Over the years I've noticed that much of Japanese video content is presented in the format of a dialogue between two anime girl pngs using text to speech voices as opposed to just some guy appearing on camera or narrating whatever the video is about.
Like if you wanted to watch a review of a new monitor, it would be one anime character explaining the pros and cons to another character
Is it a greater cultural preference for anonymity, or are people just more likely to ingest information if it's presented by Touhou characters? Note that I'm not talking about Vtubers here, this trend is much older and covers pretty much all possible video topics
Is it a greater cultural preference for anonymity
Yes.
Also, their marketing is 'behind' Western marketing where they just give you a tsunami of "impressive" factoids about the product. This kind of advertising you'll see in Western ads from <1920s. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self for how that developed)
Listen carefully: this is a meme. Not those silly little graphics with cartoon frogs.
idk about anime girls pngs, but I saw some Japanese videos that use TTS. It reminds me a bit how people on Spanish/Italian/Portuguese youtube used a program called Loquendo TTS to narrate their gameplay videos back in 2009/10.
I think it is because these are mainly made by teenagers who want to remain anonymous and have some fun making videos. Also these TTS voices have no accent, so more people can understand the video.
I watch a lot of gaming shit from japanese youtube/nico and I've noticed so much of it is touhou memes and voiceroid narration. I suppose it's better than some 4 hour long dry video game essay but these videos tend to all bleed into one another because they're all the same.
Sometimes there's tons of effort put into this format. I once watched a Let's Play of the 2012 XCOM that integrated the story, characters and missions from the game into some kind of original visual novel plotline with new main characters who were, of course, all anime school girls. Tons of graphics, art and an animated anime opening. Really impressive and also weird seeing original cutscenes where the XCOM advisor characters report to some 15-year-old anime girl general.
Felt like a pretty accurate representation of what would happen if a Japanese company went full ham on localising the Firaxis XCOMs
Yeah I've seen users make entire videos about tabletop rpgs starring a cast of touhou characters playing complete with voices. It's neat, it's otaku culture, but there's the elephant in the room of the girls are being underage and sexualized.
:bugs-no: most japanese media is just media. The fact you see a lot of pedophilic content says more about the importers than the nation it is from. THis is not to say there are no problems with pedophilia in japanese culture or content, but realistically it's not much worse than American or European culture. It's just presented in a way no normalized to you.
Ignore those hot takes, some people really just want to do "their thing".
Everyone with a fucking brain knows full well Cryon shin chan, Pokemon, Detective Conan, Final Fantasy games, the daily morning sumo tournament broadcast and the afternoon variety game shows all share the same venn diagram with 100 million rapists and pedophiles.
Interesting point, let's look at the countries where child beauty pageants are everywhere, all shows about teenagers are obsessed with sex and sexuality to the exclusion of other points, fantasy and science fiction novels and games frequently feature unusual age dynamics between members, and underage pregnancy has been considered a mainstay of trash entertainment.
There was a countdown to Billie Eilish turning 18 so porn of her would be legal, and she's not marketed to the Japanese Audience. 4chan is also dominated by westoids, not Japanese people. Just consider the fact that most imperial powers have a pedophilia problem, you're just used to your flavor of it.
Remember, one of the primary cultural distribution networks of Japanese media to English speakers has been 4chan.
Exactly, a filter is in place which encourages pedophilic content, rather than a general sampling of the culture.
yeah dude, any and all criticism of a non-white country is 100% due to racism. there are definitely no other reasons to hate :japan-cool:, of all countries
Death to America
Criticism is fine, but generalising all fucking media from a country with 100 million people as "pedo shit" is fking racism
Fk off
Im literally Chinese you scumfuck dont lecture me on this
If You said "all media produced by jews is pedo shit"
That would 100% Antisemitic
Also, Yes, me objecting towards a wholescale generalisation of a 100 million people is obviously a implicit endorsement of the state of israel
Things that are much more common for them:
-Basic TTS used in abundance for both the video creator and to read chat or other texts. Pretty much almost every stream is going to have a TTS reading chat. I don't follow JP Vturbers too much but because their chat is so much bigger they don't use TTS as much so this is a recent change.
-The niconico format which I believe they pioneered with the user comments flying across the screen.
-Using avatars and mascots for communication. This is a mix of privacy but also cultural. Asians are also more used to wearing masks too. But in general if you ever watched regular Japanese TV variety shows than presenters/participants wearing things like costumes, mascots, avatars, chibis and even anime are much more common.
-There is overall a different attitude towards anonymity and your "image". Media creators(manga/novelists) will often do public appearances but still hide their identity. This is purely to avoid harassment and the cultural obsession with manners and behavior also plays a role. I can't believe YTers are any more likely to want to put their actual face out there for no benefit.
But putting your face out there IS the benefit :soypoint-1:
Yes, but with things like product reviews it's more of a rhetorical device where one character answers the others' questions
Is there one that instead of TTS it records me talking in microphone and removes my accent or outputs another voice?
Like live? I think voice changers have been a thing for a while now. I imagine you could also use an AI voice generator to generate speech for videos
Zen uses standard TTS as far as I know (technically, speech-to-text -> text-to-speech) which is why there's a significant delay.
IDK, it's fast enough I thought it was a speech to speech. The delay is like a second longer than usual streaming delay, just feels a bit longer because she doesn't make smaller noises between words like most streamers.
She previously stated that she uses speech-to-text-to-speech, and the voice she uses is a standard TTS voice you'll hear on other streams (not sure which voice exactly)
They're going to take the call center world by storm with their and their contact-us-only pricing 🤩
