VTuber Legend: How I Went Viral after Forgetting to Turn Off My Stream

Episode 10

If you've ever wanted to watch a full-length episode of anime girls playing Among Us, this week's episode of VTuber Legend has you covered. It's a rare move for the series, having one segment that takes up the entire timeslot, and to be honest I don't know if it totally earns it. Technically it makes space for that length, encompassing as it does another mega-collab between the show's whole cast of VTubers. But in practice, it doesn't really use all of them, focusing instead on a few core characters while the others just fill in the background or die early.

Given the nature of VTuber Legend as a series, I'm surprised they hadn't broken out an Among Us entry earlier. Notably, they aren't playing the actual game here, even though the show hasn't been above real-world game inclusions, as seen with Ao Oni in last week's episode. Rather, Desert Werewolf appears to be a made-up game, conceived to facilitate the arc of this episode. It seems like a neat enough spin on the Among Us formula, throwing some survival game elements on top of the main maintenance/betrayal mechanics. I know there are real games who do this, but I wouldn't know. My friends and I mostly stick to 100% Orange Juice. They should have the VTubers play that sometime.

Anyway, the presentation of Desert Werewolf as a game in VTuber Legend is pretty spot-on. The little interior loading fade-ins and menu animations are nice touches, and the episode gets a lot of mileage out of dramatizing the characters acting out the antics within the game world and then cutting to the simplistic little isometric graphics where some players are fiddling with the funny run animation. Visually, it makes the most of a half-hour of just watching people play a video game.

That does dig into the question of how entertaining something like this can be, and the answer of course hinges on the performing ability of the players. Playing Among Us with your friends is fun enough on its own, but used as a vector by clever streamers it can transform into top-tier improv comedy. In lesser hands…anyone remember that one stream with Travis McElroy?

Fortunately, none of VTuber Legend girls go off on each other for playing the game wrong. This is a carefully constructed fictional stream, after all. What does emerge is concentrated drama between a few characters including Mashiro, Eirai, Alice, and Awa. Most are in fully committed roleplay mode, infusing drama into these proceedings. I say "most" since the likes of Alice and Kaeru naturally can't stop themselves from thirsting, in the most literal way possible in this case, over Awa. It's a survival situation, I should have expected pee would come up with this crowd somehow.

Alice's schtick in particular is a situation I can see being obnoxious if it was someone I was actually playing with, but in-story, being watched like this, it's a kinda funny aside. It does mean Alice doesn't have a ton to do while all the other conniving and backstabbing is happening, but it does arguably make it more amusing when it's her lust for Awa that leads her to foil the machinations of this plot's surprise villain.

Playing along with this murder mystery is the other appealing idea behind doing a story like this. I clocked it when Mashiro came running from Eirai and fast-tracked the others to vote her off, but it's a solid enough scheme either way. It speaks again to the performance aspect of the whole exercise that Mashiro gets to monologue like Sephiroth at the climax. And I'm not going to complain about seeing her do a yandere turn. VTubers showing off new sides of themselves is the whole thing with this show, and I'm sure this bit was very entertaining to all the in-universe fans watching as well.

But as I said, I don't know that those highlights merit having this plot take up the whole episode using all the characters it does. The joke about Chami blending into the background is funny, but it doesn't hit quite well when several other characters barely figure into the story. Last week's Ao Oni bit showed how this series can make these kinds of collaborative gameplay segments work as tight, concentrated sketches. A game of Among Us doesn't quite land as an epic television event.

Also while the subtitles made a point of working the phrase "among us" into the dialogue a few times, they sadly never once had someone say "sus". Maybe the English dub in a couple of weeks can correct that oversight.

Rating:

VTuber Legend: How I Went Viral after Forgetting to Turn Off My Stream is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Chris actually tried streaming himself, for a little bit. It went about as well as you could expect. He's since resigned himself to words, which you can see more of over on his blog, while watching his Twitter for any ill-advised Strong-Zero-influenced posts.

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