Telling stories through VTubing: a lost art?

A slightly more meta essay than what I'm used to.

Feb 11, 2025

VTubers and Streaming

VTubers may have started in 2016, but there’s no doubt that the 20s are their decade. There were almost 50 thousand active VTubers in 2023, which is truly mind-boggling, and I wouldn’t be surprised if those numbers have doubled by now. Ironmouse beat the record for the highest number of Twitch subscribers, Neuro-sama had the longest-ever hype train, and Pekora, Miko, Marine, and other Hololive members are consistently the most-watched female streamers on Youtube. VTubers have become almost commonplace; sure, plenty of people still don’t understand the appeal of watching an anime girl play Minecraft, but crucially, they are aware that they exist.

The top 5 most popular VTubers on YouTube and Twitch, according to Playboard and StreamCharts respectively. Not MrBeast or tyler1 numbers, but definitely not those of a small niche.

In 2025, everyone streams. At any hour, on any day, there are thousands and thousands of people live on Twitch, Youtube, Kick, and a myriad of other platforms. Streaming is pop culture; every Gen Z’er has a favorite streamer, Northern Lion clips get millions of views, and tens of thousands tune in to watch Ludwig play Pokemon or XQC stare at a video and say two words every ten minutes.

In our current age, people love to see the real, authentic self. They want to relate to the person on the other side of the screen. The days of untouchable celebrities are over; there will never be another Michael Jackson. Scripted content still has a place, of course, but it’s more confined than before. Yes, the youth will still watch a famous actor’s movies; but they’re far more likely to tune into a podcast or a Twitch stream featuring that actor rambling than to a talk show where they answer a few questions they read before going live.

VTubers too, are essentially exclusively streamers nowadays. Long gone are the times of watching the daily uploads of Kizuna AI and Siro. These days, you’ll rarely see VTubers put out anything that’s not either a song cover, a stream, or highlights from said stream.1 This allows, as I’m sure you all know, for a more close and personal interaction with the viewers; the VTuber is literally talking to them in real-time. The viewers too, get to see a more genuine version of their oshi, unconstrained by scripts or edits, the real behind the virtual. For some fans, this is even one of the appeals of VTubers; to learn more about the person behind the character, to discern the actual personality.

There’s a reason “VTuber real voice” clips do so well.

Speaking of characters, if you’re into VTubers even a little bit, you’ll know that most of them have some sort of background story or “lore”, even if it's just “I’m a dog girl that runs a bakery”. Nowadays, this lore is, quite often, more of a base from which to build upon; an explanation for how your model looks, and a way to get people interested and immersed in your streams at first. It can be more or less important depending on the person or company they belong to, but it’s rare for it to never be “broken” or at the very least, molded and stretched by the soul that inhabits the VTuber.2

But what about using this lore, using VTubing as a form of telling a (fictional) story? This is, of course, an antithesis to the streamer model; there is no authenticity, fan interaction is limited, and you’re often quite literally in another world.

With that said, and despite my title, this isn’t something that’s completely gone from the Virtual Youtuber sphere; occasionally, VTubers will do “lore” streams or videos, where they focus on being entirely in character. I don’t think these are unpopular, either; from what I’ve seen, a lot of people seem to enjoy this more fiction-oriented, world-building content, even if the VTuber acts completely differently on stream. Regardless, these are almost always a one-time thing, or done sparingly. It makes sense; again, people don’t watch VTubers, at least not exclusively, because of their setting.

Kureiji Ollie’s Olivia streams are a good example of lore-building content, though in this case, she is performing as a whole new character—her parallel world self.

But let us go back in time, before VTubers were streamers, before Covid, when discussions about Virtual Youtubers in English were confined to 4chan’s /jp/ board and a handful of discord servers. In these times of scripted videos, it was more common for the lore to take center stage, even if most weren’t necessarily weaving a whole novel-tier story. You wouldn’t find it weird for a VTuber to do mostly in-character videos and save live streams for special occasions, for example.

Among these early VTubers, I looked for those who tried to tell a story through multiple videos, who used their lore not just as a backdrop, but as a way of creating something unique, a tale that you can get invested in. And there’s no better place to start than Hatoba Tsugu’s channel.

Hatoba Tsugu

Hatoba Tsugu is both the most well-known and the most extreme example of a lore-focused VTuber. Really, I’d go so far as to say she isn’t a Virtual Youtuber; she’s a character that happens to be a VTuber.

Debuting on the 28th of February 2018, Tsugu’s self-introduction is quite simple; she says her name, the district in which she lives, and that’s about it. What intrigued people was what happened after; the camera panned out to reveal Tsugu was filming her video in a forlorn-looking studio.

The mysterious, grey-scale video was followed in the coming months by several others of the same minimalistic nature. In most of them, Tsugu does some mundane task and speaks little if at all, with the sounds of daily life giving the uploads an almost ASMR-like quality. To some, this had a relaxing effect, almost like a slice-of-life anime; others were creeped out by the eerie atmosphere of a lone child playing by herself in a dark room.

In #03 Morning Routine, we see Tsugu waking up, brushing her teeth, and eating breakfast.

These videos went extremely viral. In around four months, Tsugu’s channel garnered hundreds of thousands of views, and she became one of the top 10 most popular VTubers in terms of subscribers numbers. The enigmatic nature of her uploads had people attempting to figure out what was going on; was Tsugu a kidnapped child? Was she a ghost clinging to a fake daily life? Were these records from the 70s that were only now being made public? There were no answers given, and each subsequent video did nothing but pose more questions. Some wondered if this was all an ARG, or made to promote some sort of liminal horror game.

While we didn’t get any answers regarding Tsugu’s situation in 2018, we did find out the company behind her: Edanoue Inc. Their website is extremely barebones, having only their contact information, a link to their shop, and the names of three members of staff, including LM7, an illustrator who’s worked in extremely successful titles like Arknights, Uma Musume and Girl’s Frontline.

Now that’s great web design.

Edanoue would, just a year later, announce a crowdfunding campaign for a 30-minute video of Tsugu’s summer vacation. Not only did the fundraiser meet its target of 8,000,000 yen, around 50 thousand dollars, it surpassed it by several orders of magnitude; by the time the campaign ended, they’d amassed the equivalent of 134 thousand US dollars. The video is still on sale on their website, available to non-backers for a price of $40.3

Tsugu’s Youtube would go dormant from January 2020 all the way up to March 2022. She wasn’t forgotten during that hiatus though, with Goodsmile releasing both a Nendoroid and a figure of her, a rare honor for VTubers at the time.

Additionally, she also made an appearance (sort of) in Saiki-do, a TV program hosted by, among others, Cyber Girl Siro herself. In it, fellow VTuber Merry Milk invites Tsugu to the program and even sends her a handwritten letter. Tsugu replied with several more of her cryptic videos, which you could conceivably interpret as answering some of the questions presented in the letter. Maybe.

Unrelated, but Merry Milk is very cute.

Tsugu’s return in 2022 caused some buzz, with both Western and Japanese online media releasing articles about her.4

She uploaded a total of four videos in that year, including one simply titled “_”, which was perhaps one of her most creepy by then; instead of showing Tsugu, we see the POV of someone else in an abandoned, dilapidated warehouse. They play a VHS tape of one of her older uploads on a CRT TV, and the video abruptly ends after a phone rings.

This one may trick you into thinking the plot is actually going somewhere.

Tsugu’s last video as of the writing of this article was in April of 2023 and was a cut version of one of the ones that had been present in Saiki-do two years earlier. Her Twitter has been similarly silent since then.

So, where does that leave us? Well, needless to say, Tsugu’s story hasn’t had anything resembling a conclusion, and with each month that passes, the chance that we get any explanation or closure to the whole thing seems less and less likely. The ambiguity of Tsugu’s lore, which made people want to overanalyze and fill in the blanks, ends up working against her; when after seven years there’s still nothing but cryptic videos, it’s natural for all but the most dedicated fans to lose interest.5 Furthermore, while I don’t believe Tsugu is just a cash grab meant to make money, it feels odd that her last uploads just happened to coincide with new merchandise announcements. Really cute merchandise, but still, it poses the question: will there be no new videos until there are goods to sell?

Tsugu’s only upload in 2023 was nine days after a finger puppet modeled after her went on sale.

Some blame Yostar, the company behind Azur Lane, for this state of affairs. This seems like an odd entity to point a finger at until you realize that, not too long before Tsugu disappeared for two years, her videos’ descriptions started having “Sponsor: Yostar” on them. Others believe that LM7 jumped ship after being hired to work in Arknights, grinding the project to a halt. Whatever it was, it’s unfortunate that her activities have slowed down so much; there was a great deal of hype behind Tsugu that has definitely diminished by now. Her hiatus happened to coincide with the VTuber boom of the pandemic, and who knows how different the VTubing sphere would have become if Hatoba Tsugu had been at the peak of her popularity when the West discovered Hololive.

Despite never streaming or interacting with her audience, Hatoba Tsugu became one of the most popular VTubers of her time, often getting into Youtube’s trending page and amassing millions of views at a time when that was almost unheard of in the VTubing space. Her self-introduction sits at 2.9 million right now, which is on par with some of the most popular VTuber live streams of today. She proved that not only is there space for story-driven VTubing but that you can captivate hundreds of thousands with it. This article would certainly be incomplete without her.

Hatoba Tsugu by まに.

Cafeno Zombi-ko

Cafeno Zombi-ko, literally Zombie girl from the café, was a VTuber that debuted at the very start of 2018 as part of an initiative to promote a struggling VR bar/coffee shop.6 As you might surmise from her name, she was a normal girl who got reincarnated as a zombie. She then found a laptop that was connected to our world and started uploading videos of her daily life. This isn’t unusual in VTuber settings; most dwellers of different worlds/dimensions/universes/timelines/realities usually offer an explanation as to why they can talk to their viewers through a Youtube stream.

What was more unusual was Zombi-ko’s content. Instead of playing PUBG or doing the Jagariko challenge like so many others, many of her videos had her playing analog games like Jenga, roaming the post-apocalyptic city she found herself in, and mingling with zombie friends.

One of Zombi-ko’s first videos, in which she showcases her new comrade. This video also shows the dangers of being a zombie in their world, with the two of them getting shot at by a human.

Pretty much everything that happened in Biko’s (a fan-favorite nickname) channel was in-universe; even during live streams, she sometimes had to contend with sudden attacks from soldiers hellbent on killing her or ask chat for help to solve a puzzle that allowed her to access a new area. At the same time, and very much unlike Tsugu, she talked to fans, commented on fan art, and actively engaged with her audience.

After managing to open a mysterious safe, Zombi-ko found a phone that allowed her to livestream. For unexplainable reasons, some of her viewers assumed the form of those strange green creatures in the background.

Spanning over 2 years and ten “seasons” nicely bundled up in playlists, the story of Zombi-ko was crude, but in a charming way. The often janky VR models weren’t exactly great for maximizing your suspension of disbelief, but that didn’t make the videos less fun or interesting, especially considering how creative they were. Zombi-ko’s bubbly and easy-to-like personality also helped win over thousands, leading her to reach 20k subs by March 2018. These numbers may not seem too special now, but at the time, they put Zombi-ko firmly within the top 50 most subscribed VTubers. Within the realm of those not associated with a company, she was close to the top 10.

Occasionally, we get a glimpse of a more somber Zombi-ko. Here, the usually giggly zombie girl shoots a bunch of humans in cold blood.

Zombi-ko compiled the main events of each season in a short, subtitled 1-minute video. Very helpful for English fans.

At the end of season four, around five months after her debut, Zombi-ko got a new, improved model as she’d been, up until now, using a slightly modified version of a generic zombie girl model you can find in the Unity asset store. Of course, what actually happened was that she got killed by special forces and was once again reborn (though still as a zombie) in the body of a deceased girl she’d found in one of her previous videos.

Biko’s new look. Note the skirt from her former body, now mended.

Unfortunately, after this makeover, views on the Zombi-ko channel went down dramatically. It’s to the point that out of her 25 most popular videos, only a single one is from after she started using the new model.

There are many possible causes for this, and we’ll circle back to this topic by the end of the article. At the time though, some argued it was the environment; by mid-2018, more and more people were becoming virtual, making it impossible to follow every VTuber. In particular, the appearance and subsequent growth of Nijisanji showed that anyone could enter this virtual community, even with just a simple Live2D model, leading to a massive new wave of VTubers. It feels silly to argue about “saturation”, considering there are like one hundred times more active VTubers nowadays, but it’s possible that, at the time, the ratio of VTubers and fans of VTubers was skewed. The Nijisanji members were also the first to bring into vogue the live stream model for VTubers, and while Zombi-ko had done many live streams before, her main content was still video-based.

But the most likely reason for this downturn in popularity was likely just the model update, which appeared to turn a lot of people off. Despite Biko looking much better aesthetically, it seems some preferred the rough and more zombie-like features of the previous model, and complained that she didn’t really give off an “undead” feel anymore.

Regardless of what it was though, the fact remains that the Zombi-ko channel stagnated after this change. This was also somewhat reflected in the content later on; after the first months of 2019, the number of videos advancing the story of Cafeno Zombi-ko greatly diminished.

During season 9, Zombiko revealed a new model once again, stating that her body was decaying and she was tired of using make-up to hide it. Side note: At this point in the story, she was living in a huge mansion with a bunch of zombie housemates, which is a really funny concept to me.

On December 27th, 2019, a date that would mark the beginning of the last season of Biko’s story, she uploaded a video stating she’d received a call from her “real self” back in the human world, revealing she’d only have around two months before her zombie body would stop working.7

Zombi-ko held her last livestream in March 2020, a bit over 2 years after her debut. As a final surprise to her fans, she announced a crowdfunding campaign for a VR game titled “Last of Zombiko”, in which players can help Zombi-ko fight against humans and arrive at her final resting place. The fundraiser went without a hitch and the game was released successfully, though it’s hard to say what became of it after since it was exclusively distributed to backers of the project. You can at least buy the accompanying game manual though.

As for the café, it appears that despite not overtly advertising it, the existence of Zombi-ko brought in enough customers to not only save it from shutting down, but allow the owners to acquire new VR gear. Nowadays, it’s open only a few days per month, and has been transformed into a bar where you can meet and chat with several VTubers.8

The first trailer for Last of Zombiko.

And that’s the story of Cafeno Zombi-ko AKA Biko, maybe one of the most virtual Virtual Youtubers there ever was. In the eight years that have passed since Kizuna AI uploaded her first video, I have yet to see another VTuber that incorporates both lore and fan interaction as seamlessly as Zombi-ko did. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say she was a pioneer of VTuber storytelling, and maybe the one who, more than anyone else, managed to take the weaknesses of this narrative vehicle and make them strengths.

If you’ve never seen any of her content, I encourage you to take a look at some of her early videos. Most of them are subtitled in English.

Zombi-ko’s three forms by Sova.

Lionel Eleonore de Chienia

Lionel Eleonore de Chienia, or Lionel for short, was a VTuber who debuted in November of 2018. As the young furry king of the Kingdom of Chienia, he was duty-bound to look after his people and deal with governmental affairs. Protecting him were his Minions, small warriors and mages that served as bodyguards. Over several short videos, transmitted to our world thanks to the magic relic “Mirror of the Full Moon”, we learn about Chienia, its customs and traditional foods, holidays and history. But that’s not all; we also embark on small adventures with the king, capturing slimes and foraging mushrooms.

His videos had really high production quality, with game-like visuals and impressive motion capture. In fact, they were so high-quality there were rumors the channel’s goal was to promote some future game or anime. That ended up not being the case, though; it seems it really was just the result of a heavy investment by BitStar Akihabara Lab, the company behind Lionel.

Lionel and his minions battle a horde of Champollions (sentient mushroom-like creatures), in what could easily be mistaken as a cutscene from a videogame. Seriously, just watch the first few seconds.

Despite this, Lionel’s channel never really took off. Outside of the first two, none of his videos surpassed 10 thousand views, and his subscribers plateaued at just under 8000.

The consequences were obvious. The twelfth “lore” video was posted in January of 2019, but despite the ending both implying a timely sequel with the usual “see you next time!” and teasing some sort of new plotline, it would not be until 2021 that we’d get more stories of Chienia. In the meantime, fans of Lionel would have to content themselves with short and simple videos, mainly featuring the king narrating (human, not Chienian) fairy tales. Those who wanted something more would have to tune into Lionel’s streams, where he would clear dungeons by doing certain challenges, showcase fan art, and play all sorts of viewer interaction games.

Lionel proudly displays fanart he’s received in the Chienia Royal Museum.

I want to give a special mention to a certain livestream held on 07/06/2019. In it, the royal capital is in danger, with slimes and Champollions at its doors, ready to go inside the walls and assault the people. Luckily, viewers could help vanquish these foes; by typing the words above the monsters, the magic-casting Minions would be powered up and deal heavy bursts of damage.

It’s admittedly a simple concept: the more chat spams, the more HP the enemies lose. But while having viewers interact directly with the stream in this game-like way might not have been a novel concept to streaming in general by 2018, it certainly was for VTubers. I’m not sure if Lionel was the first to do it, but I’m certain he was one of the first, which is unexpected for such a small channel.

The raid boss, a giant Champollion, almost made its way to the gates.

As mentioned previously, there was a return to story-driven video content in 2021. A pair of videos of the so-called season 2 of the misadventures of Lionel would be uploaded between the end of that year and the start of the next. Just like last time, however, the narrative wouldn’t reach a satisfying conclusion, with no further episodes being uploaded after those two. Streams were also put on hold, and the only content for months was the occasional narration video.

Even those would be put on hold in December of 2022 when Lionel would take a break from all activities due to ill health. Sadly, his next communication was not a positive one; on February 21st, 2023, Lionel left a message on Twitter stating that his constant use of the Full Moon Mirror had drained him of all his magic, and he could no longer communicate with the people of our world. He also vowed to search the world for a way to recover his magic powers and hoped to meet with us once more someday.

Lionel’s final tweet. Despite the wording implying a possible reunion in the future, I think it’s fairly safe to say that he has graduated, and I’d be surprised if we saw him again.

Whether it was due to low viewership (the two episodes of season 2 put together couldn’t break 2000 views), actual poor health, or a combination of both, the story of Lionel Eleonore de Chienia too, came to an end.

At first, I was going to conclude this part by saying that Lionel is an example of why having high production quality isn’t everything. But the more I looked into him, the more I realized that’s not really fair; Lionel was cute and interacted with his audience in a similar way to Zombi-ko. Perhaps it was simply a lack of that ever-so-important authenticity—watching his videos, he certainly felt like more of an actor than his zombie colleague.

King Lionel and his Minions by Lownine.

Private Musubi-kun

The last VTuber I want to focus on today is Musubi-kun. I must admit, unlike the others I’ve mentioned here, I had never even heard of Musubi before starting to write this article. Still, I think he makes for a really good example.

Private Musubi was a femboy, wolf, and virtual soldier with a love for all things military. Throughout 2018, he uploaded a total of 10 videos. In them, you follow this peppy soldier as he, among other things, does shooting training, gets deployed on the battlefield, blows up a helicopter with a rocket launcher, destroys the rival faction’s communication satellites, nearly dies like five times, camps out in the middle of enemy territory, and has his viewers commenting “a guy is fine if he’s cute enough.” Accompanying Musubi is a sentient combat drone who helps him get through his missions safe and sound (and sometimes sexually harasses him).

In this action-packed video, Musubi contends with an enemy Apache helicopter, ultimately managing to shoot it down.

Nighttime allows for a break; Musubi changes into more casual clothes and chats about various topics while eating combat rations. Drone also confirms that he has B-cup breasts, even though he’s a boy.

His videos were very much story-driven, closer to Tsugu than to Zombi-ko or Lionel; if not for his greeting (“Good evening, civilians!”) and the fact he’s vlogging the experience the whole time, it’d be more appropriate to denominate Musubi-kun’s content VR-based storytelling rather than VTuber activities.9

Musubi and Drone take an underground passage to the armory.

In video #10, Musubi is surrounded by enemy forces, including several armored tanks, and the situation seems terribly dire. Thankfully, a rescue aircraft arrives just in time to take both Musubi-kun and the drone away, their mission successfully completed.

A cheerful Musubi-kun on the ride home.

That was the last we ever heard of Musubi-kun. His Twitter was deleted sometime after 2022, and I haven’t been able to find any archived posts that broach the subject of his graduation, though the words 活動終了 (end of activities) were added to his profile description at some point. Still, it isn’t hard to imagine the reasons that might have led to it. Unlike all the previous VTubers we’ve seen, Musubi-kun was fully an indie, possibly even a one-man project. Despite this, in terms of visuals, animations, and story, the quality of his videos was honestly not that far behind Lionel’s. They must have been extremely time-consuming to create, and though the views weren’t all that bad, especially for an independent VTuber in 2018, they were still quite far from being enough to monetize the channel. It’s truly a shame, especially since I think his videos were both fun and unique; if I had known him earlier, I might remember him with the same fondness I do Zombi-ko.10

Musubi-kun in his gym outfit by winbee.

A Conclusion in Five Parts

So what have we learned here today?

1. VTubing and storytelling don’t mix too well

It’s safe to say that, outside of some notable exceptions, using VTubing exclusively to tell a tale was never particularly popular, even before Virtual YouTubers became more like Virtual Streamers. It makes sense; if we’re talking about methods of storytelling, VTubing is not really comparable to web animations or anime, no matter how good your videos look.

Of course, you can use the things VTubing has that those other forms of media don’t, such as being able to speak directly to the fans, the ability to collaborate with fellow VTubers, among others. But then again, if you rely too much on those strengths, you may end up shirking your story.

2. The burden is on the soul

It’s not easy to be a story-driven VTuber. Unlike something like a gaming or a chatting stream, making lore videos requires planning, scriptwriting, thorough editing, etc. Not only is this time-consuming, especially if you’re an independent VTuber or even a small team, but it can also potentially cost money; you can only get so far using free assets and software, and your story will be quite limited if you lack a 3D model. This can all be worth it in the end if it turns out people love the content you put out; but as we’ve seen, chances aren’t in your favor, and while getting low engagement on a video or stream always hurts, it’s especially tough when you’ve put a great deal of effort into it.

3. Falling off is easy

Another thing to note is that all of the VTubers mentioned started well. They had lots of views, the comments were positive, and fans praised them online for their exceptionally high quality. But take a look at their channels now, and you’ll see that the viewership numbers quickly diminish after a few videos. This is consistent throughout everyone. What gives?

I believe several factors might have contributed at least partially to this decline. First, there’s an issue of both interaction and relatability. As mentioned before, a lore-based VTuber will often have by its very nature less interaction with the fans, since there is a bigger focus on telling a story. But the gap can be at least somewhat bridged, as we’ve seen with VTubers like Zombi-ko and Lionel who did streams and talked to their audience in real time.

The issue of relatability, however, is a bit more difficult. All VTubers are playing a character to some extent; but to have a coherent story, you need to do it at all times, and that often means not talking about actual real-life experience. This not only limits what one can say as a VTuber, but also makes it more difficult for the audience to relate; the lore is a hard barrier that prevents viewers from seeing the authentic (or a closer approximation of the authentic) self. This barrier can be made more malleable with some creativity; say you want to talk about your high school experience, but you’re supposed to be an angel that came down to earth. Well, that’s simple: just say there’s a mandatory angel school system similar to that of our planet. Of course, this doesn’t work with everyone. Zombi-ko lost all her memories before becoming a zombie; it wouldn’t make sense to talk about anything that occurred prior to starting her channel. The point is: unless your story can really hold people’s attention, they might get bored once they ascertain that you will just be playing a character all the time.

Now, even if a VTuber has a core audience that sticks with them, it won’t be easy to keep growing. If they’re telling their story through several videos and streams, it’s very possible Youtube users stumble upon their content via a recommended video, watch a little, realize they don’t understand what’s going on, and hit the back button. It’s on the VTuber to make it so that the videos are interesting enough to make people want to click on the channel and catch up on the backlog, but during modern times with our ever-decreasing attention span, that’s a tall ask. Not to mention that this is a problem that worsens over time, as any story or lore will get naturally more and more complex. You can keep it simpler and easier to follow, but that might prevent you from garnering a sizable audience to begin with. It’s a difficult balance.11

Finally, there’s a chance that this is just not what people want to see from VTubers. I talked about this a little in the Zombiko section, but as we got to the end of 2018, the year all the VTubers mentioned here started their channels, streaming began creeping up in popularity in the VTuber world. The most popular VTubers were still the ones who posted mostly videos, but Nijisanji and Hololive were starting to get more and more attention, and the train wasn’t going to stop. You could argue it still hasn’t. Maybe one of the reasons all these VTubers ended up losing viewers over time is there’s just not a large audience for those who aren’t doing the typical VTuber activities. The small sample size of lore-driven VTubers certainly supports that theory.

4. Lore in current year?

The big question: could we see a full-time story-driven VTuber nowadays?

Yes, of course. But could we see a full-time story-driven VTuber amass a decent-sized following and sidestep the same issues that plagued the VTubers described here? I believe that’d be rather difficult.

Personally, I don’t think (though I’d love to be proven wrong) that the majority of the VTuber community, English-speaking or otherwise, would be interested in a VTuber whose main content does not involve streaming. Hatoba Tsugu is clearly an outlier; trying to copy her would be like trying to capture lightning in a bottle, and even she got much less attention on her most recent uploads compared to her earlier stuff. There’s a reason we haven’t seen a return to Kizuna AI-style daily videos in all these years, after all. Other challenges have also arisen since 2018; for example, the discontinuation of Youtube’s community subtitles feature means that a lore VTuber would have to provide their own captions in different languages if they wish to broaden their audience. Videos don’t lend themselves well to the current clipping culture in VTubing; you can’t exactly clip a 10-minute video without either butchering or outright plagiarizing it.

What about a more hybrid model? I briefly referenced earlier those occasional lore streams or videos that some VTubers do sporadically. What if a VTuber was to, say, have 40 or 50% of their content focused on telling a story, and the remaining % on streaming?

I think this is a much more realistic approach in today’s environment, though without any examples, I can’t judge whether it’d work well. There’s definitely a possibility that the audience would be divided between those who want to see the VTuber as the character they are in the story and those who want to see the more authentic version of them that’s shown on streams. But perhaps that’s not the end of the world; if both the real and the made-up are enjoyable, people will want to follow you. There’s a reason actors are famous, after all.

5. Conclusion of the conclusion

Lastly, I know this piece isn’t a comprehensive list of every lore-focused VTuber of the past. I left out some fairly notable ones like Merry Milk or Karte due to the difficulty of finding info on them. Minai Karte’s Youtube and Twitter were both nuked, and Merry Milk has made several of her lore videos private. There are probably archives somewhere, but I didn’t want to spend a lot of time scouring the Japanese web for an article that wasn’t even focused on them.

I just wished to bring some attention, with the small reach I have, to this particular sub-genre of Virtual Youtubing that feels almost forgotten in the age of streaming. Because I would truly love to see storyteller VTubers come back in some way! Zombi-ko was one of my favorite VTubers at the time, and what inspired me to write this whole thing. Like the title implies, I feel like this is sort of a lost art, and I’d like for people to keep exploring the limits of what types of tales can be crafted with VTubers and 3D avatars; there’s a lot of potential, I think. I have no delusions that this is a popular opinion, but what are blogs for if not to ramble into the void, right?

Are there any story-driven VTubers you used to watch, or still do? Do you know of any English-speaking lore VTubers? Let me know in the comments c:

Conspo’s VTuber Archive

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