What's Up in Philippine VTubing—December 2022

As publisher of the Weekly NewsDrop, I already have my geographical bias. NewsDrop has writers in two opposite time zones—most of the NecroNews team are from the US (I believe one of them is from Australia), while me and Teddy are based in the Philippines.

One of the challenges in building the weekly newsletter is to keep it short and sweet. I was looking to put all news stories from my home country in the final newsletter of the year, but I noticed it's a lot, so what I'm doing is a separate, country-specific recap of all that has happened in the scene, starting with:

KoMETA's Merch and Open Auditions

Following the celebration of its first year since the debut of its pioneer generation, KoMETA Virtual Live shared several announcements:

• Acrylic Standees with illustrations by Ardenlolo,
• T-shirt in collaboration with Buvelle (multiple variants),
• A Collector's Pack featuring signed t-shirt and holographic acrylic standee with a doodle pin and vinyl sticker set (all encased in a limited-edition box)
• Open auditions for Generation 2, and an opening for a Male division

KoMETA will provide further details soon.

MITO Entertainment's New Generation

MITO Entertainment is also debuting new talents soon! Generation 2—Hiraya Pina, Ara Abella and Saul Ezra Azarcion (man, all of their names are definitely Filipino) have vandalized MITO's social media handles.

My take: My eyes are definitely glued to Saul, a meme man disguised as a taho peddler.

Cosplay Matsuri 2022

I always treat the last week of the year as a tradition: From December 26 to 30 (that's Monday to Friday, good for those who aren't part of the working class), Cosplay events will be held in nation's capital region.

Cosplay Carnival 2022 will be held on the latter part of the week at upper levels of SMX Manila, and the All-Star Avenue shows a lot of local VTuber merch:

PPNO (Fanfair, FC-01)

Another later addition to the list is PPNO-tubers, who will sell merch. All of the available merch can be found in the Twitter thread.

VKrazzy (Fanfair, FP-04)

Local group VKrazzy sets up shop in partnership with Crescent Link, MITO, Day/Break and 9 other VTubers.

• Standees, keychains, stickers and posters are set to be available at the booth.
• Prior to the event, a bidding war for another standee of VTuber and artist Pan the Bread was already done—and sold to the same person who already won a bid for a previous Pan standee in the middle of the year.

Kitsui Akira and FAAC Gaming (Fanfair, FP-02)

Kitsui Akira's (Kiichan) merch returns to the con floor as FAAC Gaming offers official Kiichan stickers and prints, plus a fan-made Ethyria card set are up for grabs.

Night Parade (Fanfair, FN-07)

A later addition to this post is Night Parade featuring "The Future," offering merch, meet-and-greets, and raffles.

8THiR3AL Projekt (All Star Avenue, A08)

Being one of the guest artists in this year's Matsuri, EiPro offers keychains, pin badges, photo cards and stickers, plus limited edition merchandise. A desk mat will also be raffled off during the event.

Stellar Paradigm (All Star Avenue, A09)

Dasu, Maddie and illustrator Poison will be at the Stellar Paradigm and Friends! booth just beside EiPro. I want to put everyone's attention to Maddie's merch—she has a yarn doll! A yarn doll! A standee auction is also in the works.

PH VTuber Collective (All Star Avenue, A07)

The PHVT Collective returns for more VTuber merch, including Cornelia Star's Tasty Treats, standees, keychains, stickers, mousepads, t-shirts, posters, photo cards, and the like.

I will be present at Cosplay Matsuri as well, so if you happen to meet someone in a khaki vest and a NewsDrop mic, that's me. :) Thank you for reading until the end and see you in person!