From amoeba to whale, Bao has found new purpose through VTubing BaoBao, the \u201csilly jiggly whale\u201d as she puts it, is one of Twitch\u2019s biggest VTubers. The once-utaite on YouTube was almost ready to move on, but the virtual medium reignited her spirit and let her grow from a tiny amoeba into a whale full of life. At the end of 2019, Hikaru Station was at a fork in her career. She was a successful cover artist in YouTube\u2019s utaite community. The community, built off covering Vocaloid songs and other Japanese music, was as popular as ever. She had a catalog of original works as well as covers that had millions of views on YouTube. But she was in school at the time, feeling the pressures of adulthood looming. Her creative energy was sapped after years of doing the same thing \u2014 she still loved it, but a full-time career in content creation didn\u2019t seem viable. There were some new concepts coming out at the time though in the English space, as the utaite community started gravitating towards VTubing. Hikaru Station, as she was known at the time, dipped her toes into the water, and was quickly sucked in. \u201cA couple of mutual friends were \u201860 viewer Andys\u2019,\u201d she told Dexerto. \u201cWe were close friends because we were all cover artists in the utaite community, and they were getting into streaming. They\u2019d have me come on and play games with them, and I thought that was pretty fun.\u201d VTubing presented Hikaru Station an opportunity to not just create the content she wanted to do, but also present herself in a manner unlike before. She could drop the moniker and faux persona to be unabashedly herself, and flesh out a proper personality. That was the birth of Bao, the \u201csilly jiggly whale\u201d that has graced Twitch for two years now, and exploded into one of the biggest musical talents in the medium. With more than 500,000 YouTube subscribers, and 400,000+ on Twitter and Twitch, many tune in for her wild variety of streams \u2014 not just her music. Instead of bottling the personality of Hikaru Station behind closed doors to her friends, she could open up and have this new identity. She could play the games she wanted to, and show off the authentic side of herself rather than the one manicured for short YouTube uploads. VTubing afforded her the perfect barrier to immerse herself and become the ideal Bao. \u201cI had always had a persona represent me \u2014 Hikaru Station \u2014 but I never really had a chance to flesh out my personality up until VTubing was an option,\u201d she opened up. \u201cI tried to show my face during early Hikaru Station streams, but I just really didn\u2019t like it. I felt like I couldn\u2019t focus on the task at hand because I was so self-conscious about myself. \u201cI wanted to become my persona and fully immerse my audience and the world Hikaru Station builds . When VTubing became more accessible \u2014 we can just hop on our phones and connect with our avatars through there \u2014 then yeah I definitely jumped at the opportunity.\u201d Bao never left Hikaru Station behind. In fact, her past in the utaite space became a core pillar of who she is today. Now she could show off the other sides of her that she didn\u2019t keep online: all the good, all the bad. Gone, but never forgotten Early on, VTubing was seen as the \u2018other\u2019 in the utaite space. There was a firm division between those embracing the new technology, and those wanting the precedent to stay. Bao felt this. Instead of just working with a small community on covers, she all of a sudden was sharing all of herself, online, to thousands. There was the live aspect of streaming, and all the different platforms to keep up with \u2014 YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, Twitter. It was equal parts exhilarating and daunting, yet all draining. However it gave her a tangible future in content creation. Through all of 2020, Bao worked hard towards her new found dream of becoming that anime girl whale. In the back of her mind though, there were some concerns about alienating her past fandom too much. \u201cA lot of people were nostalgic towards Hikaru Station, so it was hard to explain to them this brand new concept,\u201d she explained. \u201cAt the time, VTubing hadn\u2019t exploded yet. It was very novelty. \u201cIt held me back from being fully invested in showing my personality and myself. I was caught up in pleasing people. It was only after the first year of VTubing that I felt truly comfortable with streaming and being who I am on stream opposed to playing up a very \u2018seiso\u2019 or pure and marketable persona. \u201cBut now I don\u2019t care.\u201d If you\u2019ve ever tuned into a Bao stream, especially in the last year, that\u2019s very much the case. She isn\u2019t afraid to fully embody the cringe situations \u2014 in fact, she embraces them. Just ask her about Rick Sanchez (\u201cmaybe it\u2019s just my newfound appreciation for a man who knows what he wants\u2026 I really love him\u201d) or Blaidd from Elden Ring. She could be considered a hopeless romantic, before turning away (some) hearts with the \u201cmost cursed\u201d questions (her words). As far as out of context clips, she\u2019s right up there with the most \u2018sus\u2019. Any stream can be a roller coaster of emotions from the most mundane to the wildly absurd. But while Bao has given up the Hikaru Station moniker, she never graduated. It\u2019s more like a Version 2.0. \u201cI absorbed her, and a lot of the themes I used for her visually were absorbed into Bao. I still have blue hair, a lot of ocean thematics, so Bao is sort of an evolution of Hikaru Station. Her legacy lives on in this new evolved form. \u201cIt\u2019s a bit more personable, a lot more approachable \u2014 and Hikaru Station is a mouthful to say. I\u2019d rather just be called Bao.\u201d And deep down, she has similar angles with her content. As a utaite, you\u2019re relatively limited to the medium of singing. VTubing opened up more ways to express that to her fans. \u201cI just have always used my space on the internet to vent,\u201d she continued. \u201cI think about \u2018My R\u2019 being one of the most viewed videos on my channel \u2014 that\u2019s where a lot of my passion comes from, venting my heart out and getting all those nasty ugly feelings out in a way that\u2019s bittersweet for me. \u201cI can look back to those times and realize things have gotten better, or sometimes they are yet to get better but I\u2019m sure they will. They\u2019re little bookmarks in my life where I can look back and realize life was very different back then. It\u2019s not necessarily good or bad, it\u2019s just life. \u201cI tried being as marketable and safe as possible in my early VTubing days, but realized life is so short and I should just be happy as I am, and be happy that the people who choose to stay are those who accept me for who I am \u2014 with all my chips, scratches, and marks. That\u2019s more meaningful than presenting a portion of myself on the internet and hoping it\u2019s received well. I want to put all of my heart into this. This is the most truthful way I can convey myself, by just being open.\u201d Keeping up with VTubing\u2019s rapid growth With all that being said, that\u2019s not to say Bao has been doing the same things she was for years. That couldn\u2019t be further from the truth. VTubing has been booming, with the streaming space expanding rapidly in just six short years, and it\u2019s turned into a massive game of catch up. Every day there\u2019s new debuts, new content to consume. Looking back even just six months ago, the space was vastly different. It\u2019s competitive \u2014 no matter what way you look at it, content creation is commercialized and you have to stick with trends or risk drowning. Bao is blessed to have had a solid support structure. Unlike most other \u2018independent\u2019 talents, she\u2019s part of an agency with a manager by her side. She had a group of friends there to answer her questions from the get-go. Those diving in from the outside don\u2019t have the same luxuries. \u201cI\u2019ve never seen a community evolve so quickly \u2014 I mean the technology, the art, the prices, everything is going up,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s really crazy, and it\u2019s also really bad for someone who\u2019s just starting out and isn\u2019t used to the realistic expectation of content creation. \u201cI can\u2019t even tell them to look at VTubing as an example because it\u2019s so niche compared to every other bubble on the internet. This one is exploding and doing all sorts of things. There\u2019s no way to catch up. You play the game or the game plays you, you have to be careful.\u201d Even with the assistance, Bao has been open in saying it\u2019s impossible to keep up. As VTubing has matured, its top stars have matured and are destigmatizing topics like mental health and burn out \u2014 something many wouldn\u2019t utter at the start for fear of being seen as ungrateful for their successes by cynics out there. The reason everyone is sticking out though is because of the vast majority of the community. The support in VTubing is unrivaled compared to any other streaming medium, and even though she says she\u2019s not competitive, Bao has been fueled by those around her, growing with her. \u201cI think everyone I talk to on a daily basis is super burned out and running on fumes at this point,\u201d she admits, \u201cbut the strength the community has, especially from a content creator to another, is very strong. I wouldn\u2019t still be doing this if it weren\u2019t for all the people that I met and all the people that are invested in me the same way I\u2019m invested in them. \u201cWhen I see someone drop something insanely cool, I can\u2019t help but be really inspired and want to do something equally as cool.\u201d Bao had early goals in VTubing of joining an agency, but after a couple of failed attempts went at it \u2018alone\u2019. But she\u2019s never truly been alone. There\u2019s always been a group around her \u2014 fellow VTubers Numi and Yuzu are the two who come to mind first, but that collection of top solo talents are thicker than blood, and has made staying in streaming worth it. \u201cWhen I first started VTubing, I really wanted to be in a space where I had genmates or members,\u201d she said. \u201cThe idea of collabing with your friends and making cool content with them and building a brand that encompasses you and all of your friends; you bring a little something to the table, they bring something, that\u2019s really nice. \u201cI never got to experience that, so having my friends be that is really great. It feels like going to school and seeing all your friends and being like \u2018we\u2019ll get through this year together\u2019 and the collabs are the school projects. We bounce off of each other really well, and we\u2019ve got that content brain where we\u2019re thinking of new things to do. It\u2019s really nice being in a sphere where there are other people like me in this.\u201d Diving from the little pond into the big sea Bao has grown leaps and bounds, both as a creator and a person, in her two years in VTubing. Her major goal is to make up for \u201call the years I spent being wishy-washy on being a content creator.\u201d That means there\u2019s a long road for the jiggly whale, but she\u2019s never felt more enthusiastic about it. \u201c[Starting VTubing] felt like I was given CPR. My little flame I had left for singing and making stuff was fizzling out. I was so invested in school and being realistic with myself \u2014 \u2018this was a teenage hobby, I must now do my taxes, I must now contribute to society\u2019 \u2014 and then all of a sudden my world flipped upside down. \u201cI knew it had an expiration date, these bursts of internet fame or success online, it\u2019s not forever. Trends come and go. If I don\u2019t take advantage of this, I will regret it. This will never come by again. I had to decide whether I was going to put 100% into school, or 100% into VTubing\u2026 and that\u2019s why I dropped school. Everything across the board, it\u2019s been great.\u201d It\u2019s not been without its ups and downs, but 2022 has made her realize the impact she\u2019s had on others. Seeing friends and fans personally at events like TwitchCon turned those \u201carbitrary numbers\u201d into something tangible. \u201cYou can look at these numbers, those arbitrary ones that are changing every day, but as a human you can only imagine 100 people in a room. Any more than that, and I don\u2019t know what that number means. \u201cWhen you go out in public and meet your fans, see how many people there are looking up at you, telling you all these inside jokes that you wouldn\u2019t know unless you watched my streams, it\u2019s so much more rewarding.\u201d When I asked Bao to summarize her journey, she pondered a bit. Looking back from the Hikaru Station days to now, it feels like an eternity. But small decisions she made along the way let her flourish into the star she is today, and there\u2019s an even brighter future ahead. \u201cIt does feel like I was a little amoeba in a pond, and I didn\u2019t really know what I was. I was just floating in this pond and really vibing with it. Then as I grew with music, I started forming and became a little tadpole \u2014 I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m doing, I\u2019m just flopping around in this pond, but it\u2019s good. \u201cI then became a VTuber, started growing limbs like a frog, and decided the pond I was in was a little too small. I dived into the ocean, evolved, and now I\u2019m a whale \u2014 literally.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From amoeba to whale, Bao has found new purpose through VTubing BaoBao, the \u201csilly jiggly whale\u201d as she puts it, is one of Twitch\u2019s biggest VTubers. The once-utaite on YouTube was almost ready to move on, but the virtual medium reignited her spirit and let her grow from a tiny amoeba into a whale full […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}