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

Episodes 1-2

So, up front, I am not a huge VTuber guy. I can tell you I think that Suisei gal has a great set of pipes on her. I know that Gura saying "A BUTTON" and Korone's "Eeekum Bokum" are going to live rent-free in my head probably forever. I even covered a virtual concert a few years back that I think properly crystalized the appeal of these digital darlings for me. But I don't have the space in my entertainment life to follow everything VTubers get up to or keep up on watching their streams.

Do you know what I am deep into, though? Drinking and dealing with reactions to the material I put out online. And in that regard, even as it's about an artform I'm only aware of to an ancillary degree, VTuber Legend has my number hard. Say hello to Awayuki Kokorone. She's a dropout office worker who turned to VTubing as a make-or-break career cope, and she deals with the pressures brought on by that via drinking herself into a coma every night. I love her and am rooting for her (to fail in even more spectacularly successful ways).

Now, VTuber Legend probably could have gotten by playing Awa's activities straight in their execution—cutting between her Live2D persona and the real-world person and playing up the contrast between when she's on and off the mic. There probably are plenty of VTuber-focused light novels that do this exact thing, I'd wager. But the show's actual hook is in Awa's disparate realities driving under the influence and violently crashing into each other to kickstart the plot. Her accidental, inebriated, extremely NSFW televised tanked times net her the notoriety she'd been struggling to find, with the arguably added benefit of her seemingly being able to get by as her authentic self rather than playing up a character. Whether that will be a good thing in the long run is what Awa is looking for as her career takes off.

That blending of the real and virtual worlds is evident by VTuber Legend's most notable visual gimmick: all the VTubers are portrayed using their overdesigned anime girl avatars in-stream and real-life. No other humans are fully shown, with Awa's manager being pointedly faceless and random civilians appearing as nondescript cutouts that wouldn't look out of place in the Monogatari series. It makes it easier to let the VTuber designs wholly embody the characters, and perhaps more importantly, it's pretty dang funny to see this fairy-tale ice princess crushing cans of Strong Zero, flopping and flailing around, and eventually grappling with the hung-over aftereffects of her indulgences. I can see how this choice might be dissonant to some, and I admit it would have been neat to see the contrast between the real-world performers and the designs they embody. But this would never be that series (this choice is present in the original light novel illustrations). The series does make time to show a flashback of Awa as a wasted office lady, so it at least has some sense of culture.

It's not like VTuber Legend isn't indulging in other kinds of clever visual gimmickry. Illustrations of Awa and her colleagues munching on marshmallows pass by as they answer Marshmallow inquiries. There's a terrific effect employed in the second episode where Awa's collab with Mashiron visualizes them in a radio show set, their reflections in the window showing them at their desktop setups at home. The animation and art never feel like they're punching above their weight, with the Live2D animation, in particular, seeming oddly underplayed for a story all about celebrating that technology and the medium that employs it. But the intelligent direction is elevating it, with the visual gimmick mostly being, as Shion says, "funny, and that's what matters."

If you enjoy the general spectacle of goofy anime girls hanging out, you can probably have fun with VTuber Legend even if you're not deep into the streaming sphere. Awa's interactions with her colleagues have different levels of chemistry to sell them, with the body language rapport between her and Sei in the second half of the second episode being especially charming. You will, however, need a healthy tolerance for the praises of Strong Zero being sung damn near every minute of the series. Don't get me wrong; I do not quarrel with the sweet seltzer—I've been pretty fond of the less-catchily named "-196" version they've recently trotted over to the States (despite the lowered alcohol content because they think we are weak). But if you could accuse VTuber Legend of being a "one joke series," then Awa screaming about her love for the vodka seltzer would be that one joke. Notably, the series has made some gestures at more measured management of its alcoholic content—Mashiron clearly being concerned about Awa's intake and encouraging her to back off the sauce and still include some sober streams. How much comes of that will remain to be seen.

For now, what I most appreciate about VTuber Legend and its chosen subject matter is the ultra-modern feel of so much of the material. The exceedingly entertaining subtitle script is peppered with perfectly chosen instances of internet slang. Meme'd on gifs and shots are referenced throughout the animation (they throw #SHIBUYAMELTDOWN into the OP!). Awa's game of choice for her attempted return to sober streaming is, of course, Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy—complete with recreating Houshou Marine's epic meltdown at the same spot in the game. They, as the kids these days say, understood the assignment. To be sure, there will be plenty of other sides of these 2D avatars to look at in the coming weeks. But for now, watching a girl failure ice princess sloppily scream at her computer screen is enough for me to keep tuning in.

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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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Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.