Digital divas: Can Japan’s VTuber craze crack the US market?

Fans waved glow sticks at an animated character on stage, having packed a sold-out Hollywood concert hall to see their virtual idol perform — showcasing the global ambitions of Japan’s “VTuber” subculture.

- TOMOHIRO OSAKI PAULA RAMON GILLES CLARENNE

Pink-haired musician and lives-treamer Mori Calliope looks just like a character from an anime cartoon, brought to life on stage through a hologram-like illusion.

Platforms like Netflix have helped take Japanese anime mainstream — and Calliope’s Tokyo-based talent agency wants its roster of virtual You-Tubers, or VTubers, to be the country’s next big cultural export.

“I don’t really like most streamers, but then when I discovered VTubers, I realised, ‘hey, you know, I’m actu-ally into this’,” said Calliope concert attendee Luigi Galvan.

“They look like anime characters, I like anime, so it was easy to get into the VTuber format that way.”

The actors behind VTubers use motion capture techniques to commu-nicate directly online with fans, who can pay to highlight their comments to the character and other viewers.

Nearly half of top VTuber agency Cover Corp's virtual stars under its famous “hololive” brand speak pri-marily in English, not Japanese, and the company recently opened a US office to accelerate business in North America.

Tokyo-based QY Research predicts that the once-niche VTuber market will make almost $4 billion annually worldwide by 2030, up from $1.4 bil-lion in 2024.

Around 4,000 fans attended the recent concert in Los Angeles, hololive's first solo artist gig outside Japan.