Phase Three
The Disappearance of Kaburaki Roco
We sit on the eve of November 17th, what one may call the 'end of the line' in the Kaburaki Saga: a most fascinating tale where Japanese bureaucratic autism collided with the rampant ouroboros sigil of Otaku hype to unravel a capricious spindle of discord and speculation.
The girl who often vows that she will 'never lose'; gone silent for the best part of a month, with the darker side of perfect OpSec on full display as fans who have spent an entire year supporting her are now left without a trail. Is she okay? Is she continuing her activity elsewhere? The silence is deafening in a way perhaps most V-Tuber fans have come to take for granted, as their professional artists and active PL oshis 'graduate' to spaces we can keep tabs on.
But this tale won't go quietly into the night - that would be too simple - as the mystery surrounding the greatest PNG anime girl to ever grace the internet further deepens, and the chess pieces move towards a wider battle between VTA and the trust of its fans.
Take for example, the following spoken words from Seraph Dazzlegarden, a member of Voltaction and an alumnus of VTA Gen 1:
「人狼やることになりました。 グウェル先輩からお誘いいただいて楽しみにしていてください、 人狼をやります VTA1期生の現状いる組でやりますラナキュラとボルタクション、まあ新人の2グループということで
Taken from his Creators2 stream on Nov. 12, he says that Gwelu-senpai invited him to play a Werewolf game, but he curiously states that 'We will be playing with the current group of VTA Gen 1 graduates, Ranunculus and Voltaction' and then corrects it to 'Well, two groups of newcomers'. The argument here being that Seraph actually let slip that he knows about Roco, as he instinctively described Ranunculus and Voltaction as the 'current' graduates, and then course-corrected to saying 'two newbie groups' which is a very different thing.
The stream in question occurred later that same day on Saturday, Nov. 12 over on Gwelu's channel. This is interesting because Amagase Muyu, another alumnus of VTA Gen 1, also may have made something of a slip:
日曜日に 「わー」 がありますね、はい (中略) 何にもわかんないでしょ?何にも言えないの (中略) 土日はなんかどっちも凄い楽しいことあるまじで めっちゃ楽しいことあるけどその代わり土曜日のこの毎回こその時間にホラゲするのはちょっとなくなる申し訳ないけど ただすごい楽しいことある! びっくりしちゃうかもしれない みんな
This was taken exactly a week earlier, on Nov. 5, where Muyu says that there will be some kind of 'Wow!' moment on Sunday, and that Saturday and Sunday are going to be a lot of fun, but she says she can't say anything about any of it just yet.
We can reasonably assume that her reference to Saturday was the same Werewolf game happening the following week. But what about the Sunday, especially when the 13th is the day that aligned so perfectly with previous VTA debuts? Well, I'm stumped.
Nijisanji is a gargantuan company, and Muyu, as a smaller creator, is prone to falling under my radar despite my efforts to catch as much info as I can, so it's entirely possible that she WAS involved in something on one of those days, but all I could see was a Splatoon 3 collab with the same people she was teamed with during the tournament: Ibrahim, Mao, and Hibari.
In other words, to the best of my knowledge, a 'Wow!' moment on Sunday the 13th never came to pass. Unless she counts the upload of her original VTA debut as a Members-Only piece of content, it never came to pass on Nov. 6 either.
But it doesn't quite end there. Take a look at AnyColor's inquiries page now:
See that red text? That is brand new, and essentially tells people inquiring about VTA to fuck off and go home, implying that the push from fans to get answers that I mentioned in Phase 2 actually occurred behind the scenes, and was voluminous enough to force them to take note.
But why not simply give answers? After all, PNGs or no, 'Nijisanji' or 'VTA', these are entertainers with a growing number of fans investing their time into the program, and they deserve to be notified of graduations as any other fan of any other V-Tuber. Nijisanji recently wrote a graduation announcement of Holo-bound Miyu Ottavia (if their scouts actually know what they're doing). It was very warm, and probably the best announcement either of the two companies have ever done.
It could be part of the contract: keep them safe by not acknowledging their absence and let them pick up on their own terms. Makes sense given the VTA students all seem to be skewing younger and deserve to have their privacy protected as much as possible.
The other, more tantalising possibility that remains, though, is that Kaburaki Roco hasn't actually graduated at all...
Stay tuned.
Phase 3.5
Kaburaki Doko?
This will be something of an in-between post and a refresher. The amount of time this mini-series can continue is limited to the time it'll take for Nijisanji to churn out a new wave and put to bed the fate of VTA's bun-haired starlet; but with no clear gauge on when or where a debut may happen, I feel it's prudent to bring up new info as it arrives.
So first, let's take a step back and take stock of the events as they happened:
At some point in the last week or so, however, a discovery was made that could very well have busted this case wide open, and I have attempted to the best of my ability to verify its legitimacy or, in the case I couldn't do so, dig further to see what I could find, here are my findings:
Recently, three YouTube channels were discovered:
Youtube.com/@KaburakiRoco
Youtube.com/@KuramochiMeruto
Youtube.com/@KoyanagiRou
We will get to the last one in due time. From hereonout, my explanations may become a bit technical. For now, though, take a look at the creation date of the first two accounts. October 24. The day their VODs were privated.
As some of you may know, YouTube @ Handles work more similar to Twitter than they do to Discord/Steam: only you can have that name. Some sharp-eyed people may have also noticed that, when changing your Handle, your channel defaulted to the name you used when you first created the account. It is also important to note that you can customise your Channel URL as you see fit. This is why pretty much every V-Tuber you look at has their original names as their handles - it's because that's the name they used to make the account, and therefore couldn't get sniped.
So what does this all mean? Well, even though I couldn't find channels beyond the three listed above, I did attempt to change my own username to VTA members using the same SurnameForename nomenclature Nijisanji uses. KusakabeAzusa, IshigamiNozomi, TsuyuzakiTsuyu etc. All 'unavailable' to be used, even though such a handle leads to a dead end. I believe this is because VTA preemptively save all of their usernames, and then veil the channels behind random URLs so they can't be found - in short, I believe these channels to legitimately belong to VTA, though I will hold out on the possibility they they may still be fake.
There is one student whose name was available, though: Warabi Raika. I typed in WarabiRaika, WarabiLaika, WallabyRaika, and WallabyLaika. No matches. It's possible their name was changed and that's why they can't be found, but it's also possible that they may have more to do with this mystery than it appears.
But what about the third channel? Koyanagi Rou is a 2nd Gen recruit and, objectively speaking, one of the less popular ones. He's a gamer that posts VALORANT montages on the VTA channel, and his channel was created on Nov. 16 - almost a whole month later.
So my verdict is this: On Oct. 24, the channels were made in preparation for an imminent debut. It is unclear if their channels were public straight away or if that is a new development. Something happened at the same time - either Tanaka's arrest, or the sudden quitting of Warabi Raika - that froze it dead in its tracks. If it was due to Raika, then it would make sense that Rou has been given the call-up to debut in his stead, and the time needed to prepare has thrown the whole fucking schedule way out of shape.
*Timeline omitted - go to post if you want it*