The anime industry really dropped the ball with virtual YouTubers.

I’ve been following virtual YouTubers for about 4 years now and have been an anime fan for over 8 years. I think any objective person can look at virtual YouTubers and say that this is an area in which the anime industry really dropped the ball.<br><br>For those who don’t know, virtual YouTubers are computer-generated avatars of digital characters that appear in videos on a YouTube channel. This concept was pioneered by Kizuna AI back in 2016 who was a Vtuber from Japan. She was a computer-generated avatar of digital character that appeared in videos in which she did various activities such as dancing and talking with fans.<br><br>Kizuna AI was a really big deal back in the day and was the first virtual YouTuber to get a large following. The idea quickly took off in Japan where other virtual YouTubers quickly rose to fame. A lot of virtual YouTubers quickly rose to fame in Japan; with virtual YouTuber agencies opening up across the country. The Japanese government was so excited about virtual YouTubers that they considered them a new form of media and invested millions in the industry.<br><br>Fast forward to 2020, virtual YouTubers were a really big deal in Japan. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit and suddenly virtual YouTubers were becoming more and more popular across the world. American companies such as Facebook were investing millions of dollars into virtual YouTuber technology; virtual YouTubers were really taking off.<br><br>A lot of people were saying that virtual YouTubers were the future of entertainment. The CEO of VShojo has said that he thinks virtual YouTubers could be a multi-billion dollar industry in the future. People were worried that the anime industry was going to collapse because of the rise of virtual YouTubers.<br><br>But then, something strange happened. Despite virtual YouTubers being a Japanese concept, the industry quickly shifted towards English. The largest virtual YouTubers were no longer Japanese, but American. The content style also really shifted away from what Japanese virtual YouTubers were doing and was more similar to traditional American YouTubers.<br><br>The CEO of Hololive once said in an interview that he thought that virtual YouTubers would be able to open up a new path for anime to be consumed by international fans. But, with how globalized the industry has become, this is really not the case. Yes, there still are Japanese virtual YouTubers and, yes, they are still popular, but it is almost as if the international virtual YouTuber community exists in a separate universe from the Japanese one.<br><br>The content styles really are almost like night and day. Japanese virtual YouTubers really are more similar to anime characters than American virtual YouTubers. Yes, there are some American virtual YouTubers that have anime-like designs, but really Japanese virtual YouTubers are really similar to anime characters. They have anime-like personalities and all they do is do cute, anime-like things.<br><br>While anime is a really popular media, the global popularity virtual YouTubers has now really dwarfed the popularity of anime, especially when it comes to younger people, and they don’t really have any connection to anime. Virtual YouTubers are going to be impossible to compete against, because a virtual YouTuber is just a more social form of anime. If anime was social, that is.<br><br>I think we kind of see this in the fact that people are saying that the next big anime boom is not going to be caused by anime, but by virtual YouTubers. Virtual YouTubers are going to really popularize the concept of anime to the masses and really will be the door for many people into anime fandom. I know many people who are now interested in anime because of virtual YouTubers.<br><br>So, kind of sad that virtual YouTubers are so amazing, but are not really connected to anime and are going to be impossible for the anime industry to compete against.