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VTubing: How a Japanese Phenomenon Is Going Worldwide

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Re: VTubing: How a Japanese Phenomenon Is Going Worldwide

#11

Post by ben_w »

rmunn wrote: post #4

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.

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.

Re: VTubing: How a Japanese Phenomenon Is Going Worldwide

#12

Post by maeln »

krige wrote: post #2

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.

Re: VTubing: How a Japanese Phenomenon Is Going Worldwide

#13

Post by teleforce »

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:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VTuber

Re: VTubing: How a Japanese Phenomenon Is Going Worldwide

#14

Post by krige »

maeln wrote: post #12
krige wrote: post #2

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 mad…

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.

Re: VTubing: How a Japanese Phenomenon Is Going Worldwide

#15

Post by flobosg »

rmunn wrote: post #5
krige wrote: post #2

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.

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"

Re: VTubing: How a Japanese Phenomenon Is Going Worldwide

#20

Post by sunaookami »

rmunn wrote: post #4

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.

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.
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