Weekly NewsDrop #5—Week 41

Hello! We were supposed to release the Weekly NewsDrop at 10am EST, but the number of major updates coming through hours before this gets released led us to temporarily stop the presses for a late edition. Thank you for your patience and kind understanding.

The Latest from NewsDrop

• Nintendo Reiterates Warning Against Misuse of Their Games
• Ninomae Ina'nis Takes Extended Break, Citing Health Issues
• The second issue of the VTuber Music Recap is out
• NecroNews reviews a game from Booster's game collection, roughe-like shooter Dead Estate.
• Pokemon trainer Iono is revealed, but we do not consider her as a VTuber yet. Here's our take.
• Overidea founder Kyouka is in hot water after his former partner accused him of abuse and manipulating fans.
• Finally, the much-awaited PomuTori collaboration is set to happen this Saturday. Are you ready?
• We are now on Google News!

VTubing in China gets disturbed, with agency Overidea at the spotlight. Its founder Kyouka, a Japanese who also speaks Chinese and is mostly live on Bilibili.com, is in hot water after being accused of sexual harassment and misleading their fans in a video first posted on the Chinese video platform. The news eventually reached the international community, and we are closely monitoring the situation.  

Before we continue with this top story, we'll have a recap of some of the important things that have happened at TwitchCon San Diego, graduations left and right, plus news from last week up to the last few hours before this newsletter gets released.

Ted: Last week, we have finally confirmed two major collaborations between the English talents of Hololive and Nijisanji: the first is between Hololive’s Regis Altare and Nijisanji’s Alban Knox with the game Terraria. Now, we have confirmation that a three-way collaboration between Nijisanji’s Selen Tatsuki and Hololive’s Kureiji Ollie and Vestia Zeta is happening soon. (By this time, you've heard about the confirmed schedule for the PomuTori collab, see you there 👋)

This new update is significant, considering the fact that Hololive and Nijisanji are rivaling VTuber agencies in Japan in terms of business approach and expansion. While their business objectives are certainly different from one another, the framework is the same: handling multiple talents, engaging in music projects and events, and engaging with brands.

While collaborations between Hololive and Nijisanji talents are common in the Japanese space, the English side is best summarized in the line ‘canceled at the last minute’. For context, there was a supposed collaboration with Hololive’s Takanashi Kiara and Nijisanji’s Pomu Rainpuff, canceled at the last minute. Meanwhile, a supposed APEX collaboration between Hololive’s Kureiji Ollie and Nijisanji’s Selen Tatsuki was also canceled at the last minute.

There is hope in the English-speaking space that through these agency collaborations, apathy between two rivaling agencies may subside, thanks to genuine interest of their own talents to collaborate with other VTubers from different agencies.

Jay: Pipkin Pippa describes this third top story best: "I woke up to like five graduations on my timeline."

Ted: In the past few days (and the weeks prior to this reporting), we have seen a new wave of graduations, but more notably from smaller agencies and from the indie VTuber community. You can check out the list of the new graduations below.

VTuber Graduation Announcements from Last Week

Looking at the list and the previous graduations, it is clear two major reasons to quit VTubing: moving on to do more personal things, be it dealing with real-life issues; and then shifting their content into what they do better, including art, music production, and sometimes real-life streaming.

As the world is slowly reopening up and people going back to their normal lives, some of the VTubers we know who entered the community as a way of passion and hobby, are now retiring to return to the real world. Others are finding the online avenue they had as a new channel to regain customers for their digital services.

The question is: are we seeing more of this? The answer: Yes. But that doesn’t mean the VTubing community is coming to a halt. More and more VTubers are announcing debuts, agencies rolling out auditions, and despite the saturated market, VTubing goes on. After all, VTubers ain’t over, to be honest.

Banner Photo: Vasily Koloda on Unsplash

Jay: Nijisanji parent Anycolor has published an activity report for their Offensive and Defamatory Conduct Countermeasure Team, for its first year since its establishment in September last year.

A total of 88 cases have been handled last month, and the team has conducted several measures, such as identifying websites which infringe on the rights and honors of Nijisanji livers, contacting such websites asking them to remove such materials; as well as filing deletion requests against those who vandalize the livers on social media.

The progress report gives some detail on some of the cases, including two requests to disclose vandals who have disrupted talents' activities; and a settlement reached between the company and an adult female who violated the talents' business rights.

Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash · An initial version of the story indicated that the report covered only September 2022. This has since been corrected. 🙏

TwitchCon San Diego Post-Event Recap

Jay: TwitchCon San Diego has long concluded, but we are still on the lookout for happenings post-event:

• Following reports of drink spiking, Hazumi has tweeted that she was among the people whose drinks were spiked during an invite-only party. Worse, the only way to really test for a spiking drug is to have a forensic drug test at the police.
• Several other complaints against TwitchCon are gathered in a Twitter thread, and by now some of those tweets are either hidden to the public or taken down.
• The Zentreya car got ticketed, and Zen quickly replied: "MY CURSE".
• Evan started a discussion on cliques that sparked reactions from several attendees who are part of the VTuber community. Our take: Humans, by nature, form their circles of friends with people they can be confident with, people they can trust. Sometimes, people want to form connections with fellows of the same stature; and sometimes, people want to keep their circle secure for their own well-being.

• NBC News has featured the VShojo booth and Projekt Melody. Melody and VShojo had ideas, such as her appearing in a Terminator-style robot or having an arm-wrestling event. Both of these ideas were shot down. They did very well on having an autograph rig, which caught the attention of meet-and-greet participants.
• Another good news for VTubers is that the con has a panel on VTubing, and you can watch it at the Nomnom Theater channel.

Sara Hoshikawa Bans Posting Clips of Solo Streams

Jay: Following Ars Almal's decision to only allow posting of clips on Twitter, Sara Hoshikawa has banned clipping of her solo streams.

In an October 13 tweet which was translated an hour after, Sara has spotted a lot of malicious clips and misleading thumbnails. The number of these videos did not decrease even if she asks management to send requests for deletion.

Sara joins other Nijisanji livers Yuki Chihiro, Hakase Fuyuki, and Ars in placing certain restrictions on stream clipping.

More VTuber News

• Himemori Luna gets her own solo station ad promoting Hololive 3rd Fes. Link Your Wish Blu-ray on sale October 26. This follows her accidental removal from the Hololive Super Expo billboard instead of Uruha Rushia who was terminated prior to the event.
• Gawr Gura joins several live stream guests for YouTube FanFest on November 11 alongside various creators.
• Cover Corporation has donated around 10 million Japanese yen to the Japan AED Foundation which promotes the use of automated external defibrillators. Hololive member Shirakami Fubuki supports the organization's cause as one of the "life-saving supports" for team ASUKA.
• Holostars EN talents debut on Twitch.
• Hololive Indonesia's 1st-generation talents are set to have new costumes this month. We'll see Airani Iofifteen in twintails soon.
• Israel-based Idol has launched their HUB platform where fans can earn points by participating in streams. Based on their plan, points can be exchanged for merchandise. Early access signups are now open.
• Production Kawaii's Sava Safari hosted a soap-eating tierlist stream. You saw that right. She even tweeted about it. Warning: Do not eat soap, it will lead to chemical burns or worse, poisoning.
• Music VKet 4 is now open—access it on VRChat or VKetCloud.
• Omega Strikers Vienna VTuber Invitational gathered personalities from VShojo, Nijisanji and the Indie scene with a $50,000 prize pool. Vienna's team Following this, game developer Odyssey Studio debuted Sonii the bat, piloted by MLG Champion and Dreamhack Winner Hafu.
• Gray Scaling is looking for a female VTuber talent who's into FPS games and has streaming experience.
• AXEL-V's dissolvement officially took effect on October 16, citing lack of funding.
• Love Live! school idol project teases upcoming mixed-media franchise "Hasu no Sora Jogakuin School Idol Club" which involves a smartphone app, live and talk streams among others.
• Yuzu and Skye take their stream breaks and promise to return soon

News You Can Use

• YouTube has recently created separate YouTube payments accounts in Google AdSense as they cancel inactive AdSense accounts for non-YouTube payments. Prior to this, issues on video monetization were reported by creators on Twitter.
• Before this, YouTube has also announced Handles, another set of custom URLs that will integrates the platform with the social media habit of mentioning accounts whether on Twitter or Tiktok. This will be rolled out soon to all accounts.
• Aetheria's Oumiya Emma tweets that creators on YouTube are now allowed to either (1) let all channels or (2) let the channels they are subscribed to raid theirs.
• Gank. has released their guide on building a VTuber persona.
• The Open Broadcast Software team is aware that there's an issue with streaming using connected YouTube accounts and assured everyone that streamers can still go live using stream keys.
• VTuber Gummy assets are shared on Twitter so they can make their own versions. (We'll look forward to the best designs!)
• VRChat has further updated their Menu layout.
• VTube Studio advises Windows 11 users to delete a GPU management .DLL file which causes program crashes due to incompatibility with the newest NVIDIA Driver (522.25).
• The Fall 2022 VTuber Census survey is now released in both Japanese and English.

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Disclaimer: NewsDrop is produced in collaboration with Kawa Entertainment. The views and opinions written on NewsDrop do not necessarily reflect those of Kawa Entertainment and its talents.

Banner Photo: Himemori Luna's performance of fancy baby doll from her recent birthday live / Hololive © 2016 COVER Corp. / YouTube