Am I missing something? What is all of this?
Juts bad anime avatars ?
This is a great question. But you do understand explaining it is like a geek explaining how Dungeons and Dragons work. It is just a weird thing to explain.
I think the bad ones can be shitty anime ripoffs yeah because the artist who design them in the first place are very expensive to hire. Then you have to get a Live2D rigger who programs the digital version into the software. So the cheap way is to take a photo of your favorite anime girl and put her into that software yourself, but on the whole they are not anime at all. They are just streamers, like Ninja or Dr.Disrespect. They play games and talk to chat but not about politics or world events nothing stressful just chill funny shit or perverted shit if that is in her character lore. Most of Hololive is not kid friendly. They are trying to tame it down some but not easy to do.
Most of them suck at the games they are playing anyway so they need the foundation lore story to keep things going. some are good at games but that is not really why they stream.
I know this thread has anime themes but IMO it is a mistake to think of it that way, big difference between anime and idols. Just watch a few check Watame the sheep I just posted above she is playing Mario Kart with her Chat. She does not have to be good at the game, they just are there for the chatting and spending the time doing something outside of daily life.
They are really not very anime after you've watched for a bit. I've been trying to think about which of them screams anime to me and I have not been able to pin it down. If you come at it from ignorance and only know anime as a causal fan or it is something you hear of but never really watched then maybe it will look like anime but these virtual youtubers are not really anime. Think streamers first because that is what they really are then they perform comedy or music.
If you are coming from an anime fan background you would understand why they really are not very anime. They are something else. A manga is not anime but animes come from manga.
There are youbers who run major anime focused channels that at first had no idea what to make of vtubers they really don't relate that well to anime fans.
Anime fans are used to watching anime girls in episodes. Not interacting with an anime girl if you can understand the difference.
One is a story you watch the other is a like a role playing game but kinda real.
Like the Marvel Comic Book are really not the same thing as the MCU blockbuster movies. It is the culture that is the same but not every Marvel movie fan will understand what cosplay is and why anyone would dress up like Spiderman. The vibe is there but it is not the same experience just the born from the same things you enjoyed. Hololive vtubers are mostly shitposters, perverts, meme makers, people with high viral IQ. This is the crew you are dealing with when you watch vtubers they try to keep a story going while trying to entertain but because they are real people, they oversleep, get salty at losing games, have real people problems behind the avatar so there is a very complex dual layer going on. The Human and the Avatar.
A vtuber fan is following a few different stories, the talent and their real life, family life, sick parent, having to move, broken PC, or the deadliest issues an old boyfriend or China getting pissed because you said Taiwan on stream.
The Avatar the talent controls has a story like a comic book hero it has a background and a lore. Sometimes they follow it or it changes over time because the fanbase changes it. Example a Phoenix is called a Chicken, and a girl who wanted to be a Peacock princess is called a Turkey on day one by her fans.
Anime does not flow like that, it is not this fluid. None of the youtubers who stream can pull off these stories and dynamic changes.
The more you interact with it the more you can change the flow of the story you are watching. There are many ways one person in Chat can change a vtuber's path forever. There is no reset the fans and clippers will not allow the story to be reset. So the peacock princess is just going to have to live with her being a turkey.
I hope that helps in understanding why it is really a different type of thing so even the diehard anime fans kinda get lost and some don't understand the reason to watch.
Some of the talents are better at controlling who they are in character than others because they are better storytellers than Chat can come up with.
here is an quick example of what I mean by being different, you can't do this with a tv show or anime
and the chat of 20,000 or so had to sit through that and this is not part of Kiara's character because Kiara is a pervet and swears a lot.
the father was in the chat and sent a thank you super chat because the bird was the only thing that stops the baby from crying so her story changes a bit
she can go back to her normal self but the clips, reddit and wiki that tracks Kiara puts this as one of those many events that changes things.
After the baby thing Kiara started to censor her curse words a lot more and Kiara gained a lot more female fans.
Kiara can't do this for every parent in her chat but the fact she went off script to do it tells you about her as a person. She is no longer just an avatar most of her fans know about her life her mother and what happened to her in Japan in 2020. You know more about the talent until the character she is playing becomes transparent.
Every single one of them have moments like that, personal moments with family. Things like should you tell your mother what your job really is and what will she think of you?
buizel ?
