The Hololive fan culture is weird because it's horny, but not really.
I'd compare Hololive to My Little Pony except it was never targeted at kids in the first place. Jenny Nicholson in her video essay about the brony fandom made a point that I'm going to very loosely paraphrase here:
There is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy where society thinks that if men like something feminine, it has to be a sex thing. And because masculinity is dumb, this translates to men buying into this line of thinking themselves.
I've been a big Hololive fan for over a year now and I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of Hololive fans aren't horny for the anime girls, and they mostly joke about it because they kinda feel like they have to, if that makes sense? If you look at the most and least popular members, you'll quickly realize that sex doesn't actually sell. The new models and costumes they receive have become noticeably less revealing over the years and the audience loves them more than ever (Ninomae Ina'nis is probably the best example of this)
Basically, the gamer nerds who watch Hololive watch it because it's cute, wholesome and pretty much always happy. It's an endless stream of positivity and nice things in a world that does its hardest to grind you and your spirit to dust. But because of a somewhat self-imposed societal stigma, they can't just like feminine things for being cute, that wouldn't be manly. They have to want to fuck them.
It's bizzare, but if you follow the culture you'll quickly realize what I mean. Many of them aren't actually horny, they just act that way because they think they have to.
The rest of your comment might hold water idk but that link you sent literally has an anime child with a boob window, that was meant to be an example of the less revealing design? :yikes:
I guess it wasn't obvious from the comment, but no, the point was that the second and third outfits are a lot less revealing than the original outfit.
But thanks for assuming I'm a fucking creep, comrade.
Couldn't agree more. There's a reason some of the more sexually explicit ones in content play it for laughs. When Coco was streaming she probably had the largest breasts of any model, but very often was joking about them and sex in general. Marine makes erotic references all the time, but I really feel it's more comedic than anything else. Same with Kiara. Fauna's got a whole mommy thing but it's played more for supporting and caring for people than anything sexual. I find it funny when I see art of some of the girls on some...non-seiso websites that it feels almost obligatory, like you were saying with brony stuff. Obviously some people are genuinely into it, but some of it just looks like normal art that they felt obligated to make erotic because that's how they're "supposed" to interact with female characters they like. Outside Hololive, look at how Melody has done better as a regular streamer when she started as a chaterbate streamer. Cute girls having fun and being entertaining can be wonderful amusement.
Yeah, another good example is Yuzuki Choco, also Hololive. She has a very sexualized design and character, she does erotic ASMRs and I'm pretty sure the thumbnail she uses for those is actual cropped R34 art of herself giving a guy a handjob.
She is the most sexually explicit Hololive member, she doesn't play it for jokes and she's been around for years... and she's one of the least popular members out of all of them.
It becomes even more apparent if you compare her to Nakiri Ayame, who debuted at the same time as Choco as they're both part of the 2nd generation. She is one of the least sexually explicit members, and instead she is famous for just how damn adorable she is, even compared to the many other cutesy Hololive members. She giggles a lot, makes cute noises and then giggles at her own noises. Even the other members tell stories of how cute she is irl.
She is also infamous for how rarely and inconsistently she actually streams. Looking at her YT channel, Ayame has only done 7 streams over the past 2 months. In that same period of time, Choco has done 45.
Choco has 850,000 subscribers. Ayame has 1,250,000.
Hololive fans aren't in it to jack off to anime tiddies. Choco literally does hentai moans when she gets shot in Apex (and she's pretty good at doing those tbh), but that stuff just doesn't get the big viewer numbers. The most viewed of the weekly Hologra episodes (I'm pretty sure) is the one where Ayame says "Yo dayo." That's what it's really about.
bringing up hologra, even though Choco is allowed be be more mature there as on her own channel, it's usually to highlight the contrast between her adultness and the other girls' seisoness. Not even always sexual, like the one where Watame tries to drink coffee and keeps spitting it out on Subaru. Then they use A-chan for a more relaxed maturity. Or I guess there's also the Matsuri line, where no one can say something worse than Matsuri has already said, and they need to end the stream if they do. Noel also dips into some sexual content, but she stopped her last stream cause she saw the joke going too far.
Load those things up with fluoride and turn'em gay like the frogs. :alex-supplements:
it makes me uncomfortable when anyone says "daddy" about their parents around me in real life but if i was on a vtuber stream i would be in no place to judge them
we're reclaiming daddy from the sex freaks as a cute way to refer to your father
The best thing about Hololive, to me, is how much it clashes with my internalized stereotype of Japanese media personalities always presenting an extremely sanitized and "respectable" public image.
It’s more a generational shift and the fact they play otaku characters appealing to the otaku audience. The obsession with purity is still there it just is manifested in our ironic age. If a young female idol has a love interest in real life she will still be canceled. Kson has talked about how the Japanese domestic fans are much more demanding of her and also they seem to not be interested in the 3D version of her but the 2D version while western fans just don’t care.
Also you might not have a good eye for what a “sanitized” image is in the Japanese context.
