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Vtubers: Virtual anime characters ready to entertain fans
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Passion for it: Akutagawa Ryuji's creator says it takes more than just capable machinery to create Vtubers. Creators also need a good deal of enthusiasm. (Livetopia) (Personal collection/Courtesy of Livetopia)
Virtual YouTubers, or Vtubers, are entertainers with virtual anime avatars.
A particular group of streamers with anime avatars have been dominating YouTube's top earners' chart in the last few months, especially the "Most Super Chatted" tab.
These streamers are Virtual YouTubers, or Vtubers. They are, in the simplest of terms, entertainers with virtual anime avatars. Their avatar can be a still, a simple, hand-drawn illustration or an elaborate model animated with technology such as Live2D or motion capture. The characters’ fans and creators treat them as real people and refer to them as living beings.
Vtubers have been around for a while, although they initially had a limited following outside Japan during its early conception — which may be attributed to the fact that they mainly spoke only Japanese then. Vtubers include names such as Kizuna Ai, Kaguya Luna and Mirai Akari, who garnered a considerable number of subscribers in the hundreds of thousands even in 2018 but were otherwise a "contained" phenomenon in the mainstream.
It was not until the emergence of the now-retired Vtuber Kiryu Coco, who was best known for her crude humor and occasional impeccable Southern drawl, that Vtubers started gaining a considerable base overseas. Vtubing began to gather steam in other parts of the world, with major Vtube agencies such as Hololive and Nijisanji expanding their presence in other countries, including Indonesia, earning trillions of rupiah in the process.
With the stellar successes of these agencies, as well as the low bar of entry to Vtubing, it is no wonder that many would try their luck in this industry.
One of them is a group of Indonesian Vtubers working under the banner of Re: Memories who created and manages a character named Evelyn. The character has garnered over 64,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel.
