Interest
Virtual YouTuber Craze Leads to 1,000+ Registered Accounts
posted on by Jennifer Sherman
Over the past couple of years, the virtual YouTuber trend has taken off in Japan. Virtual YouTubers, who are usually moe girl characters with hidden true identities, post videos that show themselves doing a variety of random activities. Although the popularity of the craze has been building since around 2016, the number of virtual Youtubers has experienced a recent boom.
According to User Local's Virtual YouTuber Ranking website, the number of virtual YouTubers increased from 500 to more than 1,000 between February 27 and March 18. The number of registered accounts for virtual YouTubers has reportedly been rapidly increasing since December, but the increase by about 500 accounts in less than one month is unprecedented.
Virtual YouTuber Ranking also lists a popularity ranking of virtual YouTubers based on their accounts' numbers of subscribers and total video views. Kizuna Ai and her separate games YouTube channel top the ranking. The "(self-proclaimed) world's first virtual YouTuber" debuted in December 1, 2016 and has since garnered over 1.6 million subscribers on her main A.I.Channel and over 700,000 subscribers on her A.I.Games channel. She will voice Administrator B (Okame) in the television anime of Kentarō Satō's Magical Girl Site (Mahō Shōjo Site) manga.
The rest of the top five virtual YouTuber's on Virtual YouTuber Ranking's list are Kaguya Luna, Mirai Akari, and Dennō Shōjo Siro.
Dennō Shōjo Siro will soon get another chance to shine as she appears together at her first event with voice actors Maaya Uchida and Aoi Yūki. The trio will appear at KLab's stage event for its MAGATSU WAHRHEIT smartphone game at AnimeJapan on Sunday. The event will reveal the details of Dennō Shōjo Siro's collaboration with the game.
Dennō Shōjo Siro's YouTube channel has more than 400,000 subscribers as of the posting of this article. She is affiliated with smartphone app developer App Land.
