VTubers, or content creators using virtual avatars, have taken over the world of live streaming. These vampires, demons, witches, school girls, and everything in between have crawled out of the realms of internet obscurity to break Twitch subscriber records and pull in hundreds of thousands of viewers a week.
Though many of these creators decide to stream on their own, there’s also a strong corporate culture where a handful of companies design blockbuster stars and tastemakers. One of the largest is Hololive, an agency owned by Japanese tech company COVER Corporation. They currently have 87 active talents, 20 of whom are English-speaking, who have over 80 million subscribers between them. Hololive talents are so popular that on July 5, the company teamed up with the LA Dodgers, sold out Dodger Stadium for the second time, and gave away trading cards that go for hundreds on eBay. Later this month, the agency is bringing its star talent to the stage at Radio City Music Hall.
Using software that tracks their facial, hand, or body movements, these content creators can remain anonymous online while still building and growing an audience. “A shy person doesn’t have to reveal themselves; they can go beyond those sorts of social limitations because they’re speaking through an avatar,” COVER Corporation CEO Motoaki Tanigo told Mashable through the help of a translator. “Now you’re showing your genuine self that you can’t maybe show in the ‘real world.’ So we believe these avatars make it possible for people to be wholly genuine and really speak their mind in a whole different way.”
VTubing’s ascent started slowly, but the onset of the COVID pandemic supercharged its popularity. Annual views for YouTube videos related to VTubers nearly doubled from 2020 to 2021, and averaged over 40 billion in 2024. Now, more VTubers choose to stream on Twitch — and if you open the platform at any time, you’ll see dozens of pastel-colored hair anime avatars bopping around playing video games, chatting with their audience, or singing karaoke.
At first, I found it difficult to grasp why anyone would choose to watch a cartoon character over a streamer made of flesh and blood. But after a few hours watching a succubi run a digital hostess club, I realized that VTubers are creating a fantasy for viewers to buy into. Instead of watching an average gamer play Fortnite, I was brought into an imaginary realm where I could have tea with a demon or crumpets with a necromancer. Though I wasn’t connecting with a person’s real identity, I was able to connect with a world that may not be based in reality, but offered something new.
“When you’re talking about VTubers, they’re real people,” Tanigo said. “They have real journeys, and they can achieve real success. They have their own dreams. They have free will. You know, it’s a real person. So fans can go along that journey.”
But, real or not, becoming a corporate VTuber is no easy task.
The origins of Hololive
COVER’s Hololive VTuber agency actually started by accident. The COVER Corporation was founded in June 2016 with the goal of creating augmented and virtual reality software. Just a little over a year later, it launched its first app, which allowed users to livestream themselves as full-body internet avatars. Its first model was Tokino Sora, a bright-eyed anime girl, who Tanigo said “turned out to be more popular than the game itself.”
“VR technology wasn’t very widely known and accepted, so we decided to build a CG character that would promote the VR game that we made,” Tanigo said. “So we decided to switch gears to a business that is now called the VTuber business, and we decided to support talent and help create more talent.”
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To become a member of Hololive’s roster now, you have to embark on a grueling, potentially years-long process. According to Tanigo, Hololive comes up with a concept for a character and a group, working with “top-level designers in the game and anime industries.” Those who do audition don’t get a say in how the character they portray looks or their design, but they will be able to add in their personality and decide if they want to be a dancer, singer, gamer, or trash talker.
They have their own dreams. They have free will. You know, it’s a real person.
Auditions can take multiple rounds and can last for weeks or months before even getting to the interview stage. Some creators have to audition four or five times before even getting a callback. The process, and a lot of VTubing culture, takes inspiration from Asian idol culture. An idol is a carefully crafted entertainer, marketed for their image, attractiveness, and personality. They dance, sing, sell tons of merch, and usually start at a very young age, all while being under strict supervision by an agency. “There are certain similarities between VTubers and idols when it comes to the relationship between fans and talent,” Tanigo said.
But Tanigo doesn’t like the idol comparison, feeling that his VTubers have more individual personality than most idol groups. “The idol business requires great amounts of monetary investment, with expensive music videos. So, because there’s so much investment made by the company, it is almost like the talent has to obey, has to go along with the company’s direction, with the company’s initiatives. We are supporting individual performers, so our business doesn’t require immediate investment of gigantic amounts, so we [have] more of a supportive mission to help the talent.”
Once Hololive adds a VTuber to its roster, they become a cog in its corporate machine. The company takes a percentage of all its earnings (including donations, subscriptions, and sponsorships), decides who they can collaborate with, and owns the rights to the character they portray.
That exchange does come with a series of perks. They get access to COVER’s software, agents, music producers, and event organizers that offer “business support.” Hololive performers in Japan get access to motion capture studios they can use to stream or create content from as their character.
VTube growing pains and graduations
In their infancy, VTubing agencies are dealing with growing pains. Earlier this month, the third most popular agency (after Hololive and Nijisanji), VShojo, announced that it would be shutting down after burning through $11 million in funding without recouping it, and talent started to leave in waves. Their most popular streamer, IronMouse, announced she was leaving after claiming that the company had withheld half a million dollars she had raised to go to charity.
When a VTuber leaves an agency, either to be free of corporate constraints or to go independent, usually on amicable terms, it’s called “graduating.”
“When one of our talents ends up graduating, it was because we weren’t able to give them the exact support that they wanted,” Tanigo said. “It provides an opportunity for us to look back at our mistakes and strengthen our efforts to support the remaining talent for the future.”
Over the past year, Hololive has had seven of its talents graduate, with the most famous being Gawr Gura. The half-shark, half-anime woman was the most subscribed to VTuber on YouTube with four million subscribers since Gawr Gura launched in 2020. In April, she announced that she would be graduating from Hololive, launching her new character, Sameko Saba — part cat-girl, part shark-girl — to 200,000 live viewers.
In response to the graduations, Tanigo said in plain English, “No comment.”
Even with these choppy waters, Hololive shows no signs of slowing down. The company recently started testing Holoearth, a new virtual space that delivers on metaverse promises from years ago. Players can meet their favorite VTubers in a virtual world, take pictures with them, and even wear their merchandise.
“I think in the next five to 10 years, we will have some serious major artists come out of the VTubing world, not just in Japan, but also in other countries,” Tanigo said. “We wish to be the kind of company that can correctly support those people in the way that they deserve. So we will strive to be the kind of company that can do that.”
