I think this is not the second time I will tell every single one of you that I’ve been operating Zoom webinars for the past three weeks, and I still hate its flaws. Nevertheless, I hope to reach Zoom Nirvana soon.
That’s just one thing that have happened during my content break. Here’s the rest:
Secured another media partnership for an upcoming event (details soon)
Sprained my ankle forcing me to be bedridden for half a day
I’ve digested what’s happening in the fast-paced Virtual YouTuber scene. Here’s what I understood:
It seems to me that Hololive production finally decided that they wanted to have be happy again – this comes after a lot of negative stuff and bad press plagued them for the past few weeks.
After a three-week suspension, Coco and Haachama returns. They’ve decided that they can’t let go of the world’s top superchatted personality as well as the innocent maniac. Capping the week off, Coco showed herself in 3D again for the first time since that madness which is her 3D debut stream.
Haachama is on a roll – she’s doing English only streams for the week as well as debut a new outfit this Monday. She also has this new #HaachamaSunday streams featuring the best and intentionally worst cooking the world has to offer.
This means one thing: Hololive’s pulling out of doing business in the PRC. How do I even put this in words properly without offending anyone? Basically, Hololive’s China division has been asked by the management if they want to graduate, move to another company or go independent. Hololive China is where Artia is, and of course I feel bad for the China team, but the silver lining here is that it’s said that they are able to keep their virtual identities and the management won’t take a share in their earnings moving forward. These things I learned because I reddit, so there’s more info there as we speak. You still got to be wise in curating your info, still. See, even I got clowned with the recent updates. When will this pain go away? Lord God, I want to end the pain.
All of these happened as we continue to keep hold of Fubuki’s litmus test promise: If she leaves Hololive, we leave. She has not left us, and continue to support even Coco at the AsaCoco group’s educational arm. I’m currently part of the Department of Superchats, so let’s meet there soon.
Meanwhile, Nijisanji is now experiencing its bad moment with its termination of Kingyozaka Meiro. If I understood it correctly, it all started with an issue with accent, like how you pronounce words. It gets complicated as you continue to go deeper, to which I say this: We’re supposed to be here to be entertained, so let’s get this out of the window. Enjoy the show.
This is also the first time I got knowledge of a sort-of Virtual Keemstar. He actually exists in the form of Narukami Sabaki, whose goal is to expose the bad side of the industry to everyone’s attention. This is his words, as translated by the Virtual YouTubers Wiki: “to remake the world of Vtubers, which is lawless, unscrupulous, corrupt and wicked.” Prior to this, we already have the trap prince of VTuber talk, Inuyama Tamaki, so yeah, we get to see other influential personalities working in the sidelines as well.
To cap off this post, noticed that keepsakes. has been upgraded to Version 3.1 with a slightly new theme. As soon as I get back to producing content, I’m looking forward to put more in this website. See you soon!
After less than a year, we now have another equipment upgrade in office – this is necessary to speed up the editing process of our online events. After some tweaking, I was able to connect two monitors to a single desktop, just what I need to edit videos and stream well.
Now that the materials have been set up, I expect more work to come my way. The events season is not yet over.
Nevertheless, I take these as blessings – I should; we are still blessed to work and earn. The usual whining while troubleshooting and the like remains, but that’s part of the journey that I enjoy.
I’m just about to do the second revision to my magnum opus – a virtual induction and handover ceremony of my Rotary club where I am now a sworn-in secretary. My involvement with the Rotary continues to be the same as ever.
Speaking of upgraded equipment, I finally got to test my OBS template which I only got back into since setting it aside last year. I’m happy with the results, because finally, I placed my OBS Template to good use. Here’s the highlight of my test done early in the morning.
I’m now a year older – and so is keepsakes 2.0. We’re still in this volatile and uncertain world. Just a while ago, I heard that mentioning Taiwan as a Hololive vtuber can get you into trouble because those loyal to the PRC will storm your chat and fill it with derogatory comments.
Prior to this, we saw cases of bad actors in the local vtuber community, something that I refuse to talk about in detail with respect to my idols.
In a way, the world has changed in both good ways and bad: Look at your surroundings, you find more peace nowadays. Most of the toxicity you see are now online.
Then again, the best way you can do for yourself is to fight the battles you are confident to win.
Don’t get involved in fights as much as possible. Practice maximum tolerance. Keep your words to the people you are confident to speak to. You can think about the past but please don’t forget to move on. Be at peace with yourself. Love yourself, guys.
By this time, I am already wondering how malls survive. Some stores are still closed, most have physical distancing measures implemented, but overall, there’s less people coming in – except if it’s a supermarket or a bank, which brings in the necessities.
Then there’s online shopping, where the numbers mean crowds. The monthly sales of e-commerce giants Alibaba, Lazada and Shopee is our kind of Black Friday sale in the U.S.
These “Super Shopping Days” get people to buy, buy, buy, buy, buy with discounts and freebies galore, plus the catchy tones they use to market the numbers culture into us.
I for one have been hooked with the latest Shopee 9.9 jingle played to the tune of “You Know I’ll go Get” remixed by Rizky Ayuba based off Enrique Iglesias’ “Finally Found You.” I even know the dance moves! I can dance!
Shopee is fond of nostalgia as well, having Jose Mari Chan in the Philippine side and Gurmit Singh, popularly known as Phua Chu Kang, in Singapore. Side Note: Phua Chu Kang (Pvt. Ltd) aired on TV5 in Manila around 10 years ago.
Ignoring the logistics of these online sales, it is exciting to add to cart, apply the coupons and then wait for 12:00am on September 9 to check out.
“Lloyd Cadena para sa pagbabago, ta-ta-tara na-ta-ta-ta-tara na…”
Lloyd Cafe Cadena knows how to whip up catchy novelty jingles.
Imagine from being a vlogger, he went on to have a radio stint at MBC’s Love Radio. Then he wrote his own book. He wore many hats.
I think that one catchy jingle is the one thing I’ll remember about Lloyd. He will be missed.
You suck, 2020. First was Emman and now Lloyd. Stop it, it ain’t funny.
Capping off this Desk Diary: Finally COVER Corporation has released “A Statement Regarding Measures Against Harassment of Hololive Members,” showing that the VTuber agency is committed to taking action against people with no heart and lots of time to do unworthy things.
This is my second Desk Diary, where I put my heart out and think loud enough to cover some topics which will then be considered taboo, letting these things go and then moving on.
I have to open up and say that I’m not feeling well these days. My body clock’s a mess, I sleep and wake up late, I get much more irritated, and all I can presume that this can lead to me having cabin fever. All that’s saving me is that I’m still employed and I get to keep my hobby on the side.
Let me open up first about my content creation process – as I launch the Deremoe Archive series on YouTube this Friday, I look back at hours of content Deremoe has done in the past under my watch.
It’s a waste to delete every trace of it – it took me quite a few overnights to sort each video I produce and publish there, and it’s not just me who’s running the brand back then – so I decided to bring back good memories from it. I do have a proper explanation on why I’m doing this on last week’s vlog, I hope you’ve watched it already:
All of these Flashback Friday videos as well as this month’s podcasts are of top priority, which is why I’ve produced these first with my utmost energy.
I do these things in advance because I have fears that I won’t be able to do this during the whole month of September. So far, I’m around 90% complete, and I am yet to find a proper time within the month to process the remaining 10%.
Having a set schedule helped me to make a habit during this quarantine. It’s kind of messed up but you can figure it out along the way.
Mano Aloe
A downside of preparing too early is that when something suddenly hits, it will be hard to add it in the finished product. It’s like a newspaper kind of thing where addenda and errata are done either online or on the next issue.
We were expecting that Hololive’s 5th Generation will be completed by this month, but just as we move our online voices to support Mano Aloe, she has decided to retire 2 weeks after debut. This makes her the second fastest VTuber within the Hololive production to retire.
We all blame each other in the process – Cover Corporation who owns the production unit, the overseas fans who are zealous to meet Mano Aloe again, the so-called “Antis” who have harassed Mano Aloe to the point of her receiving multiple anonymous phone calls, or the toxic idol culture in general, Mano’s colleagues or even Mano Aloe herself.
I had already prepared a memeable clip from my recent recording for an upcoming podcast episode, where I said this:
Since Shishiro Botan has already debuted with flying colors, it’s time for Polka to speak English and Aloe to sh*tpost.
I didn’t quite expect that to hit me so hard.
Sure, Mano Aloe had committed a taboo prior to her actual debut. I’m still trying to ingest it, but I understood that it’s more of a commentary on idol culture, where agencies are so strict, idols have to be seiso (pure), so on and so forth.
Sure, Mano Aloe had approval of her manager to do a test stream on Twitcasting, implying that she will delete it soon after. It was not deleted, and information about a retired NIJISANJI virtual liver got divulged along with it.
…that’s why, please be nice to me before I get banished.
Excerpt from the fan-translated “leaked” video posted october 2019
Mano Aloe debuts as part of Hololive’s 5th Generation. Days after, things went haywire to the point that she had to make an apology video. (You won’t see it officially; the YouTube channel has been removed after all; you may find it translated on another fan channel though).
It’s said that there are misconceptions in the apology video. Our initial understanding is that Aloe had to cut ties with his boyfriend, so the antis went out to harass her boyfriend.
It’s also said that the apology video was not that sincere. Not to mention Mano Aloe is said to have spoken from a “third person view” as she mentions details about the retired NIJISANJI liver’s graduation.
News broke out last Monday that the official statement says it’s a “breach of contract,” a valid point from a company perspective. Mano Aloe DID breach the contract she signed up for. She got a two-week suspension, and it’s assumed that it’s an effort on Hololive’s side to suppress the tension by implementing this ban.
If this is Mano Aloe’s swan song in the VTuber industry as a whole, I will have to fully accept it regardless. We don’t know what’s in Aloe’s mind back then when she ranted on that “leaked” video, and we don’t know if she’s OK at this point. We just won’t know, and it will not be for us to be nosy about.
Just like you, I am shocked with the news, but what jolts me more is the caption accompanying the formal announcement:
“5th Gen will hold a meeting at 10:30 AM discussing this news.
We WILL be translating this stream. Do not accept fan translations as official.”
That enough gives me an idea that while Hololive appreciates the translations from fans around the world, in this case, it’s their words that’s made official.
The formal letter of Cover Corporation CEO Motoaki Tanigo (YAGOO) starts with the inevitable truth, followed by another apology:
“We apologize for misunderstandings caused last time due to the lack of a translated official nnouncement and the delay in adding subtitles to the apology stream. As such, we would like to explain the circumstances in more detail this time.”
As a company going global, Hololive is slowly understanding the repercussions of getting into mainstream attention, crossing international borders and cultures.
Unfortunately, Hololive is also home to careless management. It hit me just now, but I realized that I’ve read the story on Yozora Mel wrong. Contrary to my statement posted on Tiktok and Instagram, Mel got her own laywer to sort out the mess related to her long absence – as the notable Lyger translates it,
“Since she wasn’t getting the support she needed, a friend reached out and helped put her in contact with a lawyer. With help from the lawyer, they got the person named in the email to admit to being the one sending the harassing emails and doing the Twitter harassment.”
I understand now that in Mel’s case, after she got in touch with a lawyer, Hololive ended up helping her relocate and cover lawyer’s fees.
If this is YAGOO’s Idol Dream, I don’t want any of it. It reminds me of our local AKB48 branch so much, where the expectations don’t meet the reality. Also, the toxic idol fandom turned me off, and I don’t see much more positivity about it. Might as well graduate along with my oshi, I said.
The role of the agency is to introduce a personality that has a clean stature, and one of the talents’ roles is to stay clean, else they face backlash.
The story of Mano Aloe gives us a lesson on checking and double-checking talents if they are fit for an agency’s vision, mission and values. The last time they had an incident where a VTuber debut supposed to happen, they failed to check important details which then leads to a VTuber not debuting at all.
As much as Hololive wants to ignore this one, Streisand effect is in progress. It’s not my task to share it, unfortunately. It’s just a matter of searching to figure out how you want your truth about these matters will become.
No, YAGOO is not best girl, and as long as Hololive continues to bring drama and issues every month, I swear I will have to refuse recognizing his achievements. Love the Virtual YouTuber, not the system. Please promise us no promises.
Now here’s the part where I make comparisons, as much as I shouldn’t. What about its competitor NIJISANJI? They’re having less scandals, drama, et cetera; and by my perception, there’s only a few who translate NIJISANJI clips – or maybe if there are, more of the attention goes to those who translate clips from Hololive’s VTubers.
Maybe gatekeeping is a good option in this case. Mainstream attention can get quite unbearable.
Let’s take the example of the M.A.S.S., or the Mano Aloe Support Squad. The M.A.S.S. is said to have “more than 1,000 members,” has a Discord chat server, and serves its name well.
They are no different from other groups who are doing Twitter hashtag campaigns to support their idols. The problem here is that Mano Aloe made a mistake, and it just went huge as people continue support her despite the fact that she had admitted her wrongdoings.
I have entered the M.A.S.S.’ Discord server to read on the details, and I found out that even her Hololive colleagues are admonishing her – the keywords are “reflect,” and “wait.”
The plan is to anticipate Mano Aloe’s return with the warmest of welcomes, only to fail miserably as the antis escalate their harassment towards Aloe, allegedly upon knowing this campaign exists.
While I find no concrete evidence that the MASS campaign got noticed by antis in Japan, there is no doubt that it has attracted a lot of attention from the worldwide VTuber audience.
While the efforts of MASS should be appreciated (they made huge efforts for their beloved Mano Aloe), Mano Aloe is still accountable for her mistakes, just as we are accountable for our own.
(Sept 11, 2020) Let me be clear though: The M.A.S.S. on Discord is good, and I can interact with them without any judgment. Now that they’ve changed their name to the Manotomo Alliance Support Squad, I understand that they are continuing to support vtubers especially within the Hololvie spectrum. “Manotomo Alliance” is a good name – it reminds them of their roots.
I’ve had enough of this. It’s already 4 in the morning as I rush finish this piece, and I hope I won’t be talking about VTubers in such bad lights from this point moving forward.
To recap, for VTubers, please be nice and don’t leak anything, talk sh*t or do anything that will risk not just you but the agency or organization you’re into.
For agencies, please take these horror stories as a lesson in management – you don’t need to be laissez faire at all times while pretending you’re strict.
For my fellow fans, please be reminded that VTubers are human no matter how they say otherwise (?!). We are watching a reality show disguised as a TV series, with less to no scripts and delayed subs.
Antis will always be there, just as how many people will say “telebasura” or stuff like that. They won’t go anywhere, and they will be watching alongside us.
Let’s do our part. I don’t want to point fingers only to have four fingers pointed back at us.
Lastly, I trust that whoever is inside of Mano Aloe will recover but not without trauma. We only wish the best for her.
If there are three things that I’m thankful this past Sunday, (1) I still have my faith intact, (2) I produced two videos coming soon on YouTube – as I write this, I’m already rendering video #2, and (3) I got to witness THE iDOLM@STER’s 15th Anniversary YouTube stream in full.
Let me get my chest off iM@S first, and apologies in advance for raising some critical matters just right after they celebrated their 15th year celebration. I’ll be talking about the matters which were not mentioned in the live stream.
As someone who’s not into the games (read: anime-only casual), I’ve started with Puchim@s on iflix first until I ramped up and watch most of the anime series (including Episode 20), as data at that time wasn’t that limited and telcos offer uninterrupted access to select sites.
Come to think of it, the matters prior to Episode 20 deal with the struggle in the entertainment industry as well as trauma.
Years later, I am traumatized by the news that Yurina Hase, the voice actress of Yukiho (one of my favorites btw) prior to the entry of Azumi Asakura, had said a lot against some of her colleagues in the industry, including the iM@S cast.
I found myself traumatized after reading on the issue. My curiosity got ahead and scarred my poor heart.
Hase went on by mentioning the death threats against her as a major source of anxiety. The pressures that came with dealing with police made it physically and mentally difficult for her to record. She suffered from hyperventilation just by going to rehearsals. Although she had told the Namco staff that she could not appear at events, they had told her, “Please continue to play Yukiho!”
The story also says the following paragraph translated from her post:
“…I think that the Yukiho I played is my Yukiho, and the one played by Azumin (Azumi Asakura) is her Yukiho. After all, if I didn’t think that, it would just be rude to Azumin. She’s a very cute Yukiho. A miraculous Yukiho. However, I also hold the Yukiho that I played very dear in my heart.”
In the past couple years, Yurishii started to do influencer/personality stuff for her small group of fans. At first it was talking about her time in the IDOLM@STER series, then it escalated to her covering old IM@S tunes–which seems to be fine since she is not related to the series at this point. But at some point it escalated into her cosplaying Yukiho and selling chekis of that, and there was some more escalation in which led to Bandai Namco sending a C&D letter to her. A lot of fans suspect this was the act which motivated her to do that live stream on Monday.
Monday, referring to Yurishii opening up on her Showroom page, details of which are left somewhere in the air as Showrooms can’t be recorded except if there’s a heads-up (like Miki’s, which raked in a lot of viewers).
I don’t want to go into further detail as I’m as confused as you right now, but if not for Omo, I won’t get back up and continue my support over this series. Imagine losing trust for Mingosu and Eririn just because of this incident which I believe had no closure at all on the side of Yurishii.
Thinking about it further, will the lack of closure lead to a revamp of the industry? Will the industry even be willing to reflect on this? Say, if Yurishii is a whistleblower, and some influential person in the industry got sick of the casting couch thing and acts like the dragon woken up by the whistle, wouldn’t it be nice to see the industry reflect?
No, the industry will stay as it is. We’re dealing with a franchise which won’t fall at all. Jay, the world does not revolve on her – the world won’t even revolve around you. It can reflect on its own but things will stay the same until someone acts with empathy.
As far as I see it, the rest act on either maintenance or survival – to maintain their lead and keep marking on its fans, or continue to survive the challenges of building such a huge franchise.
It’s sad that iM@S has something like this in their history books, but nowadays it will be just that – another part of history.
I had come into a conclusion where Yurishii has to have a closure and settle differences with her colleagues regardless if they’re fellow voice actresses.
If anyone remembers the Kokoro Connect prank incident in 2012, the aftermath of it tells us that the subject of bullying Mitsuhiro Ichiki guested on Mingosu’s show and she side on him, saying “it was completely low of them.” Mind you, Asakura’s role as Yukiho got announced around 2010.
I also have to raise the point that Takuma Terashima is one of the accomplices in the prank. He plays Teru Tendo in the iM@S franchise. I wonder how they are doing, and if they are interacting after all of the ruse. Such is the mind of an overthinker who gives a damn more on other people rather than himself.
As for Yurishii, we simply wish that she finds her closure in all of these, given that as I understood in the pull-quotes above, she loves her role as Yukiho even after her iM@S stint. We all love to go back in time where there were no conflicts and we’re free to do what we can do without any fear of being hurt mentally and physically.
As for me, honestly, I wish I hadn’t known the matter about Yurishii; I wish it had not happened at all. Ignorance is bliss. The problem is that if we continue to delay expressing ourselves, it bottles up to become yet another traumatizing bombshell. Or maybe I was just merely overreacting, I can’t deduce even until now.
Another matter which was not mentioned was Xenoglossia. I wonder why it was not mentioned – it has Sunrise animating it for 26 episodes with an all-start cast. Was it that different from the franchise, given that it can be possible to include it in the same way SLEEPING BE@UTY was teased as a feature-length film on an actual feature-length film?
Or maybe it was because of the different cast, like how AKB0048 was.
I’ve said a lot of things which will put me into yet another jeopardy, but again, if I bottle this up, I think I won’t be able to move on.
I hope iM@S has not forgotten these matters at hand – it’s part of them, no matter what. Bad matters which we are too embarrassed to accept still has to be accepted, else it will haunt us. Sure, we are celebrating, so I can understand that they won’t even try to mention this – but at best we see the Puchis in the 15th Anniversary Theme Video.
There has to be some kind of closure, and perhaps the satisfaction of letting my ideas vent out of the meek windows of my mind can help. I hope you’re all doing well, and I hope you’re ok with this. Thank you very much.
