#PastebinMonday 06/14/2021 I Didn't Think I Would Take This So Hard Edition

Hey guys, how’s it goin?

I am in a weird place right now. My motivation to do anything productive is near zero. I did not think a particular something would hit me like it has, but it's got me thinking to myself a lot. And it's messing with sleep schedule. A lot. I feel like I'm about to write an entire monologue about a particular announcement that took place this past week that I did not think would affect my life in any meaningful away, but it does pertain to something that has changed quite a bit about the type of entertainment I consume.

If you saw my shitty Tweets this week, then you probably know what I am getting at. If you haven't, let me tell you a story about a virtual dragon named Kiryu Coco.

Virtual YouTubers (“V-Tubers”) have taken the Internet, if not the whole world, by storm in recent years. These are real people who put themselves behind a digital avatar that moves and talks with them while they chat and/or play games, mostly on YouTube. The technology that has made this possible has really come a long way since its inception.

There is a Japanese talent agency called “hololive” that specializes in managing V-Tubers. They want their members to behave like “idols.” They even host regular concerts and publish original songs. They are probably the most popular V-Tuber agency in the world. So many people apply to their agency and they manage their growth so much that they hire new talent in “generations.” There are, like, 13 active generations of hololive V-Tubers right now. It's crazy how many people live stream under the hololive label. (And yet it's nothing compared to Nijisanji...)

Within the fourth Japanese generation of hololive, I ended up falling into the V-Tuber rabbit hole via a dragon V-Tuber named Kiryu Coco. She's Japanese. She's American. She can move her hips like Shakira. She has a dragon tail that is a butt plug. She uses multiple kinds of English swear words on several occasions. She reviews memes  posted to the r/hololive official subreddit. She toes the line of political correctness so many times. She shows a considerate, hard-working side so many times. I find her to be, by a wide margin, the most interesting character within hololive.

She's also shown herself to be quite a mainstay within hololive.  For instance, YouTube has a feature called “Super Chat” where viewers can pay to pin comments onto live chats. A site called Playboard started tracking YouTube Super Chats at the beginning of 2020. At the moment that I am typing this, Kiryu Coco is the NUMBER ONE MOST SUPER CHATTED CHANNEL OF ALL TIME. In fact, the top FIVE super chat earners according to Playboard (and eight of the top ten) are ALL HOLOLIVE V-TUBERS—Uruha Rushia, Usada Pekora, Houshou Marine, and Minato Aqua all make up the rest of the top five. Coco is often credited in contributing the most to that explosion in popularity due to her bilingual nature. In addition to that, Coco has provided emotional and even technical support to the other hololive members on countless occasions. The other members can't seem to stop marveling at how much work she puts in to her channel and how caring she is to other members.

Because of Coco, I find myself consuming a lot more V-Tuber content, mostly through translated clips. I've made it part of my Saturday night routine to watch her Reddit meme review, which this past week was done in collaboration with Amelia Watson of the first English generation of hololive, which Coco was instrumental in getting started. (There was even a second round of hololive English auditions held just a few months ago.) Another member of hololive English 1st gen, Takanashi Kiara, has a running bi-weekly talk show, HoloTalk, where she interviews (primarily) Japanese hololive members and live-translates them to her English speaking audience. I don't watch a lot of live content, but I do make sure to watch that show as it happens. (On a related note, I just learned that Coco will be the next guest on HoloTalk this Saturday for reasons that will be made evident below.) On some occasions when I get frustrated, which doesn't happen that often so I must not be challenging myself enough, I will spell out “F-U-C-K-M-E” like in Coco's ending BGM song.

Why would I go out of the way to sing so many of Kiryu Coco's praises and exclaim all of the reasons why I like her so much? Well, in case you haven't heard:

Kiryu Coco is leaving hololive on July 1. She is going to have a big farewell stream that day starting at 7 am EDT.

To the best of my knowledge, this is not the first time a hololive talent has parted ways with the agency, but it is the first time that a talent is leaving on their own terms in order to do bigger and better things. (I think someone else retired due to health concerns.) If I am reading the translations correctly—I've barely started learning Japanese so the most I could tell you is what time it is right now—Coco said in her announcement that she was going to be a superstar in another world and, in another stream, also said that the world of hololive became too small for her. Always looking to go bigger, even after being the “physically” largest girl within hololive. Sasuga Kaichou.

I didn't think I would take this so hard. I got to thinking how this would affect my routine and I actually got depressed. I don't look forward to too many things in life, but the weekly Reddit meme reviews became one of them, particularly when Coco got other hololive members involved to laugh with her. That one hour is probably filled with the most laughter I get within a given week. (No, I'm not really sad the rest of the time. Don't worry about me like that.) After this month, however, there will be no more reviews. Fellow housemate and 4th gen mate Amane Kanata has offered to continue the tradition in some form and Coco has given her blessing, but those won't feel the same. In all likelihood, I will end up going back to spending my Saturday nights falling asleep to Proton Jon's Fortune Cookie (or possibly whatever shitty Steam game Gildersneeze decides to play at those times), but it definitely will not be the same.

It's not like the person behind Kiryu Coco will be gone for good after July 1, though. It may be sharing “forbidden knowledge” to talk about the alternate identities  of V-Tubers, but I've actually made it a pastime to seek out such knowledge because I like learning about the people that entertain me. I seem to have a particular thing for voice actors. Anyway, the forbidden knowledge of Kiryu Coco is one of the worst-kept open secrets within hololive fandom and it takes little effort to actually find her personal YouTube channel. I know this because OVER A QUARTER OF A MILLION PEOPLE got the same idea and subscribed with me to her personal channel since Coco's announcement, more than doubling the channel's subscribers. That said, since she will, presumably, no longer have access to the Kiryu Coco model after July 1, it won't feel the same. The personality will not be completely the same. She happens to have a V-Tuber model of her own in which she appears to get into the same voice as Coco when compared to her webcam broadcasts, but it will not have the same impact.

As an anime fan and a sports fan, I could not help but see the parallels between Kiryu Coco and sports radio host Dan Le Batard, which you may not have been able to help but see on my feed this week. I'm still not sorry. Le Batard is another person of foreign descent (Cuban parents) who also developed a cult-like fanbase by being edgy and antiestablishment within an establishment with a squeaky-clean image like ESPN for multiple years. He left the company this past January to create his own podcast network.

Does Coco have similar aspirations post-hololive? Who knows?

The funny thing is, Le Batard has been doing his show independently since leaving ESPN and I have yet to listen to it. I was listening to his ESPN show because it was convenient for lazy-ass me to discretely listen to it at work through an app and still feel connected to other people from my relatively isolated existence at my desk. (It's not that I hate being around people. It's just that having to interact with people fills me with great anxiety. I hate feeling stupid. I hate being ill prepared.) Nowadays, I would need to go through extra effort to listen to Le Batard and the cast of characters his show presents, effort that, to this day, I have been unwilling to exert. I suspect that I will have the same experience with Kiryu Coco. I will have to specifically devote time to watching her in my down time, time I could also be spending developing tutorials for Puzzle League or getting materials ready for the next tournament that is never more than three months away. God, my laziness and lack of energy is really bringing the impostor's syndrome on hard, isn't it?

I may be in a depressed mood, but from the moment I learned of the news, I was and continue to be so happy for Coco. It is not often that people get to decide what they do on their own terms and Coco has definitely made enough for herself to do just that. It's the kind of freedom I can only dream of. All I know to do is to wish her well on her next ventures and celebrate the memories that she made. It just so happens that I wake up to get ready for work at the time her farewell stream is going to start. I will be making sure to tune in for that.

Whew, I have definitely never written a weekly update that long! It is safe to say that the Kiryu Coco announcement completely consumed me in a way that I did not anticipate, but writing this... what do you call it... a soliloquy?... about how Coco has impacted my life has been VERY cathartic and gone a long way towards helping me cope. If you learn ANYTHING from reading this Pastebin, regardless of whether of not you were interested in anime or YouTubers or V-Tubers or Kiryu Coco or sports talk or Dan Le Batard or Reddit or shitty memes or anything else I mentioned here, I hope you will be able to realize that it is okay to be open about your feelings. Only when you truly examine yourself and determine your shortcomings can you hope to realize what you can do to become a better person. I pride myself on self-reflection and self-accountability and knowing my limits, but I'm not sure I've always been open about those kinds of things in front of others. Even putting this out there fills me with some trepidation because I was also the kind of person that would keep personal and business matters separate, to keep the me that is sitting here writing this Pastebin and the me that I have presented on stream for the past eight years somewhat separate. Writing this has made start to realize that there have been parts of my life that I have been living completely the wrong way from what is best for me.

I am changing, though. I am committing more to exercise. I just walked 50 minutes on the treadmill yesterday for two and a half miles. Progress! I'm going to do more of that on the weekends and after work. I need the pick-me-up! I am also committing more to sleep. If I do not get those nine hours every day, I do NOT function, like, at all. I'm having to sacrifice some streaming time in order to come to these conclusions, but I'm going to set myself up to stream more for real. In fact, let me post an actual SCHEDULE to commit to!

Wednesday – 7:30pm ET – 8 SECOND LAKITUS ONLY; Yes, I am finally going to show the world how to get to the 8 second Lakitu stage in Tetris Attack. I will also learn how to get the timing down for entering that stage consistently—it's a 7 frame window so you better believe you can get it consistent—and hopefully do some speedruns with it. Have I mentioned that I HATE being ill-prepared? Estimate: 2 hours
Thursday – 7:30pm ET – Tetris Attack runs with 8 SECOND LAKITUS ONLY. Estimate: 2 hours
Friday – 8:00pm ET – Friday Night Race Night. FFR has been on a Panel de Pon kick, lately, so we might be playing more of that. It may even include a fun party game to cool down with on the back end. Estimate: 4 hours
Saturday – 4:00pm ET – Beyblade VForce: Ultimate Blade Jam TAS tinkering with level 1-2. My current best time is 3.47 seconds. I'm sure there's a way to go faster. Estimate: 4 hours
Sunday – 4:00pm ET – VForce 1-2 level runs. Estimate: 3 hours

I hope to commit to this type of structure in the weeks to come. I also hope to be able to adapt this schedule to whatever demands I put on myself for the tournaments whenever they come around and don't completely ghost my channel every time. This is weird to say out of context, but I've been inspired by an anime girl. Hey, my name is based on an anime phrase, it's not that unexpected!

That’s my life story for the week. Until next time, everyone, thanks for reading!

--Cards

#KiryuKaiForever