Wednesday 15 May 2019

Male Vtubers

When people think of Vtubers they'll usually think of all the most popular vtubers, who are all girls. Kizuna Ai being a prime example. All of the top ranking in subscriber vtubers are girls. But if you dig down a bit deeper than the surface you'll find that there are actually male vtubers as well. And I'm not talking about all the cheap stiff live2D facerig ones. Maybe those ones can sometimes be good, I just can't get over the horrible stiff two dimensional models. 

In this post I'm going to be introducing all of my favorite male vtubers, plus some extras that I don't really personally watch much but seem like they could be interesting. First though I have to make it clear that I'm counting any vtuber with a male actor who doesn't use a voice changer as a male vtuber, even if the character/model is a girl. Maybe they aren't technically male but I and maybe others will feel that there's a similar appeal to them because of the presence of a male voice.

I'm going to start with my currently still active favorites and move down through all the currently active ones. I'm going to include the ones that have gone inactive as well just in case they maybe make a comeback some day. I really hope they will.

But now it's time to start introducing them!!

I love these two. They're the cutest and my favorites. They have such a cute and fun dynamic together. Also they do cooking videos! They do more normal short little funny videos too, and cozy live streams. Also they can sing really well. Himaru has a bunch of solo covers uploaded on the channel, Rentarou has a solo cover too. The two of them have an original duet song together!

All of the earliest videos on the channel are just Himaru by himself and then Rentarou appears a bit later. Please make sure you check them out, their videos are so comfy and cute and I love their 3D models. They probably have my favorite models of anyone.

More after the cut!

He's cute... He's cute and small... 
Technically as far as I know it hasn't been confirmed whether he's a boy or a girl. But he's voiced by a boy. A boy you may know if you're familiar with utaite. Cough cough v*pt*nch*u cough cough. He's just a really cute goofy baby boy(?). His videos are very cute, and also he sings too. There's several covers and even a bunch of original songs on his channel. Original songs! By vocaloPs! The Sasakure song is so good!! Please give him love. Also there's a page on his management company's website full of a bunch of official art of him and it's all beautiful.


Sahana together with only a small fraction of the many many Sahana models.
 Sahana is pretty different from most of the others I'm introducing in this post. Most of his videos are just dumb sh*tposts. I think they're pretty funny but I'm not sure if everyone would. He's definitely not as clean and professional seeming as the previous two I've talked about. He's like the definition of 'some regular dude who wanted to become a vtuber'. He's come a long way from his model just being an overly simply drawn live2D floating head. He actually learned 3D modeling himself just to get a 3D body and it was so charmingly awful at first. I think his current model actually looks pretty cute though. I dare you to find the video of his that I got top comment on.

Okay now I haven't really been too active with watching vtubers lately so all the still currently active ones below that are a bit more recent I haven't really watched much of at all. But from what I have seen of them they look nice and all of course have 3D models. I haven't taken the opportunity to get to know them personally but I'll introduce them real briefly for any readers that may take a fancy to them.

Here's a picture of Rinkulo together(?) with Maeno Tomoaki and Inoue Kikuko from AnimeJapan2019. It's not a joke the three of them appeared at a stage event together.
Rinkulo is a male vtuber who is definitely not voiced/acted by Suzumura Kenichi. Absolutely not. There's an amazing video with him talking with Suzumura Kenichi who is still totally not his actor.


The Dante's Peak boys Amon and Micha.
I don't really know too much about them other than I'm pretty sure they were created by Otomate, and they have the same character designer as Hypmic. Also it's obvious from the image but they got a cafe/bar setting. They seem nice though so please check them out if you want to!


The Virtual Johnny's Project, featuring Asuka and Kanata.
A unit of two vtubers, or maybe virtual idols? Managed by the idol talent agency Johnny's. They were designed by the Honeyworks artist. Their actors are Fujiwara Joichiro and Ohashi Kazuya from the Johnny's idol group Naniwa Danshi.


Cute school idol boys. I haven't really watched many of their videos but they seem very cute. Also their character designer is Kuroyuki, known for being the character designer and artist for otome games like Black Wolves Saga, Period Cube, and Gekka Ryouran Romance.




And now we're at the end of the currently active vtubers. All of the ones hereon are going to be the now inactive ones who I hope will one day make a comeback (most of them probably aren't ever coming back). But if you want to check them out and hope for their comeback too then all the videos are still there!


The main who started out as a live2D vtuber, disappeared for about three months, came back with a 3D model, did two new videos (that were pretty far apart) with that model and then disappeared again. On his Youtube channel anyway. He's still kind of active sometimes on Twitter. Maybe there'll be another new video in another three months. Here's a video of him singing with a gorilla. They're both very good singers.


A vtuber created and acted by a man who's an actual professional animator. He's very passionate about animation and the character is stated to be a sakuga otaku and also likes videogames. Particularly fighting, rhythm, strategy, and action games. If her channel ever properly gets started you can expect her to talk a lot about animation, specific animators and maybe other roles in animation production, and lots of other sakuga nerd stuff. And probably play plenty of games too. I'm still pretty clueless in the ways of the sakuga nerds but I have a real interest in the subject so I really hope her channel does eventually get started. Maybe there were problems with getting her 3D model made... There's barely any content of her on her channel but she used to be pretty active on Twitter and there's tons of cute fanart and even some really great fan animations so check that out too! Feed her monster energy drinks.

Side note. I'm using the pronoun "her" for the character since the character (I'm very sure) is intended to be a girl. In Anima Lyon's first video they talk about how he(the creator) had thought about the possibility of hiring a woman to act as the character. But he decided he wanted to try being the actor for her himself since he wanted to be able to personally nerd out about sakuga and play videogames instead of instructing and writing scripts/outlines for another person to act out. He said he would look into getting an actress for her if people really weren't a fan of him acting her. Most of her audience had no problem with it though, or even encouraged it. It probably helps he has a pretty cute voice.
Please come back!


The (as far as I'm aware) very first male vtuber with a cute design and a 3D model. The first vtuber I ever became a fan of. He probably still has my favorite design of any vtuber. Here's reference pictures that were drawn by his designer and modeler. He looked cool but he was a big goof who always got bullied by his entire audience and his manager(?) Tomonaga. His videos ended with him blasting off a lot. Poor Phi. I miss him... Please come back... 

Side note: while I was looking to find the source of those reference pictures again, I saw the character designer had drawn him again. The date it was posted was well after Phi had gone silent. The text along with the picture says "You have and always will be one of my precious children." I just got really upset finding this...


The main theme around his videos is gradually developing the world of a game? It's been a while since I watched his videos now and I think the setting was a bit confusing in the first place. I really enjoyed the videos though. I love his design and something about the sound of his voice is really soothing to me. It's like ASMR. He's gone a bit inactive on his Youtube channel but he still pops onto Twitter every little while. He's hopefully only on a bit of a hiatus if this tweet proves true.



These poor boys were so short-lived. It's such a shame, they seem very nice. Also their character designer is Suzuki Jiro. Mainly known for being the character designer for the Samonji swords and Nihongou in Touken Ranbu, and being the character designer/artist for the otome game Heiligenstadt no Uta.


The most short-lived with only two videos, and probably the most unique of the lot. A mysterious boy(?) alone in a mysterious room. Held captive in that place by forces unknown. Maybe if his videos had continued we could have found out what he is and who's holding him in that room, but it looks like that will never happen now...


I actually just discovered him as I was gathering information for this post. He was a cyberpunk fitness program agent who's mission was to improve the fitness of Japan. I have to give props to his actor, the guy did a great job as him. He had Youtube videos and Youtube lives, but he also appeared on TV (Tokyo MX) as well! Last year he made an appearance at the Hyper Japan convention in London. I really wish I had heard of him earlier so I could have gone and seen him there, I'm so upset about that...

Unfortunately there's probably very little chance of Sasaki ever coming back. Unlike the others who just shifted to radio silence, Sasaki's retirement was officially announced with a video on his channel and tweets on his Twitter account. The farewell was slightly ambiguous but I would be very surprised if he ever came back.



And that's it for the inactive vtubers who I hope will come back, but before I end the post;

Honorable Mention!
I normally wouldn't include a boy acted by a girl, but DD is a special exception. He's a really cute and sweet little brother. He's a Chinese vtuber but his videos always have Japanese subtitles so it's not really a problem (if you can read Japanese anyway). He sometimes speaks Japanese and always uses it whenever he interacts with his Japanese fanbase. He even has a series of many videos now on his Twitter account teaching Chinese words and phrases. He's friends with Sahana (mentioned above) and a while ago they did a duet cover of the vocaloid song Yi Er Fanclub. They sang half of the song in Japanese, and the other half in Chinese. It's such a cute mixture of cultures. He's still active so if you know Chinese or can read the Japanese subtitles try his videos!



And that's it! Writing this took a bit longer and was a bit more work than I had been anticipating but I wanted to get it done since I had already started and said I would. I got a bit lazy with chosing the pictures for each of them, since I saved that for last for most. I might come back later and swap out the pictures I'm not happy with. I really wanted to see this post through to the end just so maybe even a small number of people would see it and take an interest in these boys, become their fans, and make male vtubers an existence more known. I want them to be popular so it lowers the chance they disappear all of a sudden...

Ultimately all of the vtubers I included in this post I chose because of my own personal taste. But maybe there's still some good ones I haven't heard about. If any readers know of any boys like all these I would love to know about them! I double checked a lot but if I got any of the information wrong please let me know about that as well!


Update: I neglected to specify something. Although I only mentioned a few of them having Twitter accounts when it was relevant to something else I was saying about them, they all do have official Twitter accounts! If you like any of them make sure you follow them on Twitter because they'll usually always tweet fun things and interact with fans on there!

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