Parasocial Relationships and Hololive

8 min readOct 23, 2020

NOTE: THIS IS A STUPID ‘ESSAY’ I WROTE IN THE SPAN OF TWO HOURS. PLEASE DON’T TAKE IT SERIOUSLY

A peculiar quirk about myself that I’ve come to notice over the past few years is once I’ve become obsessed with something I am overcome with the urge to write an essay on that which I am obsessing over at the time. This doesn’t happen very often, but given the fact that you are reading these words right now I’m sure you’ve realized that I am currently obsessed.

Yes, over the past week or so I have fallen down a very deep, very engrossing, rabbit hole. And as the days have gone by, this obsession has continued to grow relentlessly. My compulsion to write this here post is, not only is my every waking thought consumed by the topic at hand, but the perhaps naïve hope that putting these feelings to words will allow me to move on and become once more productive.

I’ve spent enough time hiding what it is I’m tormented by, and of course, having read the title you already know that which afflicts me. My name is GJ, and I have an addiction to anime virtual Youtubers, specifically, Hololive ‘Vtubers’. I know that I am not alone in my voracious appetite for cute-anime-girls-livestreaming-games, but the purpose of my writing here is to try and answer a question those who have not (yet) fallen down the rabbit hole tend to ask, “Why? Why the hype?”

Now there are many avenues through which I could try to answer this question, but I’ve decided to focus on the phenomena of online content creators, specifically streamers, and parasocial relationships. Particularly how I believe the Vtuber format lends itself to sidestepping a lot of the issues caused by this phenomena.

For those unaware, Parasocial Interaction, as defined by A Dictionary of Media and Communication, is “A term coined by Horton and Wohl in 1956 to refer to a kind of psychological relationship experienced by members of an audience in their mediated encounters with certain performers in the mass media, particularly on television. Regular viewers come to feel that they know familiar television personalities almost as friends.” According to Horton and Wohl this leads to a one-sided relationship, where the viewer feels they have a deep, intimate connection with the other party, who has only an abstract, if any, connection to any individual from their fanbase.

Clearly this is not necessarily a new phenomena, but with the increased popularity of streamers and other content creators that put much of their lives on showcase for the world to see, Parasocial Relationships have become increasingly common and increasingly extreme. This is where the Vtuber format becomes relevant.

Now, I feel like my thoughts on the subject can apply to any Vtuber or content creator that works to stay anonymous (‘faceless Youtubers’ like CORPSE HUSBAND and BlackySpeakz come to mind) but because I’m most familiar with Hololive, a specific brand of Vtuber, we’ll be using them as a lens through which we can examine the topic.

So, before we continue, let’s quickly cover: What is Hololive? Hololive, as described by CEO Motoaki Tango in an interview with Anime News Network, is an agency of virtual Youtube idols. These are real girls (and boys, in the case of sister brand Holostars) who stream behind an anime avatar that imitates the movements and facial expressions of the streamer using software like Live2d and other XR programs. These performers have a wide array of activities they do on stream, most notably play video games, review memes, and sing karaoke. Most of these idols are Japanese, though other branches exist worldwide, including Hololive Indonesia, Hololive English, and the soon-to-be-disbanded Hololive China.

Ultimately, I have two main points I’d like to explore, both of which can be put under the general umbrella of “The benefits of the separation of c̵h̵u̵r̵c̵h̵ ̵a̵n̵d̵ ̵s̵t̵a̵t̵e̵ anime and girl.” The first point I’d like to elaborate on is the ‘alter ego/Hannah Montana’ aspect achieved by the addition of an anime avatar.

CONTENT NOTE: THE FOLLOW PARAGRAPH INCLUDES LINKS TO ARTICLES THAT COVER TOPICS INCLUDING STALKING, MURDER, AND RAPE

The issue of online content creators and their safety is not a new one. However, when discussing Hololive, we also need to account for a similar history in Idol culture. While Hololive isn’t able to completely protect their talent, the lack of direct personal information and the obfuscation of their faces goes a long way.

The general result of this is that the Hololive talent essentially achieve ‘anonymous fame.’ As Calliope Mori of Hololive EN put it in a recent stream, “It’s interesting… going about my regularly scheduled day… living the average existence… amongst others who have no idea. I’m just a normal [girl] in my day-to-day life.” They are able to achieve incredible success online while retaining the ability to live quietly, free from the fear of paparazzi or doxing (again, for the most part).

This anonymity not only grants the talent safety, but also freedom. One of the biggest issues facing the idol industry is the idol’s inability to lead real lives. Most infamously the incident that led to an idol girl shaving her head in a public apology for having a secret boyfriend. Even ‘industry-approved’ relationships can lead to backlash due to fan possessiveness (this phenomena isn’t relegated to Asian Idols, as the recent incident with online streamer Pokimane makes clear). It’s very well possible that most of the talent have significant relationships that would normally lead to backlash. However, due to the inclusion of the avatar this is no longer an issue. No matter how many people or who the talent date, the character still remains ‘pure’. (Can I tell you how much I wanted to vomit even attempting to take that concept seriously?)

The separation of character and performer grants the Hololive talent far more safety and freedom than creators of their status are typically allowed.

While the first part focused on how the Hololive model benefits the performers, I’d like to shift to how I feel it benefits the consumer. This next point is… a lot more subjective than the previous. So again, the following is just my opinions and I’m sure it’s not universal. With that out of the way, I’d like to introduce you to what I call “The Canny Valley”.

The most superficial aspect of Hololive is of course, “Anime girls playing video games” but I’d argue that the ‘anime girls’ we see in Hololive are the perfect blend between anime character and human streamer, leading to the aforementioned “Canny Valley”.

The Hololive cast are all playing characters on stream, be it dragon girl , 0-year-old princess, wolf, fox, and cat girls, or even Lovecraftian horror from the depths. But due to the extreme amount of content any one Hololive girl produces (sometimes even doing 24-hour long streams), we naturally see cracks of the human behind the character. Ultimately, the Hololive girls are far more complex and… human, than even the most well written anime character.

Take, for example, the development of Pekora, the cute bunny girl with a funny laugh and penchant to end sentences with ‘peko’. This cute bunny girl has exhibited behavior many speculate to be derived from some social anxiety, however over the past year we’ve seen her slowly become friends with another Hololive member Sakura Miko on the joint Hololive Japan and Indonesian Minecraft server, then when Miko went on hiatus due to health issues, Pekora was left alone. Over the few months in Miko’s absence, Pekora has slowly come out of her shell and even became friends with Indonesian Hololive member Hoshinova Moona. And this is of course one example out of many.

While Hololive girls are more complex and interesting than just a fictional character, they are still characters, and have the benefit of existing entirely within the content. To properly explain this, I have to go on a bit of a detour:

Technically, every single online content creator you interact with is actually just a character, everyone from the biggest youtubers like Mr. Beast or David Dobrik to your highschool friend’s Instagram. By selectively choosing what to share and what not to share, we develop an online persona, and no matter how honest an online content creator tries to be, their viewers will only ever know the persona and never the actual person behind that persona. This is part of what can make Parasocial Relationships so dangerous at times, the incorrect belief of a fan that they ‘know’ the entirety of a streamer or Youtuber or celebrity, when in fact they are only familiar with a sliver of that person deemed safe to share.

Hololive takes that online persona and solidifies it into its own character, one who only exists in the content they are featured in (content here referring to the entire online persona, everything from streams and videos to tweets and messages). For example, it is possible for me to get to ‘know’ the entirety of someone like Inugami Korone because Korone only exists online. Personally, part of the reason why I’ve had difficulty getting into streamers or vloggers in the past was because of this reason. As a viewer I will never actually get to know my favorite streamers. This is no longer an issue thanks to the online persona becoming its own separate character.

So that’s two reasons why I find the Hololive model of content creation compelling, it grants the talent safety and freedom normally unavailable and is the perfect mix of human and character (in this case, anime character). There’s of course many other factors we could explore, like how the number of Hololive channels and amount of collabs perfectly takes advantage of the Youtube algorithm to create the viscous rabbit hole, how the need for fan translated clips has brought back early 2000’s era anime fan-subs in all their glory, or how incredible the casting has been, making sure that each and every Hololive girl is incredibly talented and entertaining, but for now I’ll leave it here.

I think the era of Vtubers has really just begun, as the benefits become clearer we’ll see more and more character/avatar based content creators, even if they aren’t anime idols.

SOURCES/LINKS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER:

Written by GJ!