50 Fun Facts About VTubers

Which virtual character, who began posting YouTube videos in late 2016, coined the term 'virtual YouTuber'?

Kizuna AI's sudden popularity set off the VTuber boom: by mid-2018 about 4,000 virtual YouTubers were active, and agencies such as Hololive and Nijisanji had sprung up.

Which Japanese animation software, first introduced in 2008, is typically used to rig the drawn models of VTubers?

Live2D splits a flat illustration into layers that can be warped to fake depth, so a webcam can puppet the head and expressions of a drawn character.

Borrowed from Japanese idol groups, which word describes a VTuber retiring a character or leaving an agency amicably?

Graduation softens what is really a retirement: the agency often keeps the character, so a departing streamer may return under a new persona that fans treat as an open secret.

Which Hololive English star, nicknamed 'Same-chan' in Japan, was the first VTuber to reach four million subscribers?

Gawr Gura got her Japanese nickname from same, the word for shark, and she passed one million subscribers only forty days after her September 2020 debut.

Which Puerto Rican streamer became the first VTuber to win Content Creator of the Year at The Game Awards in 2023?

Ironmouse lives with an immune disorder that has left her largely bedridden, and her charity campaigns for fellow patients have raised over $1 million.

Which Major League Baseball team held a Hololive theme night in July 2024, the agency's first with a US sports team?

The Los Angeles Dodgers ran several Japanese tie-ins that season to build on their signing of Shohei Ohtani, and this one came with limited-edition merchandise and talent appearances.

Mori Calliope, the Hololive English singer signed to EMI Records, is in her lore the first apprentice of which figure?

The Grim Reaper had so little business, her lore says, that Calliope took up VTubing to collect souls; her character is reminiscent of the Japanese shinigami.

Takanashi Kiara of Hololive English stresses that her character is not a chicken or a turkey but which legendary bird?

Phoenix or not, Kiara's lore makes her an idol who dreams of owning a fast food chain, and her character was drawn by huke, the illustrator of Steins;Gate.

Hololive's Amelia Watson, who shares a surname with Sherlock Holmes's confidant, plays a time-travelling what?

Detective work is how her story starts: by her official profile she began investigating strange rumours about Hololive's talents, then decided to become an idol herself.

Which nickname, taken from an image file format, describes streamers who use sprites instead of a rigged model?

PNGTuber setups swap between still frames to show different emotions or actions, a low-tech route when a commissioned rigged model can cost as much as US$2,000.

Which AI-driven VTuber, created by the programmer Vedal, began as a bot built only to play the rhythm game osu!?

Neuro-sama speaks through a large language model and a text-to-speech voice, and Vedal usually appears beside her as a turtle avatar, sometimes perched on her head.

Which Hololive VTuber with rabbit ears and carrot hair ornaments voices a monster in Dragon Quest Treasures?

Usada Pekora marked one million subscribers in December 2020 by revealing her job as a virtual YouTuber to her mother, live on stream.

Which Hololive VTuber calls herself captain of a pirate crew, although her official bio admits she owns no ship?

Houshou Marine hopes her streaming career will pay for a ship, which makes her only a cosplayer; in January 2024 she became the most-subscribed VTuber from Japan.

Hololive's Inugami Korone became the official brand ambassador in Japan for which video game franchise in 2022?

Sonic the Hedgehog fans can hear her in the Japanese dub of the second film, and Korone-themed cosmetic items were released for the game Sonic Frontiers.

Which Hololive singer, also known for her Tetris skill, became the first VTuber to perform on The First Take in 2023?

Hoshimachi Suisei broke the channel's premiere viewership record with her one-take song, and two years later she fulfilled a career-long goal by performing at the Nippon Budokan.

Which Hololive VTuber topped YouTube's all-time Super Chat earners in August 2020, with about 85 million yen?

Kiryu Coco's haul was worth roughly US$800,000, and seven of the ten biggest Super Chat earners of all time that month were VTubers.

Which singer became Hololive's founding VTuber when she debuted in September 2017, before the agency formally existed?

Tokino Sora was the first VTuber to use her company's avatar capture software, and she went on to sign a record deal with Victor Entertainment in 2019.

Which Twitch VTuber persona, puppeted with a full motion capture suit, is run by a creator known as The Technician?

CodeMiko's world is wired to chat: viewers can alter the avatar and her surroundings by sending messages or donating money, and she uses it to interview other streamers.

Which VTuber hosted the first Vtuber Awards, broadcast on her own Twitch channel in December 2023?

Filian said VTubers are often a footnote at other ceremonies, so this one was made for them and held on a virtual stage instead of a physical one.

Which popular Twitch streamer tried avatar-based streams in 2020, using a model commissioned from a VTuber artist?

Pokimane's virtual debut came as VTubers were surging on Twitch, where viewing of VTuber content grew by 467% in 2021 compared with a year earlier.

Which US senator was asked by streamer Sykkuno, in a viral 2024 campaign clip, whether he knew what a VTuber was?

Bernie Sanders fielded the question during a virtual campaign event for presidential candidate Kamala Harris, and the exchange spread widely online.

Hololive's founder said his idea for a virtual idol agency was inspired by characters such as which Vocaloid singer?

Hatsune Miku was one inspiration; his company had been building AR and VR software, and in March 2017 it showed a tech demo of real-time avatar motion capture with two-way live streaming.

Which fast food chain gave a Hololive English VTuber a cameo in an anime-themed commercial in July 2021?

Taco Bell made the anime ad for the return of its Nacho Fries and launched it as the Tokyo Summer Olympics opened; its creative director says it was the first American company to feature a VTuber.

Which streaming service developed its own VTuber character in 2021 to host videos promoting its anime content?

Netflix named its character N-ko, and it is one of several organisations with a VTuber mascot: two Japanese prefectures have their own, and a baseball team shows its pair on the stadium videoboard.

Kobo Kanaeru, who launched a virtual motorcycle club with Honda in 2024, is in Hololive's branch for which country?

Indonesia got its Hololive branch in April 2020, months before the English one, and the Honda club, BeAT Aeru, was billed as the country's first virtual motorcycle club.

Hololive's Shirakami Fubuki is described in her lore as a white-haired, animal-eared otaku version of which animal?

Fox noises even named her fans: they are called Sukonbu, from her word sukon, which blends the slang term suko with kon, the Japanese sound for the animal's cry.

Which San Francisco VTuber agency, co-founded in 2020 by a member of Twitch's founding team, shut down in July 2025?

VShojo billed itself as a talent-first agency, yet it folded within days of its biggest star quitting over revenue she said had been withheld, including money meant for charity.

Which nickname do fans use for Motoaki Tanigo, the entrepreneur who founded Hololive's parent company in 2016?

Yagoo was picked as one of Japan's Top 20 Entrepreneurs by Forbes Japan for its January 2022 issue, a few years after his company pivoted from AR and VR software to VTubers.

What name was given to the first generation of Hololive English, the five VTubers who debuted in September 2020?

Myth debuted over a single weekend after auditions for English speakers that spring, and within ten months one of its members had become the most-subscribed VTuber on YouTube.

The free fan game HoloCure, starring Hololive VTubers, takes its gameplay inspiration from which indie hit?

Vampire Survivors supplied the formula of auto-attacking through waves of enemies; developer Kay Yu released HoloCure free on itch.io in 2022, then on Steam in 2023 with the agency's permission.

What is the name of the all-male VTuber agency that Hololive's parent company launched in June 2019?

Holostars was folded in under the Hololive Production brand in December 2019, and in 2022 it gained its first English-speaking group, Tempus.

Which Nijisanji EN wave, featuring Vox Akuma, was the first English-speaking male group from a major VTuber agency?

Luxiem debuted in December 2021 with five members: Luca Kaneshiro, Shu Yamino, Ike Eveland, Mysta Rias and Vox Akuma.

With which Chinese video platform did Hololive sign a 2019 deal to open 15 channels and stream alongside YouTube?

Bilibili brought Hololive 10 million combined subscribers by September 2020, but the six talents of its China branch all retired late that year after a backlash from mainland viewers.

Which Japanese company, founded in 2016 to make augmented and virtual reality software, owns the agency Hololive?

Cover Corporation was funded early on by VR start-up incubators, shifted its focus to VTubers, and began trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in March 2023.

Which company, formerly known as Ichikara, founded the VTuber agency Nijisanji at the beginning of 2018?

Anycolor set the agency up to promote flat drawn avatars and live streaming, a shift away from the 3D models and edited clips that the first VTubers had popularised.

Ninomae Ina'nis, the Hololive illustrator whose bangs are tentacles, has head flaps modelled on which sea animal?

Octopus is tako in Japanese, which is why her fans are called Takodachis, a blend of tako and tomodachi, the word for friend.

Hololive's Takanashi Kiara, who streams in English, Japanese and German, was born in which European country?

Austria is her birthplace and German her native language; a manga volume and a GameCube game given to her by family sparked her early interest in Japanese culture.

What one-word name, a portmanteau describing online broadcasters, does the agency Nijisanji give its VTuber talents?

Livers is short for live streamers, and the name fits the agency's history: it began as a face-tracking phone app that recruits were expected to broadcast with.

Which Japanese electronics giant makes Mocopi, a set of motion capture trackers geared towards VTubers and social VR?

Sony's trackers are one of several hardware routes to a moving avatar; simpler setups use a webcam, a phone camera or hand-tracking devices such as the Leap Motion Controller.

Which Japanese term, short for 'virtual girl incarnation', names a female avatar used by creators who are often male?

Babiniku took its name from the title of a June 2018 live stream, and performers may use a voice changer or simply their natural voice with the avatar.

Japanese fans refer to the performer behind a VTuber avatar as the nakanohito, a word that literally means what?

The person inside is the literal sense of nakanohito, and Japanese courts have begun to treat insults aimed at an avatar as attacks on that performer's own rights.

Which indie software, crowdfunded on Indiegogo in 2014, first enabled live avatars at home through face motion capture?

FaceRig later sold on Steam, and a module added in 2015 with a Japanese animation firm let it drive flat drawn avatars as well as 3D ones.

Which professional wrestling term describes the in-character persona that VTubers keep up on stream?

Kayfabe links the two trades so closely that the wrestler Mace, who took up VTubing in 2021 while with WWE, said the two professions were the same thing.

Under which name did Selen Tatsuki return as an independent VTuber after Nijisanji EN ended her contract in 2024?

Dokibird's exit became a flashpoint: criticism of how the agency handled it pushed down its parent company's share price, and several of its streamers took breaks from social media.

The first Vtuber Awards ceremony in 2023 took place on a virtual stage designed in which game development tool?

Unreal Engine was chosen after plans for a physical stage were scrapped; a studio executive said a real set was not the right philosophy for the show.

Which early VTuber earned a Guinness World Record in 2019 by live streaming from a helium balloon for Nissin noodles?

Kaguya Luna's phone reached 30 kilometres above sea level, beating the previous record for the highest-altitude live stream, which stood at 18.42 kilometres.

Which London-based virtual vlogger uploaded her first animated-avatar video in 2011, years before the VTuber boom?

Ami Yamato vlogs as a 3D-animated character who does not seem to realise she is animated, and she edits herself into famous films in parodies she calls Mash-Ins.

Before Hololive, founder Motoaki Tanigo developed video game characters in collaboration with which Japanese company?

Sanrio, the home of Hello Kitty, worked with him while he was at the content company Imagineer; he went on to found several start-ups before the one behind Hololive.

Which streamer's record for active paid Twitch subscriptions was beaten by a VTuber during a September 2024 subathon?

Kai Cenat lost the mark when the VTuber passed 320,000 active paid subscribers, then took it back with a subathon of his own that November.

Nijisanji began in 2018 as a face tracking app built around the Animoji feature of which Apple smartphone?

iPhone X owners could use the app to become a VTuber without a studio, and the name Nijisanji only later came to mean the talents themselves.