The March 2018 VTuber scene: Where are they 6 years after?
The Four Heavenly Kings, Eilene Family and Tenmakinin ver. G
A quick intro before we start
First of all, many thanks to everyone who read my previous article and subscribed. I hope you enjoy this one as well. m(_ _)m
Now, as much as I have to admit there are some really nice things about the current era of VTubing, such as extremely good 3D models, a lively community with constant discussion, fan arts and fan games, among others, there are still some aspects I can’t help but miss about the early VTuber times. One of those is that, at one point, you had a finite amount of VTuber content. The community was small and there weren’t many who opted to livestream by then, so it was possible to run out of videos to watch, even if you followed dozens of creators. That made it so people eagerly awaited VTuber’s daily uploads, and special events like collaborations were a huge deal, especially between the popular VTubers.
Now, you could say that this hype isn’t that dissimilar from today’s environment, but the key difference is that even the most diehard VTuber fans of today tend to focus on a certain company or group, usually the one to which their oshi belongs. Back then though, VTuber otakus could and were aware of nearly every single VTuber that existed. I think the ultimate proof of that is the charts posted by Twitter user Shiratori_Amaha during those times, which denoted the relationships between every VTuber (that cleared the thousand-subscriber threshold).
I’m pretty sure there are more VTubers in the current year’s Nijisanji than in this chart.
These are charming to me because they’re something that could only exist in the early days of VTubing when the number of V’s was no greater than your average medium-sized company. It would obviously be impossible to create anything like this nowadays, with tens of thousands of virtual personalities going around.
In this article, I’m going to take a deeper dive into one of these charts, specifically the one posted on March 21st, 2018, which you can see below. I’ll try to give an overview of what was happening in the community around this time and talk about the various VTubers who were active. Lastly, as the title mentions, I’ll take a look at where they are now, over half a decade later.1
Now, I can’t possibly cover every VTuber here, much less in a single article. For now, I’ll focus on what I believe were the biggest VTuber groups at the time.2 If people like this, maybe I’ll try writing about the others in the chart?
Click on the image for full resolution. The reason for picking the March 21st chart is simple: it’s the last one that was translated.
What was going on in the VTuber World in March 2018?
An interesting representation of the most popular VTubers at the time.
At the time, the VTuber scene was undergoing rapid growth in Japan. More and more people were becoming aware of this new subculture, and many were raring to join the virtual world themselves. Taking a look at the numbers makes this clear; in February 2018, one needed 3000 subs to be on the top 50 of the most popular VTubers, but by April, that number was now closer to 19,000!3 We were entering the period some called the VTuber Warring States Era (Sengoku Jidai). English VTubers appeared around this time, as did the first wave of Nijisanji livers and Roboco from Hololive. Videos were still the main form of media VTubers put out, with only Nijisanji and a few indie VTubers breaking the norm and focusing on live streaming.
The Four Heavenly Kings, along with Kizuna AI (the “Oyabun” (Boss)), were the top dogs when it came to VTubing in this era. They defined the landscape of this subculture, and many smaller VTubers mimicked their style of content.
Kizuna AI was the first ever to coin the Virtual Youtuber term, and by this time, she was also uncontestedly in first place in terms of popularity, with 1.7 million subs on her main channel and 727 thousand on AI Games.
Kaguya Luna, who debuted in December 2017, had in the three months since risen to second most popular thanks to her truly chaotic videos and personality, having around 600k subscribers.
Mirai Akari followed her in 3rd place, having debuted in October of the same year and boasting 500 thousand subs during this time. She was produced by Eilene, another popular VTuber who we’ll also talk about later in this article.
The fourth member of this five-person group was Siro, who had 400k and debuted in August 2017. Famous for her dolphin-like laugh, Siro was also able to speak English quite well, which granted her a few English fans who arrived early to this trend. She was produced by Appland Inc., a company that was also responsible for Baacharu, her colleague and first-ever male VTuber.
Siro’s self-introduction in English, posted in March 2018.
Finally, we have Virtual Noja Loli Fox Girl Youtuber Ojisan, AKA Nekomasu. An old man who decided to become a virtual fox girl in November 2017, he was the first indie VTuber to make it big, proving that anyone, regardless of budget or gender, can become a top VTuber. He was already becoming less active by this time, but his videos were still very popular.
A lot of people liked Nekomasu for his relatability, something the other top VTubers didn’t quite have.
You might be curious about the line linking Luna and AI. It’s mostly a joke, born from the fact fans loved to imagine either a rivalry or a romantic relationship between the two most famous VTubers.4
The type of content these four (and by extension, most of the VTuber community at that point) made was, as mentioned earlier, videos. The most common videos were gaming-related, with FPS like PUBG and Fortnite being particularly popular, but Q&As, skits, and different online tests and quizzes were also popular video topics.
One of Mirai Akari’s Q&A videos, uploaded in late February 2018.
Now, what if you were a VTuber fan who didn’t understand Japanese? Well, you’d often check past videos to see if someone had been kind enough to subtitle them using the community subtitles function which has sadly been scrapped by YouTube. Kizuna AI’s videos were practically guaranteed to be subtitled within days, but for the others, it depended on many factors, including the length of the video and whether they had a dedicated fansubber. While the Four Heavenly Kings were popular enough to receive captions on most of their videos, smaller VTubers often only had their first video subtitled, leaving them out of reach of most English fans. I will write more about the experience of being an English-speaking VTuber fan during these early days some other time.
A collaboration between Mirai Akari and Kaguya Luna. Luna was infamous for having low FPS at the time.
What remains of this group that once stood at the peak of VTubing, six years later?
Well, Kizuna AI has paused her activities for an indefinite time and remains in “sleep mode” as of the writing of this article. Both Kaguya Luna and Mirai Akari have graduated, though Akari did so recently, at the end of March 2023, while Luna went inactive much earlier, in mid-2020.5
Siro remains active and posts fairly often. Interestingly, she appears to have “adapted” to the current VTuber landscape; after uploading daily videos for over 3 years(!), she now focuses more on live streaming. Incidentally, Baacharu is also still streaming, though not regularly as he nowadays acts as more of a manager for the VTubers under .live, Appland’s VTuber group which Siro is a part of.
Nekomasu has had a bit of a different trajectory. Being indie has both its perks and disadvantages, and he went through multiple hiatuses and channel rebrands owing to personal issues. Around July 2018, he temporarily handed over his channel to someone else due to time constraints, who hosted a VTuber-related variety show in VR called Vangumi. As one might expect, suddenly changing to a completely different style of content in which Nekomasu wasn’t even present was not a popular move, and he ended up losing his spot in the top five before the end of the year.
Nevertheless, he came back at the beginning of 2021, unlisting the videos that had been uploaded during his absence. He’s still active to this day, posting the occasional video and streaming every other week, though mostly with a different model than the one he was originally known for.
The Eilene House, or Eilene Family, was a group of VTubers produced by Eilene, who was a VTuber herself. Mirai Akari of the Four Heavenly Kings was included in this group, though Eilene would no longer have any involvement with her by June 2018.
Eilene has had a troubled history, starting many VTubing and animation-related projects over the years, but with few successes. She’s done so much that I could easily write a full article concerning her, but to massively summarize, she started posting on YouTube in 2014 with the hopes of one day making her original anime or manga. Eventually, she got a following in Japan and abroad thanks to her hand-made animations. By 2018, she was known for starting the Mirai Akari Project and having two other VTubers under her wing, that being Moemi and Yomemi.
Moemi had been active as early as mid-2017, introducing herself as “your wife Moemi”. Unfortunately, Eilene privated most of her earlier videos, which were posted in what would become the Mirai Akari channel, and as such I’ve been unable to determine the exact date of her debut.
Yomemi made her debut in January 2018, with a video showcasing her as a character in a AI Virtual Girlfriend app. This confused some people, who thought that the app was a real work in progress and soon they’d be able to download Yomemi on their phones.
Yomemi’s introduction video. It does try pretty hard to sell the idea that you’ll be able to install Yomemi on your phone.
Others believed Moemi would be replaced by Yomemi due to their similar appearances (it’s important to note that Eilene, Yomemi, and Moemi also shared a single channel, which might have strengthened this rumor). Eilene eventually cleared up this misunderstanding, explaining she simply wanted to debut another VTuber to hopefully increase her upload frequency, due to the YouTube algorithm prioritizing channels that upload every day.
Both girls would eventually upgrade to a 3D model, though Yomemi would do so half a year after her debut, while Moemi would have to wait until July 2019.
Yomemi’s most popular video, with a staggering 2.7 million views. You can probably tell why from the thumbnail.
Their last public video on the shared channel is from December 2018. However, there’s a slew of unlisted videos that were posted between 2019 and 2022. I’m unsure as to why, but it likely has something to do with the fact that the channel was hacked in late 2022.
As for where they are now, Eilene went radio silent sometime in 2022, with Comdost, an English VTuber and friend of hers, confirming she had retired due to failed projects and health issues. Despite that, Eilene has now started a new channel. I’m not sure she can be considered a VTuber anymore since her new content appears to be AI-made skits and animations. I suppose it is closer to her original goal of making an anime though.
Moemi created a channel for live streaming in 2020, and she remains active there to this day. It’s unclear if she’s still affiliated with Eilene, but at the very least, she isn’t involved with her new content.
Yomemi, despite also having an individual channel of her own, has not posted on it. She appeared only sporadically in 2021’s uploads, and the last time we see her is in this short animation. While we don’t know the full details, it’s been confirmed by Natsumi Moe, another VTuber who would later join the Eilene Family, that Yomemi has ceased her activities.
Lastly, we have Tenmakinin ver. G, a group composed of five indie VTubers, and, in its initial iteration, the first ever VTuber group. Its members were:
Zettai Tenshi Kurumi-chan (Absolute Angel Kurumi), an angel VTuber who became known for her powerful singing voice from her debut on the 12th of January, 2018;
Akkun, a Demon King who debuted on the 7th of January;
Inui Shinichiro, a ninja who debuted on the 15th of January;
VT-212, better known as Neets, a mechatuber robot girl who uses an artificial voice and started her activities on January 18.
The group name comes from each VTuber’s identity. Ten (天) from Tenshi (Angel), Ma (魔) from Maou (Demon King), Ki (機) from Kikai (Machine) and Nin (忍) from Ninja. Ver. G stems from Virtual Gorilla, who debuted on January 13 and joined the group at a later date.
The first Tenmakinin collaboration was on the 8th of February, 2018, when the original four members played PUBG together. This was also the first ever collab between VTubers.
Neets video of the Tenmakinin collab. The first minute is a cute introduction to the group.
During these early VTuber times, when everything was novel and the landscape was dominated by the Four Heavenly Kings, the idea of a group of small, indie VTubers (all with subscriber numbers ranging from 4000-7000) joining forces was quite charming and resulted in several fan arts.
Tenmakinin fanart by 月わに on pixiv.
Unfortunately, this group wouldn’t last for long with its original members. On the 14th of February, Kurumi’s social media was taken over and subsequently deleted. Due to the content of the posts made before her Twitter was deleted, it was speculated her family pressured her to cease her activities.6 After Akkun personally contacted Kurumi and confirmed the situation, Tenmakinin (now Tenmakinin ver.G, thanks to the introduction of Virtual Gorilla into the group) decided not to disband, but to wait for her return.
By March 2018, when the chart that serves as the basis for this article was posted, the remaining members of this group were still going strong. Unlike their more popular counterparts, they focused on both streaming and videos, except for Inui, who didn’t stream at all until late 2019. Tenmakinin ver.G’s members continued to collab with each other occasionally, much to the delight of their fans.
At the end of 2018, during an end-of-year stream on Tsukasa Meika’s channel, a video was unveiled showing the five members of Tenmakinin ver.G, including Kurumi, singing and hanging out together. Though this wasn’t accompanied by the return of Kurumi, fans were pleased to see she was still doing fine and staying in contact with her former colleagues.
Akkun’s upload of the mentioned video.
It is also worth noting that both Inui and Gorilla joined VEEMusic, an agency and music label focused on VTubers, that same year, with Gorilla being its very first member. According to their website, they help with planning and producing merchandise and provide help in organizing live concerts and events. This agency still exists, though most of its members have either graduated or gone independent.
On May of 2022, Kurumi came back to the VTuber world with this nonchalant video. Many things changed during her hiatus, but she seemed to adapt right back, doing frequent live streams and releasing several song covers. With everyone’s angel active once more, Tenmakinin ver.G did another collaboration, this time playing Overwatch 2. This was also the first time all five members did a collab stream together since Gorilla had never had the chance to stream with Kurumi.
Once again, we look to where these VTubers are now, over six years after their debut. Unlike the previous groups, and perhaps surprisingly, none of the members of Tenmakinin have quit. With that said, not all of them are active. Kurumi has kept a regular streaming and uploading schedule, and so have Akkun and Inui, though on Twitch rather than YouTube. Gorilla streams quite often on his Gorilla Games channel, though his main channel has only been used to upload song covers for the past few years. Neets is the most inactive of the bunch. She had been silent since 2019 up until December 2022, when she streamed a few times and uploaded a video. Since then though, her YouTube has had no activity, and while she had been posting short videos on Twitter, those too have stopped since mid-2023. With no official announcement, we can only assume she’s taken another break and will return at some point.
Realistically, there are not a lot of remaining Tenmakinin ver.G fans remaining, much less in the English circles. Nonetheless, I can’t help but smile at the fact that the very first group in the history of VTubing is still together.
Thank you for reading this far. It’ll probably take me quite a few articles to get through the chart, but this has been a very fun and nostalgic experience, and I hope you’ve enjoyed it as well.
As always, if you have any topics or suggestions, or you wanna see any particular VTubers from the chart covered next, feel free to leave a comment here or DM me at ConspoLopes on Twitter.
This does mean the article will eventually become obsolete, which is something I wanted to avoid… But I think it’s more interesting this way.
Okay so technically they’re not really groups in the idol sense, more like loose associations… But it’s close enough.
Sources for every single subscriber number mentioned in this article are from Wayback Machine’s archived copies of https://virtual-youtuber.userlocal.jp
I’m including this as a footnote since it’s a bit of a tangent, but I’ve noticed people don’t really care who are the most subscribed VTubers anymore. Sure, they like to compare numbers, especially when it’s hololive vs nijisanji, but I haven’t seen anyone talk about who's in the top 5 or 10 for a long time now.
Akari has actually reincarnated as a different VTuber, but as I said in my previous article, I’m not a fan of discussing that type of thing. Luna also has her own personal channel she’s active in, though it’s not VTuber-focused for the most part.
You can read more about this on her VTuber wiki page. A bit sad how the drama is easily the most documented thing regarding her.
Very interesting to read, thank you for sharing your research with us! ^w^