Nijisanji L Collection

[Aquatic Novellite]

Kizuna did not fucking invent livestreaming you retard, that was Nijisanji

The live section is now wiped, because Activ8 management has never not sucked ass, but the second to last time I checked, the first Kizuna Ai livestreams dated to the first half of 2017, roughly a year before the first Niji debuts.

Nijisanji popularised L2D, but live streaming with an avatar was already a thing long before it.

 

[NeneHATE]

The live section is now wiped, because Activ8 management has never not sucked ass, but the second to last time I checked, the first Kizuna Ai livestreams dated to the first half of 2017, roughly a year before the first Niji debuts.

Nijisanji popularised L2D, but live streaming with an avatar was already a thing long before it.

Everything has been a thing before it became popular, but the popular point marks a clear historical distinction of great significance. Nitpicking only makes everything needlessly complicated and confusing, there is an obvious shift from 3D skit videos to Live2d streaming after Niji began doing it.

Same as EN vtubing existed long before 2020, but 2020 expanded the EN side of things a thousand-fold so we give it the importance it deserves. Idc if ironmouse was doing it in 2016 or whatever, the change is obvious and significant. Same with Ami Yamato, same with avatars being used in the 90s for commercials, same for the discovery of the americas.

 

[CalciumAnimal]

Everything has been a thing before it became popular,

As i said earlier.

Is it really that hard to say POPULARIZED instead of Started with. No one is saying doom was the first FPS (ok some are but i don't count morons) but it's prolly the first to popularize the genre (along with wolfenstein) and prolly one of the first names you think of when you think FPS.

 

[NeneHATE]

ACKzUalY

 

[MerelyTourist]

The part that still baffles me is that from all the earliest English Vtubers he picked from, it's Projekt Melody.

Ah yes, Hololive and Nijisanji went on to Chaturbate, saw a MMD anime girl masturbating and said, "This is it, the western market for vtubing is real."

The gall to say that a whoretuber inspired what later was Niji EN, Holo EN and Phase Connect is absolutely retarded.

TBF Melody was the loudest cultural phenomen and shakeup. He could've (and should've) also refer to Naynners, Zen and Silver who also boomed in 2020, but i think Mel outshined them by barging into normies field of view.

wtf, editing glitched somehow

 

[Seth]

TBF Melody was the loudest cultural phenomen and shakeup. HNe could've (and should've) also refer to Naynners, Zen and Silver who were also boomed in 2020, but i think Mel outshined them by barging into normies field of view.

I would argue that if you're gonna add zen in the conversation then Ash should be aswell in the conversation. People never talk about her but she is one of the OG vtubers and pretty sure she was the biggest vtuber on twitch during the end of 2020/early 2021.

 

[Superduper Samurai]

TBF Melody was the loudest cultural phenomen and shakeup. HNe could've (and should've) also refer to Naynners, Zen and Silver who were also boomed in 2020, but i think Mel outshined them by barging into normies field of view.

Melody was a fad mostly brought on by thots seething about her being able to thot out with actual anonimity and she didnt reach the weeb mainstream till she picked up regular streaming as a sidehustle.
But if anything it just made normies think vtubing or virtual avatars were just for sex when Kizuna was undeniably the one who brought it out to the mainstream weeb crowd as an avatar first and then video game playing with her side channels

 

[Fauna's Deadest Sapling]

Melody was a fad mostly brought on by thots seething about her being able to thot out with actual anonimity and she didnt reach the weeb mainstream till she picked up regular streaming as a sidehustle.
But if anything it just made normies think vtubing or virtual avatars were just for sex when Kizuna was undeniably the one who brought it out to the mainstream weeb crowd as an avatar first and then video game playing with her side channels

This is the version of history that tracks most for me. Kizuna AI and Upd8 were the ones finding out where all the boundaries were in 2017-2018.

Like whether people just wanted 3-6 minute videos of a cute anime girl or if they would watch 30+ minutes of that same cute anime girl playing a video game (first "Inside" video i wanna say was spring 2017?). Or whether some other actor could skinwalk the model and fans would accept it (turns out Hard No, see the Multiple Ai's drama circa summer 2019).

I understand that Zentraya debuted on Twitch even earlier doing VR Chat stuff but I've always avoided Twitch so I couldn't tell you anything about that. And besides, Zentraya was hella niche whereas Kizuna Ai went so mainstream that she once got to flirt onstage with famous actor Christopher Waltz.

Goddamn, 2019 was a strange year...

 

[Superduper Samurai]

This is the version of history that tracks most for me. Kizuna AI and Upd8 were the ones finding out where all the boundaries were in 2017-2018.

Like whether people just wanted 3-6 minute videos of a cute anime girl or if they would watch 30+ minutes of that same cute anime girl playing a video game (first "Inside" video i wanna say was spring 2017?). Or whether some other actor could skinwalk the model and fans would accept it (turns out Hard No, see the Multiple Ai's drama circa summer 2019).

I understand that Zentraya debuted on Twitch even earlier doing VR Chat stuff but I've always avoided Twitch so I couldn't tell you anything about that. And besides, Zentraya was hella niche whereas Kizuna Ai went so mainstream that she once got to flirt onstage with famous actor Christopher Waltz.

Goddamn, 2019 was a strange year...

For me Kizuna's more mainstream reach was undeniable when people actually started captioning her videos, this was when you could still do fan captions for individual videos without needing an ok (iirc) so it was pretty apparent that EOPs were watching when brand new videos had captions within the day of release

 

[MerelyTourist]

This is the version of history that tracks most for me. Kizuna AI and Upd8 were the ones finding out where all the boundaries were in 2017-2018.

Like whether people just wanted 3-6 minute videos of a cute anime girl or if they would watch 30+ minutes of that same cute anime girl playing a video game (first "Inside" video i wanna say was spring 2017?). Or whether some other actor could skinwalk the model and fans would accept it (turns out Hard No, see the Multiple Ai's drama circa summer 2019).

I understand that Zentraya debuted on Twitch even earlier doing VR Chat stuff but I've always avoided Twitch so I couldn't tell you anything about that. And besides, Zentraya was hella niche whereas Kizuna Ai went so mainstream that she once got to flirt onstage with famous actor Christopher Waltz.

Goddamn, 2019 was a strange year...

In my snapshot of internet, i never saw any mentions of Kizuna (or Nyanners and others), but Mel came up here and there few times. I found out about her from an article about porn industry and tuned in on her CB stream for like 5 minutes back then. Then i stumbled upon mentions of her again and saw the very first one-page version of vshojo site. I've got into watching vtubers only like year and half later.
So i can understand if someone will point out Mel over Kizuna, but then you're just one vtuber wiki page away from other vshojo members who also got big in 2020. So yeah, no matter how you look at it, it's just lazy. Same as previous joke of a whitepaper. Maybe we should make our own collaborative treatise on the history of (western) vtubing?

 

[NeneHATE]

For me Kizuna's more mainstream reach was undeniable when people actually started captioning her videos, this was when you could still do fan captions for individual videos without needing an ok (iirc) so it was pretty apparent that EOPs were watching when brand new videos had captions within the day of release

Then they epically fumbled the bag and she became irrelevant in like a year Honestly Activ8 is the most retarded corpo to ever exist.

In my snapshot of internet, i never saw any mentions of Kizuna (or Nyanners and others), but Mel came up here and there few times. I found out about her from an article about porn industry and tuned in on her CB stream for like 5 minutes back then. Then i stumbled upon mentions of her again and saw the very first one-page version of vshojo site. I've got into watching vtubers only like year and half later.

I think this just means you're a shameless coomer.

I saw Kizuna, Siro and Mirai Akari a couple of times before 2020, after 2020 it was all Korone, Miko and Fubuki shit, later in the year I saw count dankula talking about Melody, and it was mostly just in the context of angry whores seething about her, not her being interesting or popular enough to get in my feed.

 

[MerelyTourist]

I think this just means you're a shameless coomer.

That i am, but camwhoring is not my type of content so i only looked at it out of curiosity.

 

[El Rrata]

Melody was never actually impactful or a big thing in the Twitch sphere beyond being a target for jokes from people who thought VTubing was cringe, that is revisionist and cope.

CodeMiko was FAR more relevant as a virtual streamer than her or any other VShojo member was during the 2020-2021 VTuber boom on Twitch.

 

[Superduper Samurai]

In my snapshot of internet, i never saw any mentions of Kizuna (or Nyanners and others), but Mel came up here and there few times. I found out about her from an article about porn industry and tuned in on her CB stream for like 5 minutes back then. Then i stumbled upon mentions of her again and saw the very first one-page version of vshojo site. I've got into watching vtubers only like year and half later.
So i can understand if someone will point out Mel over Kizuna, but then you're just one vtuber wiki page away from other vshojo members who also got big in 2020. So yeah, no matter how you look at it, it's just lazy. Same as previous joke of a whitepaper. Maybe we should make our own collaborative treatise on the history of (western) vtubing?

Like you said, you're a geniune outsider to the industry and so your frame of reference to vtubers was Mel and the whores bitching about her.
But the general genesis of vtubing even in the west will always be more weeb adjecent projects like Kizuna, weaboo faggotry built this industry and will keep nurturing it till it dies, even Mel spergs out about hentai which is a part of more coomer weaboo culture

 

[Seth]

Melody was never actually impactful or a big thing in the Twitch sphere beyond being a target for jokes from people who thought VTubing was cringe, that is revisionist and cope.

CodeMiko was FAR more relevant as a virtual streamer than her or any other VShojo member was during the 2020-2021 VTuber boom on Twitch.

Looking a sheer numbers from twitch tracker, melody was the onky 4 views vtuber i could find before the announcement of hololive myth. Im assuming he based melody being the "opening" gate for EN vtubers based on that.

 

[El Rrata]

Looking a sheer numbers from twitch tracker, melody was the onky 4 views vtuber i could find before the announcement of hololive myth. Im assuming he based melody being the "opening" gate for EN vtubers based on that.

Couple things: YouTube as a streaming platform wasn't actually seen as a serious thing until the 2020 VTuber boom and Dr DisrespectTheAgeOfConsent was banned on Twitch. The people who already watched Twitch started watching YouTube streams. Thus, what was popular on YouTube cause changes in popularity on Twitch. Old ENVtubers on Twitch didn't popularize the format, they became popular because they were there when VTubers became popular on Youtube.

Melody didn't tap into an untapped market of people who wanted to watch VTubers, she brought in the existing coomers who were already watching normal whores. She had a stable viewership that didn't grow or shrink during the boom, and also didn't really generate much buzz in terms of clips compared to other VTubers, both English and Japanese and also got boosted initially from the LSF clique. She didn't really stay within the consciousness of the community beyond her own other than being the butt of the joke. CodeMiko, while similar, at least generated buzz with her content outside her own community.

IronMouse's rise in popularity is basically entirely from Hololive and Myth booming, so she isn't even worth mentioning.

 

[Seth]

IronMouse's rise in popularity is basically entirely from Hololive and Myth booming, so she isn't even worth mentioning.

Basically every vtuber started getting attention right after myth was announced/debuted.

 

[El Rrata]

Basically every vtuber started getting attention right after myth was announced/debuted.

That's pretty much my point. There is no "pioneered VTubers on Twitch!" as what is popular on Youtube is what is also popular on Twitch.

 

[Saturnus]

IronMouse's rise in popularity is basically entirely from Hololive and Myth booming, so she isn't even worth mentioning.

Basically every EN vtuber got an increase in viewership when Myth debuted. Tsunderia existed for several months prior to myth and girls like Purin got more attention around that time. ShArtemis also rode the coat-tails of myth's debut by reply guying a bunch of their tweets iirc and got noticed by a lot of people because they had a decent model.

 

[Aquatic Novellite]

Then they epically fumbled the bag and she became irrelevant in like a year Honestly Activ8 is the most retarded corpo to ever exist.

What kinda company was Activ8 back then? Nowadays it's clearly entertainment (more specifically, pretending to be relevant by pointing at its past trendsetting role and current failures without mentioning the "Failure" part), but if they were initially a tech company doing tech demonstration (which I believe is the case, but I cannot actually find anything clearly stating this), them fumbling after stumbling on the entertainment line is understandable.

I mean, it can clearly be done better, as demonstrated by Cover, but Activ8's tech was so far ahead of its competition, there's an implication of tech being thoroughly entrenched and entertainment just not being considered the point of the company at all.

That Upd8 only became a thing after Hololive, Nijisanji and .LIVE all already ran half a dozen talents or more rather demonstrates how much of an afterthought entertainment was.

While it clearly fumbled an opportunity, it's more understandable if their undeniably cutting edge tech was actually theirs (Cover's tech was theirs, of course, but cutting edge... uh, yeah. No). It'd mean that they genuinely put in the engineering work first, everything else was just for showing off said work.

The problem with that approach being, of course, that there's no obvious monetisation avenue. And with engineering being so highly entrenched and genuinely intensive in terms of manpower and finances, swerving towards entertainment was a lot harder for them than it was for Cover's literal handful of people on a budget made of dreams and wishful thinking.

Profitability would also have been more difficult to achieve since the money input was so much greater.

tl;dr: Activ8 may arguably have failed because its tech was too good.