Danbooru

Should Link! Like! Love Live! characters be considered virtual youtuber?

Posted under General

zetsubousensei said:

Is this like Kemono Friends V Project? There is an actual youtube channel there and we tag them as vtubers, if its just in-universe vtubing I'm not sure if we have a tag for "canonical vtuber" yet.

Based on some discussion on Discord, they seem to be normal streamers in-universe, but the VAs regularly do in-character livestreams, which do include interacting with chat etc. (i.e. not entirely scripted or anything).

zetsubousensei said:

Is this like Kemono Friends V Project? There is an actual youtube channel there and we tag them as vtubers, if its just in-universe vtubing I'm not sure if we have a tag for "canonical vtuber" yet.

From what I know, they do actual streams while in-universe they aren't vtuber. So in a technical sense, they are virtual youtuber but then so are other characters like Gold Ship, Yuugiri (Zombie Land Saga) or Osaki Tenka.

Moving beyond technicality though, it's getting complicated and difficult to discern. Are the voice actresses playing the characters whose story and personality are written to be their own things and the actresses merely adhere to such characters albeit with lots of ad-libs? Or are the "characters" just a convenient LARPing device? There are many questions to consider and even on discord, there are disagreement if those questions even serve well as a way to distinguish vtuber and non-vtuber.

Even if we can't reach a consensus, however, getting people opinions and how they look at this topic can be interesting nevertheless.

gzb said:

From what I know, they do actual streams while in-universe they aren't vtuber. So in a technical sense, they are virtual youtuber but then so are other characters like Gold Ship, Yuugiri (Zombie Land Saga) or Osaki Tenka.

In cases where there are actual streams involved, not just fictional ones, the fact that they aren't VTubers in-universe isn't as relevant - whether or not they are VTubers in-universe only matters if there are no actual streams/videos for one to watch. Doubly so if the streams being done are ones done at a regular basis, and triply-so once interaction is involved (i.e. talking to chat).

Note that we do tag virtual youtuber on characters that don't qualify for the tag regularly (read: fictional characters that still aren't defined by their VTubing) as long as it references whatever VTuber thing they did, if they did do something, of course. As an example, Katsura Kotonoha isn't a VTuber, but she had an infamous VTuber stream that inspired memes and fanart like post #4269377, so not tagging the tag would make it harder to find stuff like that. We do have a counter-example though in Pakatube, where that copytag is used in place of the VTuber tag for stuff referencing that channel - presumably the fact that the channel isn't just Gold Ship and co. doing a ton of 3D stuff, that's probably why?

Moving beyond technicality though, it's getting complicated and difficult to discern. Are the voice actresses playing the characters whose story and personality are written to be their own things and the actresses merely adhere to such characters albeit with lots of ad-libs? Or are the "characters" just a convenient LARPing device? There are many questions to consider and even on discord, there are disagreement if those questions even serve well as a way to distinguish vtuber and non-vtuber.

Even if we can't reach a consensus, however, getting people opinions and how they look at this topic can be interesting nevertheless.

It's difficult to discern because that's always existed in the VTubing space, the only difference is that for the VTubers whose stories and personalities are written to be their own things, said things are increasingly 'written' in collaboration with the intended soul of the VTuber, so you can't even draw a yes/no binary answer from the questions you asked, as it'd be yes for all of the above. But there's still a lot of VTubers who stick strictly to the character they developed, though that feels more common on the Japanese side - see the most famous example, Hatoba Tsugu. She has always been considered a VTuber, but a number of "fan definitions" for VTubers people in the West have developed would toss her out.

Bringing up Katsura Kotonoha situation is interesting because it implies that tagging non-strictly-vtuber as vtuber should only be done in reference to their vtubing. The Love Live situation is more complicated, however, since they are much more involved in vtubing, though I'm not sure how much.

I guess another way to view this is looking at the "soul" of a character. If you change her VA, does it affect her character? Can she stand on her own without her VA? Kizuna Ai is definitely a vtuber because we all know how people felt about the possibility of changing her "soul". For characters like Gold Ship, it probably doesn't matter as much. Some people will still argue that it's not the same anymore but it will certainly be much more acceptable.

gzb said:

Bringing up Katsura Kotonoha situation is interesting because it implies that tagging non-strictly-vtuber as vtuber should only be done in reference to their vtubing. The Love Live situation is more complicated, however, since they are much more involved in vtubing, though I'm not sure how much.

Just throwing out the opinion that the virtual youtuber tag is weird since it doesn't descibe anything observable about the picture it's more used as a "canon tag" than anything else. Perhaps there should be a tag for more explict vtubing as an action. We have a livestream tag but thats much broader.

gzb said:

I guess another way to view this is looking at the "soul" of a character. If you change her VA, does it affect her character? Can she stand on her own without her VA? Kizuna Ai is definitely a vtuber because we all know how people felt about the possibility of changing her "soul". For characters like Gold Ship, it probably doesn't matter as much. Some people will still argue that it's not the same anymore but it will certainly be much more acceptable.

If we're talking about replacing VAs, I can say that that has only happened once in the entirety of Love Live!'s history (that is, for Yuki Setsuna), and that was only because the original VA has a disability that impacted her ability to perform live. I'm sure, even before VTubers even existed, that people would go absolutely nuts if any VA in Love Live! were to be replaced for no apparent reason. So I don't think that is a good metric.

If we're going to instead use whether they call themselves VTubers as a metric, then the Hasu no Sora members don't really count. I don't think it was the intention, even; people just conflated the word "Virtual" in "Virtual School Idols" with the concept of VTubers. There really isn't an easy way to describe their activities other than as "VTubing", though, since they do stream and perform as their characters complete with full 3D models. In that respect, they are much closer in concept to early VTubing than what most people would consider VTubing nowadays.

In fact, according to this interview with the staff of the game, they had received special training so they could perform live, in live performances and in normal livestreams. Though, that was more to emphasize the "fan interaction" aspect of the game, and make the transition between the provided story and livestreams seamless.

Updated

gzb said:

I guess another way to view this is looking at the "soul" of a character. If you change her VA, does it affect her character? Can she stand on her own without her VA? Kizuna Ai is definitely a vtuber because we all know how people felt about the possibility of changing her "soul". For characters like Gold Ship, it probably doesn't matter as much. Some people will still argue that it's not the same anymore but it will certainly be much more acceptable.

caps7 said:

If we're talking about replacing VAs, I can say that that has only happened once in the entirety of Love Live!'s history (that is, for Yuki Setsuna), and that was only because the original VA has a disability that impacted her ability to perform live. I'm sure, even before VTubers even existed, that people would go absolutely nuts if any VA in Love Live! were to be replaced for no apparent reason. So I don't think that is a good metric.

As I had brought up on Discord, invoking the souls of the people behind the personas is just overcomplicating the situation, which is why our usual modus operandi for tagging VTubers is following the Japanese practice, which is to say, we tag them if they consider themselves VTubers. We develop practices for exceptional cases and exceptions (ala Katsura Kotonoha et al), but otherwise that's the simplest and most encompassing approach for us.

In practice, as far as Danbooru is concerned, there is no difference between someone like Hinoshita Kaho and Nerissa Ravencroft, except one is far more embodied/influenced by the person behind the model than the other, but that's meta information that isn't particularly necessary. The moment you try to create more narrow definitions of what a VTuber is (as most common Western definitions try), you end up kicking out key figures from the space from the definition and include folks who actively choose not to be VTubers (ex. trying to define it based on streaming ends up including VRChat streamers who don't call themselves VTubers, but removing folks like Kaguya Luna and Hatoba Tsugu, and the latter would also be excluded if you try to define it based on how much the character is influenced by the person behind the model, because Hatoba Tsugu is absolutely just a fictional character).

caps7 said:

If we're going to instead use whether they call themselves VTubers as a metric, then the Hasu no Sora members don't really count. I don't think it was the intention, even; people just conflated the word "Virtual" in "Virtual School Idols" with the concept of VTubers. There really isn't an easy way to describe their activities other than as "VTubing", though, since they do stream and perform as their characters complete with full 3D models. In that respect, they are much closer in concept to early VTubing than what most people would consider VTubing nowadays.

In fact, according to this interview with the staff of the game, they had received special training so they could perform live, in live performances and in normal livestreams. Though, that was more to emphasize the "fan interaction" aspect of the game, and make the transition between the provided story and livestreams seamless.

I'd argue it isn't conflating though. Given how much of a brand term "VTuber" is, having a broader (non-YouTube) term, especially one that hasn't been really used yet, makes a lot of sense. Nijisanji explicitly named its talent 'VLiver', a term that has now garnered its own life to refer to talent in 'closed garden apps' ala IRIAM and AniLive, for instance. And it's not like they haven't used the term 'VTuber' before for Love Live, as Tennoji Rina had a number of videos on YouTube explicitly labeled as such. That's why most recognize that 'Virtual School Idol' (バーチャルスクールアイドル) is just their way of saying VTuber - searching it on the Japanese net makes that abundantly clear.

The mention of 'early VTubing' is why we don't rely on common Western definitions for what constitutes a VTuber or not, because most Western definitions are based on the fact that most folks were exposed to VTubers only from 2020 onward. For the Japanese, their definitions still include 'early VTubing' styles because they are still fairly common on the Japanese side. To name but one example, the Omega Sisters still overwhelmingly prefer doing prerecorded content for their own channel as opposed to livestreamed (and have even pushed the boundary by the fact that they have their 3D heads applied directly to their actual bodies, allowing them an even wider breadth of content).

zetsubousensei said:

Just throwing out the opinion that the virtual youtuber tag is weird since it doesn't descibe anything observable about the picture it's more used as a "canon tag" than anything else. Perhaps there should be a tag for more explict vtubing as an action. We have a livestream tag but thats much broader.

You're not the only one with that opinion; the tag is one of the few instances of generic-copyright tags (alongside idol, utaite, voice actor, the once-proposed 'vocal synthesizer' tag, etc), where the concept/profession is tagged, a thing which isn't immediately observable from the art itself, and a number of builders/contributors have expressed their distaste for the tag's continued existence (and the only reason why the tag will continue to exist is because, despite all logical [to some] measures, a lot of people search the virtual youtuber tag, either by itself or in tandem with something like sex, or even use it in blacklists to ensure they get no VTubers in their search, so there's implicit support for it from the silent majority).

Regardless, on actually depicting VTubing as an action, in art, VTubers are just as often depicted as emotive as actual people, so something like that wouldn't make as much sense. Using livestream and fake video is good enough for that.

Damian0358 said:

I'd argue it isn't conflating though. Given how much of a brand term "VTuber" is, having a broader (non-YouTube) term, especially one that hasn't been really used yet, makes a lot of sense. Nijisanji explicitly named its talent 'VLiver', a term that has now garnered its own life to refer to talent in 'closed garden apps' ala IRIAM and AniLive, for instance. And it's not like they haven't used the term 'VTuber' before for Love Live, as Tennoji Rina had a number of videos on YouTube explicitly labeled as such. That's why most recognize that 'Virtual School Idol' (バーチャルスクールアイドル) is just their way of saying VTuber - searching it on the Japanese net makes that abundantly clear.

Yeah, honestly, I have no objections. When the pixiv Encyclopedia entry straight-up just calls them "VTubers", there is nothing to say.

For now, I've added a link to virtual youtuber in each idol's wiki, in line with other VTubers.

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