VTuber nanda ga Haishin Kiri Wasuretara Densetsu ni Natteta • VTuber Legend: How I Went Viral after Forgetting to Turn Off My Stream - Episode 1 discussion
VTuber nanda ga Haishin Kiri Wasuretara Densetsu ni Natteta, episode 1
I'm unhappy with this to an absurd degree. The references clearly show that they know the scene. But why do they completely skip the whole concept of the person behind the screen being different from the character on the screen? Why do we see her vtuber model in the IRL parts? There even was the whole 3d sequence with the spinning face which was presumably designed at first to show off the IRL character looking different from the onscreen model before someone decided that the people watching are too stupid to deal with a single character having 2 completely different looks. And now we have a IRL character running around with their vtuber model looks and costume. As someone deep, deep into the vtuber rabbit hole this pisses me of more than I can put into words.
I also don't know how funny this is to someone not familiar with the people parodied here. I could imagine they will have the same experience watching this as I have watching OPM.
As someone only vaguely familiar (I watch some vtubers, but didn't pick up on much direct parody other than genital jousting, just that one of the other vtubers reminded me a lot of ookami mio (was that her name lol) and my closest thought about MC was that the dichotomy reminded me of what I know about haachama), I thought it was pretty hilarious in a "i should drunk watch this with a friend and have the greatest time" kinda way. To me it was mostly stupid sex humor and sometimes that's just all I want.
MC is basically Yukihana Lamy from Hololive who started out like MC but dropped the good girl act after the introduction of alcohol. She has her own brand of Sake by now (which even won a bronze award at an international wine competition. I wouldn't be surprised to see something like this reflected here further down.)
There are a lot of other references like the software used for example, and most likely a ton of others that I missed since I follow JP vtubers only via clip highlights or special events.
I noticed that but since it's the first episode I didn't want to jump to conclusions. The other irl characters were also represented symbolically, so it's probably either to communicate that the character is the one that matters in the scene and the actor is irrelevant, or could also just be a way to maintain the "illusion" so to speak. At the very least, I'm inclined to believe that if they understand this much about vtubers, they must have made a concious creative decision to represent her as the character irl. Whether or not that was a good decision remains to be seen.
I'm not into vtubers and it sounds like there are a lot of jokes and references I'm missing, but what I did get from this show I didn't like. It seems like the story is set up to explore the space between a vtuber's online persona and real life self (similar to mmo junkie) but the lack of real life character designs for all the characters massively undercuts that. A lot of the jokes were like "pure girl says dirty thing" which, like, I don't know if that even really counts as a joke to me. MC also has a bit of the "predatory lesbian" trope in her and I don't vibe with that at all.
I also am sort of confused about where MC was at in her career before going viral. It seemed like she had thousands of viewers and a very active chat, even without doing any activity (gaming/art/asmr), but her channel wasn't even monetized? She's also missing that streamer style of speaking where you read out the questions you're responding to, which would be both more realistic and make the conversations she has with chat easier to follow.
Overall, I give the premiere a 1/5. It's possible that the referential humor I'm missing makes up for some of that, but without it there's not much left.