: heyo! there's a 2nd-genner here hahaha
“Huh?”
Live-On as a company was huge, now one of the front-runners in Japan’s VTuber management race, still in fierce competition with its rival corporations. But no matter how powerful a creature grows, it always starts out as a weak little baby. Even Live-On originally started with a single VTuber.
Plus, she’d only been born to test out how good they could get the models’ movements to look, and they’d recruited the streamer herself from the employees of the still-tiny Live-On. Essentially, she was a trial product. And so, naturally, she’d been thrown into the seas of the internet with unremarkable character design—a sailor uniform and short black hair, neither of which could be called great design by any means—and janky motions. Going by her appearance alone, she clearly lacked anything she’d need to get popular. Apparently, only ten people had watched her very first stream.
But being a baby didn’t mean she’d had no abilities. Possessed of natural-born talents, she’d quickly overawed her audience. Her singing voice was so powerful and energetic that it shook your very soul—none who heard it would ever forget it. On her zatsudan streams, she showed an incredible breadth of knowledge and unconventional ideas—genius that made you wonder what kind of life she’d lived until now. Meanwhile, her video game streams were full of the worst luck you could possibly imagine, which always plunged her viewers into a whirlpool of laughter—you had to assume the heavens themselves had taken her viewers’ side.
It would not be an understatement to say that all of the VTubers currently with Live-On had been influenced by her a lot. Despite nobody expecting anything from her, she’d sent furious waves through more than just Live-On—she’d shaken the entire VTuber world to its core, and served as the bridge that had guided Live-On to its future growth as a corporation. She was Live-On’s one and only first-generation VTuber, still boasting the highest number of channel subscribers to this day. Her name: Hareru Asagiri.
After she’d spread Live-On’s popularity, though, it had been the three members of its second generation who’d really catapulted Live-On to the top—each of whom were like densely packed bundles of sheer individuality.
The first had straight, crimson hair that reached her waist and a slender body that was over 180 centimeters tall. The horns coming out of her head made her look like a little devil—and her clothing spared no effort in showcasing her bombshell physique. Confronted with her dangerous charms, like those of an evil executive, the viewers had been on the edge of their seats wondering what her personality would be like—and then, on her first stream, she’d revealed that she’d used to be a “sexy” actress who’d specialized in yuri, or lesbian, content and proceeded to baffle everyone by talking about her favorite “sexy” actresses and “sexy” yuri video recommendations. Her name was Sei Utsuki. I had fond memories from back when I’d been drowning myself in VTubers of laughing myself out of my chair at just how fearlessly hard she always went.
The second went all in on the cute visuals—she was a little beast girl with brown, tiger-pattern cat ears and a tail, and her clothes looked like a school uniform from a fantasy anime. However, she loved only the worst of games and the worst of movies, earning her the nickname the Filth Junkie. Her name was Nekoma Hirune. For whatever reason, in a world where both domestic and foreign industries were filled with wonderful video games and movies, she preferred the awful ones, the ones that could only be called stains on mankind’s very history, and she frequently did interesting and hilarious commentary on them while streaming. I remembered one time during her “Try Not to Laugh: #40 (Temporary Title), Playing While Reading with All the Feeling” stream when my sides had nearly split from laughing so hard.
And then came my final senpai, the exceptionally talented Shion Kaminari, who was able to keep the three highly individual characters I’ve already mentioned in check. Shion was possessed of such keen insight that people believed she could literally see emotions. Not only did she always meet her viewers’ expectations, but she always went one step further, with her rock-solid stability and humor basically making her streams virtuoso performances. That was all the more apparent when, during collaborations, she would take the role of master of ceremonies. Although getting multiple Live-On members together usually made for absolute insanity, Shion’s mere presence was enough to set everyone’s minds at ease.
Her character was a shrine maiden with the spirit of a nine-tailed fox within her. Her visuals matched that—she had fox ears, nine tails, mystical shrine maiden clothing, slightly drooping eyes implying just a hint of ephemerality, and black hair cut cleanly at the shoulders. Those natural features, which avoided the excessive, made her burst with an aura that soothed everyone who watched her. Lately people had taken to calling her the Live-On Mom, or Shion-mama—titles she had eagerly weaponized. And with such powerful weapons in hand, she was unstoppable.
That was a pretty long explanation, but basically, what I wanted to say is that my four predecessors were basically godlike beings to me. And now...
Sei Utsuki: The scent of a comrade brought me here.
Shion Kaminari: Turns out you were just as much a part of Live-On, huh...
...these two gods had deigned to descend upon my humble chat!
In the past, I’d received several comments from my senpais who’d wanted to be considerate to their kouhai. Each time, though, I would get so terribly nervous that I’d barely been able to stammer out my words, and it would really slow down my stream. I did at least remember what we’d talked about at the time, though, so while I couldn’t be certain, I assumed that if I went even further beyond that level of nervousness, I’d turn into...whatever it was I’d become during my third-gen interview.