Fans waved glow sticks at an animated character on stage, having packed a sold-out Hollywood live performance corridor to see their digital idol carry out — showcasing the worldwide ambitions of Japan’s “VTuber” subculture.
Pink-haired musician and livestreamer Mori Calliope seems to be similar to a personality from an anime cartoon, dropped at life on stage by a hologram-like phantasm.
Platforms like Netflix have helped take Japanese anime mainstream — and Calliope’s Tokyo-based expertise company needs its roster of digital YouTubers, or VTubers, to be the nation’s subsequent large cultural export.
“I don’t really like most streamers, but then when I discovered VTubers, I realised, ‘hey, you know, I’m actually into this’,” stated Calliope live performance attendee Luigi Galvan. “They look like anime characters, I like anime, so it was easy to get into the VTuber format that way.”
The actors behind VTubers use movement seize strategies to speak instantly on-line with followers, who will pay to focus on their feedback to the character and different viewers.
Nearly half of high VTuber company Cover Corp’s digital stars below its well-known “hololive” model communicate primarily in English, not Japanese, and the corporate not too long ago opened a U.S. workplace to speed up enterprise in North America.
Tokyo-based QY Research predicts that the once-niche VTuber market will make nearly $4 billion yearly worldwide by 2030, up from $1.4 billion in 2024.
Around 4,000 followers attended the current live performance in Los Angeles, hololive’s first solo artist gig outdoors Japan.
AFP requested Calliope — in her avatar kind — if digital YouTubers can actually crack the U.S. market.
“A couple of years ago, my firm stance was, ‘No, it won’t,'” stated the star, who has over 2.5 million YouTube subscribers.
“But these days, I like to be a little more hopeful,” added Calliope, whose actor wished to stay nameless like most within the business.
Calliope, who playfully calls herself a “Grim Reaper” on a mission “to harvest souls”, likes black gothic outfits that distinction along with her lengthy pink hair.
An alter ego helps audiences “see and appreciate you for what lies within” as an alternative of age or seems to be, permitting VTubers’ expertise as musicians and raconteurs to shine, she stated.
Calliope is one among Cover Corp’s greater than 80 hololive VTubers, who collectively have 80 million YouTube subscribers globally, from Indonesia to Canada.
While Japan reigns supreme within the VTuber world, the nation may face fierce competitors from neighbouring cultural superpower South Korea within the coming years, warned Cover Corp’s CEO Motoaki Tanigo.
“Aspiring K-pop singers have survived tough training and are already professional,” making the nation a possible goldmine for VTuber actors, he instructed AFP in Tokyo. “Can we easily find people like that in Japan? Of course not.”
South Korean VTuber corporations “stand a good chance of growing exponentially” within the vital US market as a result of American audiences choose polished performers, Tanigo stated.
In distinction, in Japan, followers typically cherish the method of unskilled idols evolving, he defined.
Global enlargement can even include political dangers, with one common hololive streamer incurring the wrath of Chinese viewers by inadvertently suggesting self-ruled Taiwan — which Beijing claims as its personal — was a rustic.
While VTubers reside in a digital world, Tanigo stated the human ingredient behind the characters is a crucial a part of their enchantment.
“In principle, we won’t” use generative AI know-how to create new digital skills, he stated.
“This whole business is based on fans’ desire to support someone because of their extraordinary artistic talent,” Tanigo stated. “I think fans would be left feeling confused as to what, or who, they are rooting for.”
Calliope fan Ian Goff, 23, agreed, saying he’s fascinated by the actors behind VTubers, and their avatars are simply the “cherry on top”.
“You can make a character with AI, but you can’t make a person with AI because that’s what makes the VTubers who they are,” the San Diego resident instructed AFP.
In the quickly rising, aggressive business, VTubers threat overexerting themselves by livestreaming nearly continuous to develop their fandom.
“The longer they go on livestreaming, the more fans watch them,” stated Takeshi Okamoto, a media research professor at Japan’s Kindai University. “This can potentially amount to exploitation of their passion for the job.”
Yet the professor — who himself doubles as a zombie-like VTuber — sees a vivid future for the business.
With the recognition of digital worlds just like the Metaverse, “a day might come where it becomes more normal for us to live as avatars”, he stated.
“Our lives, then, could more seamlessly fuse with VTuber stars.”
© 2025 AFP