ago
88 points by pwim 12 hours ago
That's a bit... late to the party. I can't find when the article was published, but the phenomenon "went worldwide" several years ago by the means of COVID. These days the vtubing as an industry is in a somewhat stable state, if not a possible decline, going by viewership hours over the same period. Many big EN and JP names have already retired too.
For the big VTuber corporate brand, for sure. But the indie VTuber scene as exploded. It used to be fairly expensive to get in the hobby, and you needed to be technically savy or have someone be for you. Now there is a lot of free and open-source VTuber software that don't need complex setup, just a webcam. And you can easily commission a few hundred bucks an artist to get your whole character and animation.
This made the barrier almost inexistent. And since showing your actual face was a big stop for a lot of people, vtubing has allowed a lot of people to get into streaming. There are thousands of <100s viewers vtuber right now.
Nah weaboos and (us) furries been doing it for ages + not necessarily expensive at all, can use a webcam for basic ones for ages now.
It's not 2018 anymore, so that's not quite true. By now free models have been there forever, and indies have been using them for as long. I mean, Filian has already been using one over 4 years ago.
Which caused some problems with merchandising, but that's a different can of worms.
> Which caused some problems with merchandising, but that's a different can of worms.
Can you expand on this? Are they not able to sell merch since they don't "own" their design?
How popular are they? Have they considered buying the model from the authors?
It's a complex/murky matter with lots of allegations in every direction that's hard to summarize properly.
The absolute barest bone / neutral summary is that Filian is very popular (3.2 mil subs on yt, 1.3 mil subs on twitch, although she may be retiring currently, or is doing an extensive publicity stunt as her channels and socials are wiped clean). Two years ago, the model's creator announced [0] that Good Smile is making a nendo based off his model for an unnamed vtuber, and that they were not informed beforehand, let alone credited or compensated. They were trying to contact Good Smile and said vtuber to resolve the matter. After a few days Jingo posted an extensive message [1] that the situation was resolved and the parties are cooperating, further noting, among other things, that "free to use in VRchat" does not mean "free to do anything without any credit".
Note that this was not the first time Filian made merch off this model, and it was not stated clearly why Jingo took steps only at that point. Possibly because they never heard about Filian and only realized what's going on since Good Smile is a well known Japanese company.
that fillian controversy gives me flashbacks.... suprisingly little of that controversy seems to have survived, even though its only been 2 years.
this one is the only thing i could scrounge up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsXOyo1BM6Y - but always take what he says with a barrel of salt, he'S more trying to drum up drama then actually portrait things truthfully
Is this AI? That was the case like 5 years ago. Every big western vtuber right now started out as an indie using free models.
> I can't find when the article was published, but the phenomenon "went worldwide" several years ago by the means of COVID.
Article cites stats from Q1 2026, so presumably this is a current view of the phenomenon.
Yeah it really hit its peak with gen 1 of Hololive English I want to say, along with the explosion of indie vtubers on twitch and stuff that followed.
A lot of female content creators I followed online became vtubers. HikaruStation used to be a singer, but now she’s a whale Vtuber by the name of Bao.
AmaLee (of LeeAndLie) also got famous through anime song covers, but she’s mostly a vtuber now.
I think the current vtuber “market” is a lot harder to break into now than it used to be though.
It quotes figures from Q1 of 2026, so it was definitely published this year.
According to the article metadata:
"datePublished":"2026-07-16T08:18:37+09:00"In case you need a real example that's not just gaming or concerts, join me and thousands of others watching Sumo live hosted by MidnightSumo (he's not a cat)
A testament to how tech has come along, first you needed complex equipment, then Adobe released a home animator thing which needed a webcam and was paid.
And now anyone with a phone https://www.youtube.com/shorts/i2hpLm9CEVU
Some more interesting topics around the subject that I haven't seen covered in the comments:
- Hololive is huge and they definitely take a decent cut for their efforts. But why do people sign with them? The short answer is that they're a well oiled machine where people go through a sign up process where they create a test video etc. If accepted they're placed into groups (such as Hololive English) etc., but at the same time they also get to interact with all the other groups which immediately raises their popularity significantly.
They also look for some other related skills, for example probably all of the English group can sing semi-professionally on a stage etc.
In general your success is pretty much guaranteed once accepted, it just becomes a question of scale.
- Downsides: Usually the vtuber character, name, image and all other related copyrights belong to them. If there are disagreements then you can leave depending on your contract, but you can no longer use that character in any way. For example Nimi Nightmare used to be Fauna in Hololive, but she left and restarted on her own, whereas some other really popular streamers left but never seemed to resurface.
In general they also don't seem to collaborate much with vtubers outside of their space, so I'm sure there are some rules in play there.
The last section should have been titled “Why Do People Watch It?” because I finished the article still wondering.
I would rather flip the question. Why not?
If you watch streamers, there are going to be Vtubers on the same platform recommended to you.
Are you going to discard/ignore those streams because the streamer is more privacy concious and doesn't show their face, and instead uses an avatar?
That's a bigger question, like why do people watch streamers in the first place. It's not for me personally but it's a huge worldwide multibillion industry so plenty of people enjoy it and / or aspire to be it.
I didn't get it when it first was a thing (like 15 years ago) but now I watch streams of esports/pvp and I watch longplays to scratch an itch for games I have no intention of putting the full time sink into but need to experience bits of the game (like FF7Remake). Being able to skip or passively consume the boring bits is good and it's less addictive than playing.
Occasionally if they are genuinely funny or are a personality I care about, I find the streamer can be additive to the experience.
For example it was quite hilarious and interesting seeing Justin Wong of street fighter fame trying out Elden Ring. Same for Demetrious Johnson from UFC
I watch a few indie vtubers (and was a fan of idol corp before they got sold off and their first english gen left). I like the streamers and would watch them regardless of what they look like in meatspace
I also wondered this before I ever saw any. There is a gradient from someone streaming with no cam, then a non-human vtuber, then human vtuber and finally a real human.
The simplest answer is probably that we all have our likes and dislikes, but personally for me I fall inbetween the non-human and vtuber section. If they stream permanently as e.g. a fish I find it too odd, whereas apparently my brain is perfectly happy seeing any kind of expressive humanoid that I can link to the speaking person.
If they have no cam then its just a voice over which feels too impersonal for the streaming space, which I don't like.
Same reason people watch any streamers; they either enjoy the streamer's personality, the games they play, or both.
For a lot of people, it's basically like watching one of your friends play a game you enjoy, and a way to become part of a community of others interested in the same thing.
Meanwhile in other cases it's a matter of just not having the time/energy/skill to play the games they're covering, but being interested in seeing how they pan out. For example, I often watch people play extremely difficult mods of games like Super Mario World, Super Mario 64 and New Super Mario Bros Wii. Yes, I could easily go ahead and do the same thing, and I do play mods of those games which are a lot easier...
But I find a good player's experience of these games fun to watch, and don't feel like spending hours on every level trying to match that myself.
I enjoy a handful of streamers for a few reasons:
* I get to experience games I wouldn't normally have time for: I work full time, and as much as I love games and always make time for them, I still have a finite amount of time to make and a solid chunk of that time has to be devoted to multiplayer games, since it's a big part of how I meet my social needs. And even then, some games that are quite fun to watch for me are games I don't necessarily want to play? Like I love watching people play things like Lethal Company, but I don't have a friend-group to play with, so a streamer is great for that. Also horror games usually have really interesting worlds, but uh... I am a chicken shit LOL
* It also broadens the number of games I'm exposed to quite a bit. Many a time I have tuned into a stream, watched it for awhile, and been like "okay this actually looks really good/fun/interesting" and turned off the stream to go buy it on Steam. I've just bought Claire Obscur because I initially thought it was Yet Another Damn JRPG (objective 1: go to class, final objective: kill god) but I was thoroughly incorrect, and corrected by watching some streamers and an essay on it, and I'm really excited to play it now.
* Additionally, a wild third option: sometimes it's nice when working remotely to have a stream on for background noise. It hits your brain in a way that's vaguely similar to hanging out with a friend when you're both doing completely different things and just... existing together. It's completely fake of course, the streamer has no idea who I am, but it doesn't need to make sense to feel nice to my brain.
Not the parent, but I have the same question.
Your reasons above could be said about streamers in general, but what about VTubers in particular appeals to you?
You all are beating around the bush. Some people like anime girl personas better than 3d girls. It is somewhat similar to the whole furry thing on a few levels. This creates the demand for services/content which we are now discussing. /thread
Not to mention a small minority act and look like children doing art commissions with pretty vile dialogue. See more: https://piunikaweb.com/2026/05/01/uk-vtuber-arrested-anime-a...
Oh I can answer this! I watch quite a lot of VTubers, almost all of them from the Hololive brand and a few indies. I don't watch regular streamers anymore.
- The most succinct way I can describe it is it has some overlap with the appeal of the anime/manga subculture in the West. Imagine a character in a manga has a "soul" imbued in them and they talk for hours on YouTube about a brand of ketchup they like and all the specific reasons why they like that brand. Depending on the topic, it's hard for some to get enough of that sort of thing. You feel a sense of (parasocial) connection to the streamer as you get to learn more about them in these hyperspecific ways over the years, in a way that a static, deliberately constructed medium such as anime or manga cannot express. Accumulated personal knowledge of the streamer is the social currency of VTuber fans, and by extension fans of real-life idols, as it can only be gained by watching and following them for a long time. I would recommend the book Idols and Celebrity in Japanese Media Culture for an academic perspective of real-life idols, since many of the concepts overlap with Japanese corporate VTubers.
- Many anime/manga franchises and brands like Vocaloid have historically appealed to a need of emotional connection in the past with things like character goods, but VTubers interact directly with their audience so the effect is much more pronounced. It is like those characters are actually speaking to you for once (though usually they aren't speaking to anyone in particular). Plus they talk about their own favorite anime, manga and games. This is very appealing to some.
- I don't know about regular streamers but with VTubers it's a surprisingly social activity. People are encouraged to create art and post it on the hashtags of each streamer, so watching streams is a wellspring of motivation for creative types. A lot of the things depicted in that art would be unusual or weird if they were drawn for real-life streamers IMO, but in the VTubing sphere it is seen differently. I would say the vast majority of VTubers aren't insulted if you post something explicit of them so long as you keep it off of the offical channels. They will just ignore it and carry on. There is something to be said about this in a culture that some might say is becoming more and more puritanical.
- The fan communities are niche but very devoted. Being a fan gives you a sense of identity. Meeting with a fan that watches the same streamer instantly gives us a lot things to talk about. Multiple people I met at in person events describe the community as "home" to them, maybe same as football fans are with a favorite team. People wear the liveries of their favorite streamer or cosplay and group together for large gatherings or do online fan activities. I'm not aware of an equivalent for someone like Asmongold!
- In Hololive's case, it is a truly apolitical streaming experience, I believe one of the few that exists with their level of popularity. I watch VTubers to shut out the chaos and cynicism of the rest of the world. You can depend on Hololive for this anti-cynicism bubble because they have stringent rules that politics or inflammatory topics are off-limits. But in addition, the VTubers themselves are just fun to watch. Reading the interactions they have with each other online is one of the few times I get the "old web" feeling that has mostly vanished from modern social media. It is a precious feeling and I end up wanting to protect and cultivate it.
- With Hololive in particular, it's hard to describe but after watching for a while you get a "feeling" for what brand identity the management is trying to build, and that identity appeals to me. It is built on some level of restrictions on topics/activities (permission to steam certain games being one example) but the trade-off is the amount of resources thrown at each VTuber means they are freer to be themselves within those limitations and they don't have to act outrageous all the time to get attention, since the company takes care of promotions and reach. This one is big for me. I disagree with the article's notion that "eccentric", "expressive" and "weirder" necessarily contributes to a more appealing stream environment. A lot of those things mean being loud to stand out in the overcrowded market if you're an indie, unless you have a pre-existing fanbase.
- Being a fan gives me an excuse to feel like a child again, without any social repercussions. I think this is common to a lot of hobbies. I can carry around a plushie of a VTuber I like in public and people have randomly come up to me an said "oh! Is that ______?" and we can hold a sustained conversation for like half an hour.
Wanting a sense of togetherness is why I keep returning. True, it is an experience based on a false sense of connection with the streamer, but I have made a lot of real friends in the hobby and we talk regularly.
The first time I encountered VTubing, I thought the point was just to hide your face, for various reasons. Being sensitive about your looks, not wanting to attract stalkers, whatever. But there's apparently a lot more to it; I was surprised.
I've ran once on some streamer who along with the CGI animation also wears some full body suit of anime girl with helmet, wig. That looked like a blend of two ideas. But that's still nothing new - there were always people on youtube who did fully cover their faces to not be recognized.
How to not be seen
That's one reason. Another big one is it's fun to put on a character. It lets you step away from things you don't like about yourself while embracing the things you do
There's a lot of indie vtubers who do it for that reason. It's just that the biggest ones are corporate.
That's what many western VTubers don't get, they see it as an "avatar" for themselves which is not what VTubing is. It's supposed to be a completely different persona with no connection to your real identity. It completely dilluted (and I would say even ruined) VTubing in the west.
Maybe they do get it, but are choosing to lean more into the authenticity angle. An art form, a medium, evolves when new cultures and sub-cultures take it up and add their own stuff, both the creator and the audience.
Maybe from their perspective they're correctly doing it their way, instead of, as in your perspective, failing to do it your way.
You might prefer things to be that way, but it's important to remember that's an absurd expectation. Especially in the west with how frequently vtubers graduate and show up under a different name. Even hololive JP, who push the entire persona thing very hard, have to periodically break immersion and remind fans that there are real people behind the avatar.
The "different persona" stuff is responsible for some of the most serious abuses the industry has surfaced, and the increasing treatment of VTubing as an avatar is a direct consequence of that.
If I were to make YouTube videos of the camera-to-face variety, I would cloak my face and voice both to avoid stalkers and to avoid deepfakes of each.
But against the flood of videos even before all the AI-generated content churned out by people who don't care about quality, I think I will instead just not make any.
Strange omission to talk about the general anti-AI sentiment, while not mentioning that the #3 most-watched English VTuber (Neuro-sama) is an LLM – who is actually widely accepted as a "good" use of AI by other VTubers and viewers.
I think neuro-sama has been accepted because she isn't deceptive. It's very clear that Neuro-sama isn't a real person or even really intelligent. The other big reason is that she collaborates with other vtubers and has brought new audiences to them.
Also, arguably nowadays the main streamer is Vedal, her (for lack of a better term) handler. Part of the fun is seeing them interact
Does anyone actually believe the premise of Neuro-sama that she is an AI? The original premise was that she is a lightweight AI model livecoded on streams, but that is obviously not the case anymore.
Do humans often repeat JSON spewed by integrations? It’s still very much a LLM.
It's certainly possible someone could fake something like that for views, but I'm curious what you consider to be the tells that it's no longer an LLM behind the wheel?
Maybe it's LLM and human actor splitting work, but she looks too natural, too fast and too error-free to be LLM based since too long ago. Just their dictation -> thinking -> TTS loop is too fast to be LLM. Context awareness and character adherence is too perfect as well.
Never seen Taalas?
Let alone a decent sized model on a couple 4090s or similar, pretty gud t/s to churn out tts/stt/response/control model actions and emotes.
The VTuber phenomenon is often framed as escape hatch for streamers who do not prefer to show faces; IMO, it couldn't have worked if audiences found it disappointing - the audiences must prefer the presenter hiding their face than prominently displaying it. I think that's more noteworthy than the person behind it opting to hide their faces.
The two largest vtuber agencies/companies are publicly traded in Japan.
https://finance.yahoo.co.jp/quote/5253.T?term=2y
https://finance.yahoo.co.jp/quote/5032.T?term=2y
The stock prices are not great all things considered- I think that the vtuber audience needs something new/different to broaden beyond it's current market base AND I think investors would rather put money into AI related stocks than IP/vtuber related stocks.
> The two largest vtuber agencies/companies are publicly traded in Japan.
Which makes their popularity as organic as the explosion of the K-Pop mania.
I have extremely bad news for you about the authenticity of pop stars, going back at least to the 1950's.
I'm not particularly into VTubing (not a fan of social streaming or the japanese style), but i find the tech and creativity amazing. I'm very into mocap and started building an experimental facial capture system, which overlaps a lot with the VTubing concept, but using different protocols (most VTubing models/solutions uses VMC) and more varied custom cartoon models.
If you are into the tech behind mocap this community is a fun place to explore.
Anyone remember Max Headroom?
With great affection.
Mind you, when it launched, I was in my mid-teens and I believed the hype: I thought it really was CGI. Ah, innocence of youth...
The olds always told me some day I would be old myself and would be baffled by what the youngs are into, I think that day has arrived. I haven't hit the "afraid" stage yet but I'm guessing that is coming.
well at least my generation hasn't destroyed the world, so they weren't completely right. Yet?
I don't understand the draw of video anything at all; I never have. I can read information 100x faster than a video can provide and I just cannot possibly understand why anyone would want to sit through a 45 minute YouTube video that would have taken 1.5 pages of text.
That said, I'm not at all opposed to OTHERS getting the information in the delivery method they prefer. Great; good for you. But! I don't want to see written word be entirely replaced by video. And, before you ask: no; a transcript of the script is not what I want either.
Interesting. I prefer video/audio for the same reason. But I watch most things on 1.5x or 1.8x speed. I'm not a particularly fast reader, so I prefer audio/video forms.
Totally agree with you though about not thinking written form is inferior. I do still enjoy a good long form article. (Also I'm not including technical writing like documentation.)
> I don't understand the draw of video anything at all; I never have. I can read information 100x faster
It's not about information, it's about shared para-socializing. Totally different intent.
I think this can be very fun, practical amd enjoyable approach for teaching and sharing online techical contents especially presenting to the younger generations, but focusing on the non-AI generated contents.
It can be a very good trade-off between the sloppy AI and the boring lectures.
I can see myself doing this in the future, but why they need agents for VTubing, is it because of VTubing platform, marketing/promotion or payment?
Obligatory VTuber Wikipedia entry [1].
[1] VTuber:
Agencies are helpful for the tech and business side, sure, but as the article mentions, the indie scene has exploded. Plenty of creators are putting out high-quality stuff entirely on their own [1].
So, nothing is stopping you from giving it a shot. People are already looking into using VTubing for education, too. [2]
Moreover, these days as more people experiment with real-world integration and interactive setups, the traditional constraints of being a VTuber are really starting to disappear.
[1]: https://www.moguravr.com/pq-vtuber-live-review/ (ja) [2]: https://steam-library-gov.note.jp/n/nd0907ba91174 (ja)
Marketing and promotion, some level of organization involved (coordinating streams with collaborators etc) and merch deals, I think?
Not all of them need it - plenty of full independents out there. But even some small ones group together to hire a manager and form a little "network" I think.
Some VTubers treat it as a gateway into Japanese idol culture. So being part of an agency helps them with access to resources and opportunities for that sort of thing, e.g. voice acting gigs, appearances at events, planning concerts, recording studios, 3d motion tracking studios and brand sponsorships.
*Went worldwide, half a decade ago.
The latest and greatest method of exploiting and monetizing the male loneliness epidemic.
I've personally met more women into vtubers as a whole than men. Though, I've met a lot more men who exclusively watch a single vtuber to an almost obsessive degree. This probably has its roots, like most things in the scene, in Japanese idol culture. At least from what I've seen, women are more likely to enjoy the entire experience surrounding the industry instead of just a single idol or group
Also, this completely ignores the small but not insignificant minority of male vtubers
Are VTubers mostly attractive looking female characters?
The extreme majority, yeah. The guys doing it are less popular, although they also have a kind of "anime husband" aesthetic.
> The guys doing it are less popular
I get the impression that a lot of the female characters are dudes.
This is a very tired insult/joke outsiders throw around about vtubing (though I don't get the impression that you had that intention). It's somewhat ridiculous, vtubers stream very often and voice changers tend to be pretty obvious. There are some men who use female avatars, but it isn't common.
It's also kinda misogynistic, plenty of women enjoy anime culture. Many prominent artists for vtuber models are also women (and occasionally vtubers themselves). To the level that calling the model artist "mama" and the model rigger "papa" is a common trope.
That used to be the case, but dudes through a voice changer are quite rare now.
It's quite rare for that to be the case, at least in the English speaking side of the Vtubing world. I can really only think of one example.
lol the assumptions remind me of the late 90s and early 2000s
where routine benign things such as playing an offline game with a character that didn’t look like you and a different gender was considered to mean something it didn’t, outside of the gaming community
[dead]
aka digital twining