Vtubers

Ok, first of all in order to begin talking about vtubers and the impact that made to me. I need to give you some context about the things I enjoyed when I was growing up.

During my adolescence I was your steriotipical videogame and anime enjoyer, I liked having conversations with friends about this subjects and liked a lot sharing opinions about them. Also I would easily say that I learned english thanks to videogames.

Since I learned english fairly early while growing up, I started to watch lots channels from the golden era of "lets players" (2010 ~ 2014), I remember watching lots of videos and streams from "The Creatures", the Vinesauce group or any other notorious lets player from that era.

I have lots of fond memories of that time and I'm grateful of it.

Alright! since we are finally done with my past experiences we can begin talking about vtubers. So one night I was talking on discord with some friends and we were looking for the next anime to watch together, then out of nowhere someone recommends us to watch "Virtual-san wa Miteiru" (January 2019). We were reluctant to watch it because of the synopsis of the show but in the end we agreed to watch it just for "shits and giggles". That was one of my first expositions to vtubers and I had a blast watching that show with my friends, I really recommend it.

After watching that show I didn't really got hooked with vtubers and I just kept going with my life. It was just nice to know the existence of this kind of media.

Then from 2019 to 2021 lots of things happened... I'm not going to go through details but from that point onwards I became depressed, nothing entertain me anymore and was just living my life just by inertia. No motivation, no enjoyment, nothing.

One day I was just going through some discord servers and on one of them, someone posted this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYNSB9qYY5A (original video deleted) When I saw it I was laughing so much, I was almost crying of laughter. That video reminded me the existence of vtubers again. Also after watching that video Youtube began to recommend me lots of videos about vtubers, I didn't really care that much but slowly I was falling down into this rabbit hole.

Then I finally found Kiryu Coco's channel and I fell in love with the humor and content she provided. And thanks to her asaccoco streams I got to know more and more about the girls from hololive, she completely sold me the idea of vtubers (Watch this video if you want to learn more about why she had such a big impact in the world of vtubers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rspIYo9iYnk)

After finally finding something to entertain myself I began to consume lots and lots of media about vtubers: clips, streams, fanmade videos, animations, art, music, etc). I didn't stop there and began to follow lots of independent vtubers, I learned about v-singers and I also followed some of the OG vtubers. I was having the time of my life and fun was nowhere to end. (All this happened during mid 2020 which many call it the "Golden era of Vtubing")

I'm extremely grateful with the vtubers, without them I would have lived a sad life.

Now you might be wondering "Why?". Why I love so much this kind of media?. And the answer is kinda complicated, if I have to give it a reason I would say that for me they were at the right moment. After watching many streams you begin to learn more and more about the person behind the avatar, you learn about their past, their dreams, their harships, etc. This gives a really personal feeling which I can relate and it makes me realize that "I'm not Alone".

You begin to worry about them, you want them to success and you want to be there when they achieve their goals and celebrate together. This also gives me motivation to push through with any difficulties that happens on my everyday life.

Another reason why I like them it's because of how vtubers in terms of entertainment are pretty much the same as the lets players that I followed back in the days. And also, come on! how can you not like an anime girl playing your favorite games? lmao.

Currently I'm not consuming that much of vtuber media as before, but since I'm more experienced with media itself I'm mostly watching my "Oshi" Amane Kanata and I'm being more selective in choosing who to watch. I'm still having a blast here and I feel that I have many years to come until I become bored of vtubers, so let's enjoy the ride together!

It's truly amazing how your life can be saved by a fox girl singing Scatman with a silly voice.