Latest from Acapella: Second Edition

Kilia Kurayami's Crazy Month

July started out just like any other. But for Kilia Kurayami, that quickly changed.

Just a few days into the month, Kilia's ISP went down for more than a day. Having to cancel one stream already, it was thankfully back working in time for her Oshi Karaoke stream on 7 June. This was a vertical karaoke stream where Kilia only sang songs by her hololive oshi, Takanashi Kiara.

About halfway through the stream, none other than Kiara herself showed up in chat to cheer Kilia on and inadvertently provided Kilia with the shock of a lifetime. Unfortunately, this shock paled in comparison with one to come mere days later.

On 12 June, during her Paper Mario stream, an accident occurred which caused Kilia's streaming space to catch fire. When she left to grab a snack during a hypoglycemic episode, a lit candle managed to cause a pair of headphones to catch fire, which in turn spread to a blanket, which then spread to the entire shed.

Thankfully and most importantly, no one was injured. However, the majority of her streaming equipment and other personal items were lost.

While resistant at first, Kilia eventually decided to reach out to her community and put some items to be crowdfunded on her Throne. All items were funded in less than an hour.

She returned on 14 June with a small stream to update everyone on her well-being and a potential timeline for when her streaming shed might be back in action.

Then, just a few days later, Stoneforged Technology sent out a care package to Kilia to replace lost or damaged components of her PC. Eventually, she was able to get her PC up and running, but repairs on the shed were taking longer than expected, so regular streams still had to wait.

A welcome distraction came on 23 June when Elia Stellaria, Hirano Kokoro, Pippa Pebblesworth, Xiulan Long, and Furi Ferntail joined Kilia for a hangout day in London filled with Japanese barbecue, karaoke, and dancing.

Ending the month on a high note, Kilia was invited to do a virtual hangout at DoKomi 2024 thanks to apparel shop Pastel Melon. Seeing the faces of her fans was just the boost she needed to stay the silly, smiling Dorca we all know and love! – snakeeatingmouse

GX Aura's Charity Concert

On 15 June, Aura hosted a charity concert for the Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity. But this wasn't just Aura's event: The concert featured 33 VTubers of all shapes, sizes, and agencies.

Some of the VTuber invitees consisted of many independents and agency VTubers, including those from hololive, EIEN, and Mythos. Dubbing it the "SummAura Concert", the event consisted of covers of summer-themed J-Pop tracks.

While there is no official VOD, many people have uploaded some of their favorite clips, songs, and moments to YouTube.

In recent history, Acapella Media interviewed Aura in its March 2024 issue, in which she mentioned how much she wanted to do concerts and collaborate with others to achieve it.

Aura even managed to sing with her long-time kamioshi and inspiration: Takanashi Kiara.

The event raised 6,000 GBP (around 7,625 USD) for the hospital. At the time of writing, Aura is probably still fangirling that she sang with her idol. Chase your dreams, readers. – Gilthunder

Capped Birthday Subathons

Hazumi Aileen

Hazumi Aileen held a capped subathon event to raise money for her surgery. Her subathon started on her birthday, 7 June, and lasted five days. During the subathon, she unveiled a new cover, a Patreon with tiers starting from 5 USD, and created a Free Company in Final Fantasy XIV for the Hazuminis to join.

While the event was initially scheduled to run for 5 days, she extended the subathon by a day to catch up on the Final Fantasy XIV storyline in anticipation of the upcoming expansion.

After the surgery, she recounted some events leading up to the operation and continued her Final Fantasy XIV marathon. She also posted an... interesting post-surgery meme on X, giving the uninitiated an abridged version of the announcement. “p*ssy fixed.”

Through the subathon, the Hazuminis also have a lot of content to look forward to. This includes a variety of streams, a cringe ASMR scenario, a song to sing and dance to at an upcoming 3D live, and, most notably, a free-to-use Hazumini Live2D model! – Flood_

Sinder

Sinder held a capped subathon to celebrate 2 years as a VTuber. As a gift back to her community, she spent 10 days with the Pyro Pups hosting various giveaways, playing a multitude of games (some against her own will), and spending quality time together whilst looking back at the past.

With a lot of love and support to give, the Pyro Pups responded in turn by smashing the subathon goals out of the park, dropping an astounding 8403 sub points by the 24-hour mark and meeting an “arbitrary challenge goal” at 22222 sub points by the ninth day.

As an added bonus, they kept Sinder around after hours by starting a Hype Train, prompting even the subathon timer itself to tell them to “CHILL!” so the subathon can properly wrap up.

With the talk of goals, the Pyro Pups made it well past 16,666, unlocking everything to offer. This includes merch drops, a 2.0 bikini outfit, and a new Patreon account… one may only guess what lies ahead. – Flood_

Phase Connect's OffKai Collab

If you felt like the "Hag Garden" event from last month wasn't enough of a fever dream for you, Phase Connect always delivers. And it's fair to say they never hold back or half-bake anything. The girls at Phase Connect had a massive off-collab following their attendance at OffKai at the end of May.

The VOD for this event got deleted as it was originally on Pippa's channel, but reposts as well as clips are available on YouTube for you to watch.

The presentation felt like a "girl's night" kind of party. If you are into that kind of content, no doubt you will enjoy it. The whole stream was filled with the laughter of all the girls, making fun of each other and bantering.

Deciding to ignore context at every turn, talking about their nipples and about drunk driving (reminder that this is illegal and neither Acapella nor Phase [or even NewsDrop] encourages it), this was definitely a very chaotic stream.

Similarly to Hag Garden, this was definitely a Phase collab of all time and an emotional rollercoaster during the two hours of the video. Keep being yourself and never compromise. – Gilthunder