Hololive still stunned by insane success of English VTubers like Gawr Gura YouTube: Gawr GuraHololive is now a household name in VTubing across the world, but once upon a time they were basically unknown to an English audience. The Japanese company didn\u2019t expect to find so much success outside the country \u2014 but they\u2019re glad they did. When the VTuber boom of 2020 happened in the west, Hololive was one of the first agencies to cash in on it. One could argue holoMyth \u2014 the generation featuring the five biggest English VTubers on the planet \u2014 was the catalyst for it all. Before then, VTubing was just a niche section of the internet, relegated to just the diehard anime fandom. There weren\u2019t many English-speaking VTubers out there. But that all changed, and now you can\u2019t go on Twitch or YouTube without seeing them. However, two years on from the debut of holoMyth, the agency is still stunned by the success \u2014 both management and the creators who made it happen. During Hololive\u2019s fifth anniversary stream, founder Motoaki \u2018YAGOO\u2019 Tanigo knew the market would be lucrative, but expectations were blown away once Gawr Gura hit 4 million subs, as well as the other successes of the group. \u201cAs the English-speaking world is certainly very big, you could say we had some expectations of [people watching more frequently],\u201d he said. \u201cSince the name recognition of Hololive itself had been rising around the world, we figured we should see an increase in viewership. \u201cI personally talked to all of them before their debut, but we didn\u2019t predict anything like that.\u201d Ninomae Ina\u2019nis was a long time fan of Hololive before joining the agency, having watched the talents since 2018. It was a dream to become a member of Hololive, but her blow-up in the aftermath \u2014 overtaking some of her senpais \u2014 was equal parts shocking and inspiring. \u201cBefore our debut we didn\u2019t think we\u2019d get this many fans. It makes us want to work harder going forward,\u201d she said. The boom in 2020 also contributed to the growth of Japanese Hololive stars as a new audience was exposed to the medium. \u201cHololive really got a huge influx of fans that year,\u201d Shirakami Fubuki said. \u201cI think I got around 700,000 subs just that year. We were very thankful. Thanks to the English and Indonesian girls joining, we got a lot more viewers from overseas.\u201d It\u2019s not just the English stars who are pushing the growth. The agency\u2019s Indonesian talents have seen an abundance of success. Kobo Kanaeru is the leader with the Gen 3 member already cracking 1 million subscribers with her cute content, but veterans like Gen 2\u2019s Anya Melfissa \u2014 who made an appearance in the anniversary broadcast \u2014 are also doing very well. There was a method to the madness though. Not only was Indonesia a huge market due to the massive anime fandom, but there were also some deliberate casting decisions on Hololive\u2019s part to make sure the groups from all languages can interact with each other. \u201c[Hololive ID Gen 2] can all speak Japanese and English so they can experience media from all kinds of countries and can use that knowledge in their streams,\u201d Hololive founder YAGOO said. \u201cIf there is ever an event with all of hololive, they could use those skills there too. They\u2019ll play an important role for sure.\u201d Now with the English market continuing to grow for VTubing, Hololive is looking at expanding its reach. One way of doing this is an increased presence at anime and manga conventions with guest appearances from talent. Crunchyroll Expo in Australia and Comic Frontier in Indonesia are two of the upcoming ones. The second is by diversifying talent, and that started with the launch of HOLOSTARS English and the TEMPUS branch. \u201cAmong all the Hololive EN debuts, I thought it\u2019d be interesting to see a male VTuber group that would appeal to even a male audience with their synergy as a brotherhood,\u201d YAGOO said. This was backed up by Axel Syrios, one of the four members of TEMPUS: \u201cWe\u2019re a lot more like brothers than we are idols. We\u2019re just a group overflowing with individuality. I\u2019m really glad to be a member of this group. I feel that every day when I talk to them too.\u201d What the future holds from here remains to be seen, but there\u2019s still more markets to tap into. YAGOO has previously highlighted South America as a potential growth point for the agency so it can become truly worldwide, so there\u2019s lots to do yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hololive still stunned by insane success of English VTubers like Gawr Gura YouTube: Gawr GuraHololive is now a household name in VTubing across the world, but once upon a time they were basically unknown to an English audience. The Japanese company didn\u2019t expect to find so much success outside the country \u2014 but they\u2019re glad […]<\/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-49699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49699","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=49699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49699\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}