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.