A or is an online entertainer who uses a virtual avatar generated using computer graphics. Real-time motion capture is often used to capture movement and changes in facial expression. The digital trend originated in Japan in the mid-2010s, and became an international online phenomenon in the 2020s. The majority of VTubers are live streamers. By 2020, there were more than 10,000 active VTubers. Although the term is an allusion to the video platform YouTube, they also use websites such as Niconico, Twitch, Facebook, Twitter, and Bilibili.
VTubers are associated with Japanese popular culture and aesthetics, such as anime and manga, and moe anthropomorphism with human or non-human traits. Some VTubers use anthropomorphic avatars, including non-human characters such as animals.
The first entertainer to use the phrase "virtual YouTuber", Kizuna AI, began creating content on YouTube in late 2016. Her popularity sparked a VTuber trend in Japan, and it spurred the establishment of specialized agencies to promote them, including major ones such as Hololive Production and Nijisanji. Fan translations and foreign-language VTubers have marked a rise in the trend's international popularity. Virtual YouTubers have appeared in domestic advertising campaigns and have broken livestream-related world records.
Overview
VTubers use avatars created with programs such as Live2D, portraying characters designed by online artists. VTubers are not bound by physical limitations, and many of them engage in activities that are unconstrained by their real-world identity. Some VTubers, particularly those from marginalized communities, choose to use avatars to reflect their online identity for personal comfort and safety reasons. Transgender VTubers may use their avatars as a means to better reflect their preferred presentation to their audience.
VTubers often portray themselves as a kayfabe character, not unlike professional wrestling; Mace, an AEW wrestler who himself began streaming on Twitch as a VTuber in 2021, remarked that the two professions were "literally the same thing". Ironmouse described her character as being akin to a superhero costume.
Technology
A VTuber's avatar is typically animated using a webcam and software, which captures the streamer's motions, expressions, and mouth movements, and maps them to a two- or three-dimensional model. Both free and paid programs have been developed for loading models and performing motion capture, with some capable of being used without a webcam (albeit with pre-determined animations), and some also supporting virtual reality hardware, or hand tracking devices such as the Leap Motion Controller.
Some programs offload motion tracking to external phone cameras via mobile apps to save system resources, and take advantage of hardware features (such as Face ID on iPhone) that can enable more precise motion capture. In 2022, VTube Studio released an update integrating with the Nvidia Broadcast tools, allowing for NPU-accelerated facial motion capture on systems using Nvidia RTX graphics cards.
The proprietary animation software Live2D is typically used to rig two-dimensional models constructed from drawn textures. Three-dimensional models can also be used; these typically use VRM, an extension of the glTF specifications designed to define humanoid character avatars for metaverse applications, and is supported by software such as Liv (which composites VRM avatars into VR games) and VRoid Studio (which can be used to create anime-styled avatars and export them to VRM), and also exported for use in other software such as VRChat. Commissioned models can cost as high as US$2,000 depending on their level of detail.
Some VTubers, colloquially known as a "PNGTuber" (in reference to the PNG image format), use sprites as opposed to a rigged model, with different frames for conveying different emotions or actions.
Agencies and commercialization Major VTubers are often employed by talent agencies, with business models influenced by those used by Japanese idol agencies. Streamers are employed by an agency (sometimes via open auditions) to portray characters developed by the company, which are then commercialized via merchandising and other promotional appearances, as well as traditional revenue streams such as monetization of their videos, and viewer donations. Another holdover from idol groups is the use of the term 'graduation' to refer to a VTuber retiring their character and/or leaving an agency on amicable terms.
In agencies, a VTuber's character and other assets are often the intellectual property of the agency; if they are not able to receive rights to their character's IP when departing an agency, former corporate VTubers may transition to streaming independently under an alternate persona, with their past identity usually treated as an open secret.
Personal and legal rights With the rapid growth of the VTuber industry, the mental burden on performers (referred to in Japanese as and the ongoing online harassment directed at their avatars have emerged as significant structural challenges.
In September 2020, Anycolor, the corporation behind the Nijisanji agency, created an "Aggressive Acts and Slander Countermeasure Team" to offer counselling to victims of harassment and take legal measures against perpetrators of harassment, specifically the online harassment plaguing the Japanese entertainment industry. This announcement came in the wake of Hololive's VTuber Mano Aloe's retirement after only two weeks of activity due to online harassment.
A unique legal issue within this space is whether insults aimed at a fictional avatar legally constitute defamation against the actual performer behind it. In Japan, judicial precedents have begun to establish that if viewers equate the virtual avatar with the performer, infringing acts against the avatar can be legally recognized as an infringement of the performer's personal rights. This legal framework has enabled performers and their agencies to successfully file requests for the disclosure of perpetrators' identifying information, as demonstrated by a landmark ruling by the Tokyo District Court in 2022.
History Predecessors On February 12, 2010, visual novel maker Nitroplus began uploading videos to its YouTube channel featuring an animated 3D version of its mascot Super Sonico, who would usually talk to the audience about herself or about releases related to the company. On June 13, 2011, UK-based Japanese vlogger Ami Yamato uploaded her first video, which featured an animated, virtual avatar speaking to the camera. In 2012, Japanese company Weathernews Inc. debuted a Vocaloid-styled character called Weatheroid Type A Airi on SOLiVE24, a 24-hour weather live stream on Nico Nico Douga, on YouTube and their website."ウェザーロイド Airi". Comptique Extra issue of December: Vtique Vol.02 (コンプティーク 12月号増刊 Vティーク Vol.2). Kadokawa. 2018. pp.76–79. In 2014, Airi got her own solo program every Thursday and began live broadcasting with motion capture.
In 2014, the FaceRig indie software launched on Indiegogo as a crowdfunding project and later on Steam, becoming the first software suite that enabled live avatars at home via face motion capture and leading to animated avatars starting to be actively used on streaming websites and YouTube. The Live2D software module enabling 2D avatars and was added one year later in 2015 in collaboration with Live2D, Inc.
Breakout
In late 2016, Kizuna AI, the first VTuber to achieve breakout popularity, made her debut on YouTube. She was the first to coin and use the term "virtual YouTuber". Created by digital production company Activ8 and voice-acted by Nozomi Kasuga, Kizuna AI created a sense of "real intimacy" with fans, as she was responsive to their questions. Within ten months, she had over two million subscribers and later became a culture ambassador of the Japan National Tourism Organization. Kizuna AI's popularity can be attributed to the oversaturation of traditional webcam YouTubers and for aspects of characters that the audience would not expect. For example, despite her otherwise juvenile appearance, Kizuna AI often uses profanity in her videos when she gets frustrated while playing a game.
The VTuber trend Kizuna AI's sudden popularity sparked a VTuber trend. Between May and mid-July 2018, the number of active VTubers increased from 2,000 to 4,000. and followed Kizuna as the second and third most popular VTubers, with 750,000 and 625,000 subscribers respectively. and , two other early VTubers, each gained followings of 500,000 in six months.
In the beginning of 2018, Anycolor Inc. (then known as Ichikara) founded the VTuber agency Nijisanji. Nijisanji helped popularise the use of Live2D models instead of the prior focus on 3D models as well as the shift towards livestreaming instead of edited video and clips that was the standard for VTubers like Kizuna Ai. Cover Corporation, a company that was originally developing augmented and virtual reality software, shifted its focus to VTubers by establishing Hololive.
After their initial success in Japan, the trend began to expand internationally via their appeal to the anime and manga fandom. Agencies like Hololive and Nijisanji created branches in China, South Korea, Indonesia, and India, as well as English-language branches targeting a global audience. Meanwhile, independent VTubers began to appear in many countries, from Japan to the United States. In July 2018, VTubers had a collective subscriber count of 12.7 million, and more than 720 million total views. By January 2020, there were over 10,000 VTubers.
The COVID-19 pandemic led to an overall increase in viewership of video game live streaming in general in 2020, which helped contribute to the growth of VTubers into a mainstream phenomenon. Searches on Google for VTuber related content increased over 2020, leading towards the September 2020 launch of Hololive's English branch. In August 2020, seven of the ten largest Super Chat earners of all time on YouTube were VTubers, including Hololive member at number one, who by that time had earned approximately (approximately US$ in 2020). VTubers accounted for 38% of YouTube's 300 most profitable channels, with a total revenue of US$26,229,911 (roughly half of which being viewer donations). YouTube's 2020 Culture and Trends report highlights VTubers as one of the notable trends of that year, with 1.5 billion views per month by October.
At the same time, the popularity of VTubers continued to rise on Twitch, with a host of several notable English-speaking VTubers such as then VShojo members Projekt Melody and Ironmouse. Pokimane also experimented with avatar-based streams using a model commissioned from a VTuber artist.
On March 30, 2021, Kizuna AI was chosen as one of Asia's top 60 influencers. In May 2021, Twitch added a VTuber tag for streams as part of a wider expansion of its tag system. On 30 June 2021, Gawr Gura—a member of Hololive's first English branch—overtook Kizuna Ai as the most-subscribed VTuber on YouTube.
Cover's CEO Motoaki "Yagoo" Tanigo was selected as one of the Japan's Top 20 Entrepreneurs by Forbes Japan in its January 2022 issue. The following month, in the midst of a subathon event, Ironmouse accumulated the largest number of active paid subscriptions of all streamers on the platform at that point in time, although still behind an overall record previously set by Ludwig. According to data provided by parent company Amazon, VTubing content on Twitch grew by 467% in 2021 compared with a year earlier. In December 2022, the independent VTuber Neuro-sama gained attention on Twitch for her use of a large language model attached to a speech synthesis system to interact with her audience.