The voice provider (or soul, in Virtual YouTuber fandom terms) for Vtuber pioneer Kizuna Ai revealed that she is resigning from her advisory role at Kizuna Ai Inc., leaving fans wondering if there even is any chance she’ll come back at all.
Kizuna Ai began the current Virtual YouTuber trend when she first entered the scene in 2017, although the streaming variety ended up becoming more popular than the video-producing kind. She held a final concert in 2022 before “entering hibernation,” with only a vague statement that Ai may return someday.
Since then, there have been several projects like a Kizuna Ai-based voicebank and the anime Kizuna no Allele, but nothing has taken off in the same fashion.
While Kasuga Nozomi, the woman providing the voice of Ai-chan, has now officially left the project, she reassured fans that Ai will continue to be Ai (possibly alluding to the fact many Vtubers ‘graduate’ and begin a new online identity) and that she’ll still provide Ai’s voicework even in the future, until the end.
So, she graduated but she will still provide her voice to Ai? Wtf
She got a contract that says “you bitches better pay me regardless of who voices my character, or you come to me first–you get no third choice.”
Strictly speaking, it’s more convenient for the company–they don’t have to keep up with the market with newer talent and don’t need to pay for training to catch up.
I’m so over vtubers, at least the english ones, the japanese ones are still kind of traditional entertainers.
But I’m fucking over “anime girls finally being real” and then doing tik tok and NPC s♥♥t, man.
Them being born in this current age is cancer. They need to stop and come back in 60 years when the world has gone into a new cycle, like the 80s.
This sucks so much. She was best Vtuber. Everyone else still does that stupid 2D thing, or some other mocap of lesser quality. Not that I don’t wish them well in their success or anything.