Cacozelia - Essays

Goodbye, Anime Girl: VTuber Graduation and Parasocial Grief

Kenrin — Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Any attempt to understand grief tied to parasocial attachment among VTuber fans must begin by setting aside the instinct to dismiss it as existential whimsy. While mourning a digital persona may appear frivolous from the outside, the phenomenon is psychologically and socially real. (And that, honestly, shouldn’t be surprising. People are still melting down about the deprecation of 4o.) After analyzing 13,655 English-language Reddit posts and comments, Lee et al.[1] found that VTuber graduation can evoke a range of intense emotional responses constituting a form of grief that's both authentic and comparable to bereavement following the loss of a loved one. The authors conclude that these reactions stem from the audience’s deeply invested parasocial relationships, cultivated through repeated interactive engagement. Early responses are characterized by elevated levels of negative affect and concern for the performer’s well-being, which quantitative binomial regression models indicate decrease over time. Sadness decreases gradually (β = −2.87e−3, p < .001), shock diminishes more rapidly (β = −0.01, p < .001), and concern declines substantially (β = −0.07, p < .001). By contrast, regret increases steadily (β = 3.56e−3, p < .01), reflecting lamentation over missed opportunities, while loyalty likewise grows over time (β = 1.91e−3, p < .001). Termination produces stronger initial negative responses than graduation due to its abruptness and anxieties about losing content, but both forms of retirement exhibit similar long-term emotional patterns. The implication of these findings relevant to us is that parasocial grief is both empirically observable and meaningfully directed. What remains unresolved is the precise object of this grief, which is a question we shall shortly D’Arce choke, but before proceeding further, it is necessary to examine the literature in detail, both to demonstrate the analytical complexity embedded within the concept of the VTuber and why their study is most effectively situated within a multidisciplinary perspective.</p>

Methodology</h2>
Before addressing the emotional dysregulation associated with grief in the VTuber milieu, we need to first consider the statistical framework through which the study’s empirical results were established. Actually, we don't need to, but I want an "I am pretty smart btw" paragraph. Skip it if you don't care. Binomial regression models with a logit link were used to analyze binary outcomes, where each dependent variable indicates the presence or absence of a given emotion in an individual post or comment. The logit link is defined as logit(p) = ln(p / (1 − p)), where p is the probability of the outcome, and the model estimates coefficients denoted by β, where each β represents the expected change in the log-odds of the outcome associated with a one-unit increase in a predictor, like elapsed time since the announcement, while holding other predictors constant. Positive β values indicate increased odds of the outcome. I'll let you guess what negative values indicate. Because the relationship between predictors and outcome probability is nonlinear, β coefficients don’t correspond to direct or proportional changes in probability. Coefficients can be reported in scientific notation, for example β = −2.87e−3, where e−3 denotes multiplication by 10⁻³, meaning −0.00287. They can also be transformed into odds ratios by exponentiation (e^β) to facilitate interpretation as multiplicative changes in odds, where values greater than 1 indicate odds that are pogchamp and values less than 1 indicate odds that are sadchamp. Statistical significance is assessed using p-values, which represent the probability of observing a coefficient at least as extreme as the estimated one under the ぬる(ぺた) hypothesis (no one will get this reference)[2] of no association, with conventional thresholds at p < .05, p < .01, and p < .001, and statistical significance reflects the reliability of the estimated association, not its substantive magnitude.</p>

Virtual Grief</h2>
The paper adheres to a conventional HCI structure, first establishing the significance of the observed phenomenon, situating its contributions within existing scholarship, outlining its methodology, presenting its results, and finally, discussing the results' implications. It is scrupulously researched and demonstrates a high level of scholarly competence by posing questions that are well-motivated by gaps in existing literature, particularly the lack of attention given to VTubers as a case distinct from celebrities in parasocial relationship-related studies, with a longitudinal scope of nearly three years that significantly extends beyond the short observation windows common in prior research on this topic. Moreover, the distinction between graduation and termination as natural experimental conditions provides valuable insights for analysis.</p>
But, this distinction is largely borrowed from the Virtual YouTuber fandom wiki’s categorization of retired VTubers[3] and is introduced without substantial elaboration, justified by the claim that, “as a crowdsourced wiki, it reflects a consensus by the VTuber community.” This practice is defensible within the standards of HCI, which view emic distinctions as methodologically valuable and wikis as living artifacts of community sensemaking that constitute a legitimate source of empirical data (and, to be fair, the assertion itself is by no means incorrect), but this effectively amounts to a form of folk taxonomy elevated to scholarly usage not through analytical refinement, but through convenience, which renders it conceptually somewhat, for lack of a better word, detumescent, especially for the non-academic VTuber-fan philomath who one day might read this post. (There has to be at least one person like that. Right? Right?) This is not an assault on HCI, nor on academia as a whole, but rather a cautionary note that peer-reviewed work, even when it appears to address a given research question adequately, may not do so comprehensively across all dimensions. If one imagines the constraints of a given discipline, here human–computer interaction, as Aikido, and the multifaceted complexity of VTubing as the UFC, it becomes evident that expecting the former to independently account for all relevant nuances of the latter is simply unreasonable, and the aikidoka's katate-dori attempt will only result in concussion.</p>
For example, the paper bases its claims entirely on Reddit. Yes, as stated, consistent with HCI standards… but less so with common sense. Platform-specific datasets and the inductive coding of affective expressions are ubiquitous within the field, which typically treats online discourse as a legitimate, investigable empirical object in its own right (rather than as a proxy for “true emotion”), without requiring the verification of internal emotional authenticity, but the results nonetheless raise the question of how broadly the findings of such a study can be applied, considering that it is debatable whether comments posted on r/VirtualYoutubers (I mean, let’s be honest, it’s Reddit.) in response to a graduation can (or should) be taken at face value or regarded as representative of broader community sentiment. Imagine a study that examines behavioral differences among men as a function of height, while relying exclusively on Tinder bios as its source of data. The findings might still reflect certain realities, but the conclusions would remain unconvincing if the paper were to assert an average male height of 6’4” as per the self-reports. What Lee et al. effectively analyze are textual performances of emotional expressions, mediated through memes, platform-specific conventions, and an environment that rewards conformity to momentarily dominant convictions. Consequently, while the text purports to be an analysis of publicly expressed parasocial grief, what it ultimately provides is closer to a form of digital sociolinguistic analysis of ritualized speech acts than a comprehensive mapping of emotional responses. This isn’t a categorical mistake, but the title of the paper, “’Can’t believe I’m crying over an anime girl’: Public Parasocial Grieving and Coping Towards VTuber Graduation and Termination,” is nevertheless somewhat inexact and potentially misleading for the uninitiated.</p>
Take, for instance, the practice of posting “F” to “pay respects.” Although this meme has kind of developed into a shorthand that can indeed carry emotional weight, treating it unambiguously as an expression of genuine grief would be unwise. Such posts are to be understood as a type of phatic expression, or in other words, acts that primarily maintain social bonds and prioritize acknowledging shared emotions over conveying new information. While pressing “F” can convey sincerity and authenticity, it can just as easily suggest irony or even be mocking, depending on context. In the case of VTuber graduations, such expressions likely correspond to actual sadness, but the paper’s methods cannot confidently distinguish between (a) someone who feels profound grief and expresses it through a meme, (b) someone who feels mild disappointment or perhaps anger toward the company releasing the VTuber and uses the meme as a form of mockery, and (c) someone who feels nothing but participates in the ritual for social belonging. While the paper doesn’t explicitly include the “F” meme, it does incorporate several analogous VTuber-adjacent expressions that are publicly performed speech acts shaped by platform norms. For example, the salute emoji “o7” is coded as an expression of respect, while “pain peko,” despite the author’s acknowledgement that it derives from a verbal tic popularized by Usada Pekora, is classified firmly as an expression of “sadness.” This raises the question of whether widely circulating memes with highly elastic meaning, such as “press F” from Call of Duty, a GIF of Solid Snake saluting at Big Boss’s grave or “pain peko,” which originated from a photoshopped image posted on Reddit in 2020, can legitimately be taken seriously as direct manifestations of emotional states. In the section analyzing “sadness,” additional internet catchphrases are included, like “it’s a terrible day for rain,” referencing Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, or more playful ones like “there are ninjas cutting onions.” While these expressions do communicate sadness at a symbolic level, the extent to which these phenomena signify affective engagement versus platform-specific, socio-behavioral posturing remains epistemologically opaque. The authors do acknowledge this by explicitly stating that they’re examining “public parasocial grieving,” so these observations don’t meaningfully attenuate the study's overall empirical validity, but if I were feeling slightly more acerbic, I might question the ratiocination behind spending three years analyzing data to confirm something that most people already intuitively suspect. “People feel sad when the thing they loved ceases to exist.” Thanks, I would’ve never guessed. The authors of the paper are, however, real academics, while I am a dropout and an alcoholic, so my opinion can be taken as such. I mean, it’s not that the data is without value. If we treat grief in online communities as always already (Heidegger jump scare! Get used to it.) mediated through platform-specific conventions and communal speech acts, then analyzing these performances may amount to studying grief as it actually manifests in digital contexts as an ensemble of emotional intimations ultimately channeled through a particular mode of digital human expression that is, however, at best excursively related to VTubing itself, and as such, not particularly relevant for our very (very!) specific purposes.</p>

Selection</h2>
Another limitation of the paper, which I believe somewhat undermines its findings even within HCI standards, is its evident selection bias. Although the authors briefly note that graduations of smaller VTubers may elicit qualitatively different responses and cite Virtual YouTuber Wiki’s catalog of more than 600 (now more than 1000) graduations, they still choose to ground their analysis in only two emblematic cases meant to contrast graduation and termination. These cases are Kiryu Coco (桐生ココ) and Uruha Rushia (潤羽るしあ). Seriously? (Seriously.) While analyzing a small number of cases is methodologically allowable, especially when using critical case analysis to examine extreme events, the selection of two exceptionally prominent and historically consequential cases introduces a limitation on generalizability. Taking into account the fact that these events aren’t representative of the broader range of VTuber graduations and terminations, the paper does not truly address online emotional responses to VTuber retirement or publicly expressed grief in a general sense, but provides insight specifically into publicly expressed grief following the retirements of Coco and Rushia, whose cases were highly context-specific, not readily comparable to other instances, and unlikely to ever recur. The three-year longitudinal analysis is prominently emphasized, and it is incontestably an impressive, notable contribution to parasocial studies, but I feel this comes at the cost of reliability. Building a thesis around only two cases, one for each type of retirement, is already a fragile foundation, but the extended timeframe effectively excludes most other potential examples, so they didn’t really have any other options.</p>
I don’t want to engage too deeply with the surrounding controversies, but Coco’s graduation was anything but uneventful and followed a period of significant tension within the community, serving as an example of graduations that, while formally still self-initiated, are in practice compelled by external forces. As the first VTuber with substantial global recognition to graduate, her case functioned as an introduction to the very concept of VTuber graduation for many English-speaking viewers, which predictably resulted in confusion, particularly on Reddit, a platform with which she maintained a unique relationship through her Reddit Meme Reviews. (Truly dire times.) Her 2021 graduation continues to rank as the second-highest viewed VTuber stream in recorded peak viewership. Lee et al. report “more than 500 thousand viewers,” citing Dexerto,[4] but metrics from Holostats (now VSTATS) indicate a peak viewership of 491,342.[5] Rushia’s case, by contrast, involved termination for alleged contract violations and the leakage of personal information, marking another unprecedented controversy at comparable scale. For many fans, this was the moment they learned that VTubers operate under non-disclosure agreements, while the controversy itself provoked moral disapproval toward the person behind Rushia from a certain subset of the audience, further complicating affective responses. Given these conditions, it is reasonable to question whether a longitudinal analysis spanning three years warrants reliance on cases that are fundamentally unrepresentative, particularly when the post-graduation activities of both individuals have demonstrably influenced subsequent audience perception. If a similar study were to be conducted in the future, even if limited to VTubers retired from Hololive, I would much prefer to see Minato Aqua (湊あくあ) used as an example of graduation and Yozora Mel (夜空メル) as a case of termination. Although Mel’s termination similarly followed alleged contractual violations and generated controversy, its scale was comparatively limited, and her post-termination activities did not retroactively destabilize the integrity of her VTuber persona. Aqua, by contrast, exemplifies what might be called an “ideal” graduation, much as she embodied the ideal of the virtual idol. Her departure was announced well in advance of her final 3D live performance, allowing both audiences and fellow Hololive members sufficient time for reflection and collective processing. This journey culminated in a live event that surpassed Coco’s graduation in viewership metrics, serving as a culturally legible and symbolically meaningful ritual closure for the character. Arguably, Aqua’s graduation is similarly atypical, but it is atypical in a positive sense, as it represents how graduations ideally should unfold and can therefore be treated as a paradigm case. Plus, I spent a lot of money on her merch.</p>
But this would still fail to account for the graduations of smaller VTubers. Although the affective response to the retirement of creators with millions of followers is predictably magnified by audience size, examining graduations among lesser-known VTubers may yield analytically “cleaner” results precisely because of the reduced scope and density of participation. (An HCI researcher might reasonably ask about the provenance of this data, to which my response would be that it was once revealed to me in a dream.) Future studies directed at investigating less-publicized VTuber retirements would provide valuable insights into how audience size affects parasocial relationships, as data limited to macro-influencer graduations is fundamentally insufficient for comprehensively modeling the broader fandom phenomenology. What about the hundreds of VTubers who graduate silently? Is the relational bond between such creators and their audiences potentially more intimate than that between celebrity-level VTubers and their vast fanbases, or do these graduations simply fail to provoke comparable emotional responses? If the latter is true, then the study concerns popularity dynamics rather than VTubers per se. This invites a broader question: what does the paper meaningfully demonstrate about VTubers as a distinct phenomenon? If VTubers were substituted with conventional content creators, the most conspicuous difference, with the exception of reincarnations, would appear to be terminological rather than analytical.</p>

Parasocial Theory</h2>
The paper applies parasocial relationship theory somewhat sloppily, which, in my view, raises additional questions even when evaluated strictly within HCI guidelines. Although the authors provide a competent exposition of PSR and apply it in a consistent manner, they don’t sufficiently interrogate how parasocial structures may be transformed when the subject of interaction is a VTuber. While the authors reference Kowert and Daniel Jr.’s[6] concept of a one-and-a-half-sided parasocial relationship to capture the reciprocal affordances of live streaming, and recognize deviations from Horton and Wohl’s[7] original concept, including intensified community affiliation through shared experiences, fandom formation, aspirational identification with streamers, elevated emotional engagement, and an increased sense of presence due to the relative accessibility of streamers and their content, the analysis doesn’t adequately incorporate considerations of scale nor the distinctive mediating conditions introduced by “VTuberness” as a specific mode of performance and presentation. The structural distinction between celebrity-scale and intimate-scale parasocialism is explicitly acknowledged in the work of Kowert and Daniel Jr., who note that “Even though microcelebrities typically have a smaller scale of viewers or followers (or ‘fans’) than their traditional television or film counterparts, their ability to influence their viewers is amplified due to the higher likelihood of potential interaction.” They also emphasize that “Additional research is needed to determine if the differences in how these communities are conceptualized by the streamer are due to size; that is, whether it is related to the fact that streamers with smaller communities likely have more of an opportunity to engage with their communities, and call them as such, whereas larger streamers may consider their audiences fandoms.”</p>
This actually invites another interesting question, the question of whether Lee et al. are in fact analyzing grief rooted in parasocial relationships, or whether the grief they observe is more accurately attributable to fandom as a collective phenomenon. As Kowert and Daniel Jr. assert, “Traditionally, discussions about parasocial relationships differentiate themselves from discussions of fandom,” insofar as fandom is often conceptualized as a form of worship or fanaticism, while parasocial relationships are framed as perceived interpersonal bonds between viewer and persona, and adjacent research outside VTuber studies reinforces the instability of this boundary. As summarized by ScienceDaily,[8] the termination of a beloved television series can evoke grief responses analogous to mourning, particularly in cases of unresolved narrative closure. Similarly, Gerace’s[9] study of audience reactions to the conclusion of Neighbours finds that while parasocial empathic engagement reliably predicts the intensity of grief, parasociality itself is not posited as a necessary condition for grief to occur. In light of this, it remains theoretically indeterminate whether public grief following VTuber graduation is directed toward the VTuber as a parasocial other, or toward the VTuber as an abstract object of collective devotion. Although Lee et al.’s emphasis on publicly articulated grief is coherent, the lack of sustained theoretical articulation leaves the ontological status of the grieving object unresolved, and thus renders the interpretive scope of the data insufficiently specified, though admittedly, fandom studies is a whole other field only tangentially related to VTubing and with extensive scholarship on its own even in English and even more so in Japanese, particularly in relation to the concept of oshi (推し), meaning one’s actively supported or favorite performer, or oshikatsu (推し活), the activities undertaken to support that favorite.</p>
For now, it’s worth emphasizing here the particular affordances of VTubing that shape such relationships. The paper acknowledges some VTuber-specific phenomena, including reincarnations and cultural coping mechanisms, but it fails to differentiate the nature of parasocial engagement with VTubers from that with conventional streamers. Unlike typical streamers, VTubers frequently occupy a dual performative function, combining entertainment with affective companionship, thereby generating parasocial bonds of distinct intensity and structure. Community-specific notions such as the Girlfriend Experience and Boyfriend Experience are pervasive within VTuber culture, and although they are ethically and socially ambiguous, their exclusion from an analysis of graduation-induced grief seems negligent. Furthermore, one (me, I’m the one) might postulate that the intrinsically voluntary nature of VTuber graduations exacerbates the affective resonance of parasocial bereavement, framing the departure as an active, unilateral repudiation of the audience by the performer. Additionally, as we discussed, the intensity of these emotional responses changes depending on the size of the creator's audience. While high-profile VTubers typically instantiate a one-and-a-half-sided parasocial relationship, small to mid-sized VTubers often operate within interactional regimes that approach full reciprocity, including sustained engagement in fan-managed spaces. The paper further restricts its scope to female VTubers with predominantly male audiences, leaving unexamined the possibility that parasocial responses may differ in cases involving male VTubers and predominantly female fanbases. While the paper acknowledges Reddit’s inherent bias toward young, male, Anglophone users, it does not consider how different types of VTuber content might alter the composition of the audience, and it treats VTuber viewership as if it were homogeneous. While fandom culture and identification are mentioned, the paper does so mainly by referencing Kowert and Daniel Jr.’s work on conventional streamers, without adequately considering what sets VTubers apart in these respects. Fan solidarity within VTuber communities is demonstrably stronger, with many VTubers assigning collective fan names and symbols. These communities are further reinforced through fan marks and hashtags that foster collective identity and engagement. While such practices may fall outside the methodological reach of Reddit-based analysis, they are nonetheless critical to a comprehensive understanding of parasociality in VTubing, particularly given both the medium’s deep structural reliance on parasocial engagement and the persistently negative connotations attached to the concept within Western discourse due to its frequent misinterpretation in online public discussions.</p>

Conclusion</h2>
Initially, my intention was to draw primarily on the paper’s conclusion, but reading it generated a growing number of additional questions, even though I recognize that it was never designed to address them. I was initially misled by the person who shared the link on Discord, along with the surrounding discussion that incorrectly framed the text as the authoritative analysis of VTuber-induced parasocial grief. Not really the paper’s fault, but it is what it is, never believe people on the internet. Especially on Discord. Even more especially when the person has a Jujutsu Kaisen profile picture.</p>
I reckon many place too much faith in academic papers and in academia as a whole, or at least mistakenly assume that it can provide a complete, all-encompassing overview of something that is fundamentally interdisciplinary. It cannot. What it can offer instead are incremental contributions, each discipline supplying a partial insight, from which, over a long and laborious journey, we may begin to assemble, piece by piece, something resembling the truth. It is important to avoid permitting a field of this complexity and breadth to be shaped disproportionately by the findings of a single, albeit seminal, contribution. I have witnessed this occur once before, and the result was a field mired in stagnation for decades thereafter. If I have to read one more paper that cites Laura Mulvey, I will gouge my eyes out and then stomp on them.</p>
Notwithstanding my earlier grievances, Lee et al. have provided a useful foundational text. The study cannot cover every facet of the topic; that would be an impossible standard. My goal in questioning their approach is not to be combative but to encourage broad and continued exploration. Their primary conclusion is sound and provides a definitive basis for future discussion: VTuber retirements trigger identifiable grief reactions among audiences. This leaves us with three pressing questions to resolve. Why does this occur? What, precisely, is it that grief takes as its object? And, perhaps most troublingly, what exactly even is a VTuber? It is to these questions that the next installment will direct its attention.</p>

Footnotes</h2>
[1] Ken Jen Lee, Piaohong Wang, and Zhicong Lu, “‘Can’t Believe I’m Crying over an Anime Girl’: Public Parasocial Grieving and Coping Towards VTuber Graduation and Termination,” in Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (New York: Association for Computing Machinery, 2025), https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3714216.</p>
[2] Null & Peta Official Website: Game & Anime Cross Media Project, accessed May 18, 2026, nullpeta.com.</p>
[3] “Category: Retired,” Virtual YouTuber Wiki, Fandom, accessed May 18, 2026, https://virtualyoutuber.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Retired.</p>
[4] Virginia Glaze, “YouTube’s Most SuperChatted VTuber Kiryu Coco Has ‘Graduated’ from Hololive,” Dexerto, July 1, 2021, https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/vtuber-kiryu-coco-graduates-hololive-1604652/.</p>
[5] Holo_Data (@/Holo_Data), “昨年12月27日に配信された天音かなたさんの卒業ライブにおいて…,” X, January 2, 2026, https://x.com/Holo_Data/status/2006928588373991607.</p>
[6] Rachel Kowert and Emory Daniel Jr., “The One-and-a-Half Sided Parasocial Relationship: The Curious Case of Live Streaming,” Computers in Human Behavior Reports 4 (August–December 2021): 100150, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbr.2021.100150.</p>
[7] Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl, “Mass Communication and Para-Social Interaction: Observations on Intimacy at a Distance,” Psychiatry 19, no. 3 (1956): 215–29, https://doi.org/10.1080/00332747.1956.11023049.</p>
[8] American University, “How Fans Mourn the Death of Popular TV Series,” ScienceDaily, August 10, 2014, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140807121527.htm.</p>
[9] Adam Gerace, “When TV Neighbours Become Good Friends: Understanding Neighbours Fans’ Feelings of Grief and Loss at the End of the Series,” PLOS ONE 19, no. 6 (2024): e0302160, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0302160.</p>

The End of Gariben Girl V

Kenrin — Fri, 01 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A significant era in VTubing is about to end with the recent announcement of the conclusion of Gariben Girl V (ガリベンガーV),[1] a VTuber-centered variety program that began airing in January 2019 on TV Asahi (テレビ朝日). Across its run, the program’s core format centered on an interactional triad consisting of VTuber participants, comedian Kotouge Eiji (小峠英二) as principal host figure, and a guest expert drawn from a rotating pool of academics and specialists. These experts delivered compressed lectures or demonstrations on a wide range of topics, while the VTubers were positioned as students in what amounted to a quasi-pedagogical setting. The program’s official X account,[2] and then an announcement from its most prominently featured VTuber, Dennou Shojo Siro (電脳少女シロ),[3] (following the official romanization) confirmed that the broadcast will end in May 2026. (You could argue it actually ended back in 2024, but let’s start at the beginning.)</p>

Four Heavenly Kings</h2>
In line with TV Asahi’s tendency to experiment in its late-night block, Gariben Girl V stands out primarily for treating VTubers as talents castable in terrestrial television. By the time the show premiered in 2019, the so-called “Four Heavenly Kings of VTubing” (バーチャルYouTuber四天王) had already achieved recognition among fans (Although presumably not the first time the term appeared, based on my X bookmarks’ epignosis, the earliest instance that received mainstream attention was on December 20, 2017, when X {then Twitter} user @/q_d__b_p posted four images outlining the Four Heavenly Kings’s characteristics,[4] including Mirai Akari {ミライアカリ}, Kaguya Luna {輝夜月}, Nekomasu {バーチャルのじゃロリ狐娘Youtuberおじさん}, and Kizuna AI {キズナアイ}. Kizuna AI later came to be known as Boss {親分}, and Dennou Shojo Siro {電脳少女シロ} was referred to as the fifth. The post has accumulated 43,000 likes since.) and has been codified as a category in user-generated compendia such as Pixiv Encyclopedia (Pixiv百科事典)[5] and Niconico Encyclopedia (Niconico大百科).[6] Concurrently, the emergence of agencies signaled an incipient industrial consolidation.[7] Despite this, though, the field was still far removed from the eventual Cambrian explosion, since Virtual YouTubers existed as a phenomenon legible primarily within otaku-related spaces and had yet to establish any durable presence in mainstream media. Gariben Girl V was the mediating platform within this transitional phase. By positioning Siro in the permanent first-seat role of “Gariben Girl V No. 1,” and supplementing her with other performers from .LIVE (どっとライブ), like Yamato Iori (ヤマトイオリ) and Kagura Suzu (神楽すず) in the first episode, alongside a later expanding roster of guest VTubers,[8] the program effectively established a weekly point of convergence at which Four Heavenly Kings-era figures could co-appear with emerging talents. The interplay was structured around Kotouge Eiji of the comedy duo Viking (バイきんぐ), whose role as a “human axis” facilitated a sort of cross-dimensional interactional regime in which the physically present performer directed tsukkomi at beings with no corporeal existence in the studio. The expert’s enthusiasm, the VTubers’ exaggerated reactions of horror or excitement, and Kotouge’s exasperation together constituted a tripartite comedy grounded in the temporal and rhetorical dynamics of manzai, but avatar mediation extended it beyond the conventional dyadic form and into something closer to mixed-reality slapstick where idiotic questions penetrate ontological boundaries.</p>

The Beginning</h2>
Gariben Girl V didn’t manifest ex nihilo as a VTuber project; it constituted the third iteration of a struggling late night TV Asahi franchise. The Neo Bara 2 (ネオバラ2) slot (TV Asahi’s late night window, rebranded in 2022 to Media City Zone {メディアシティゾーン}) inaugurated Choujin Joshi (超人女子) in October 2017 as a sports variety, reconfigured it a year later into the talk show Choujin Joshi to Zukejyo (超人女子とズケ女), and subsequently executed a more radical relaunch on January 17, 2019 as Choujin Joshi Senshi Gariben Girl V (超人女子戦士ガリベンガーV). The new format positioned Gariben Girl V as an organization training superhuman girl warriors to resolve “ultra difficult phenomena” pervading Earth (地球にはびこる超難解な現象),[9] borrowing its naming and visual rhetoric from mecha anime and tokusatsu. Veteran anison singer Ichirou Mizuki supplied both the opening theme and the narration until his passing in 2022.</p>
Structurally, however, the show was closer to a sort of educational variety. Each episode invited a “special lecturer” (特別講師) to explicate a specific topic before an assembly of VTuber “students,” while Kotouge assumed the role of the disciplinarian “instructor” (教官). The first official episode archive[10] uses the template “The super-difficult question we’re asking “Gariben Girl V” to solve this time is… “ (今回『ガリベンガーV』に解いてもらう超難問), lists Kotouge as instructor (教官) and Siro, Iori and Suzu as Gariben Girl V, closing the announcement with “A new variety show featuring lively VTubers!” (VTuberが躍動する新感覚バラエティー！). The first episode’s super-difficult questions comprised: Why does Mount Everest not sink into the ground despite its immense weight? (なんでエベレストは重いのに地面に沈まないの？) What distinguishes Mount Fuji from Mount Everest!? (富士山とエベレストの違い!?) Did India collide with Asia!? (インドがアジアにぶつかった!?)</p>

The Predecessors</h2>
Since we mentioned that the show had predecessors, I believe we should provide a more comprehensive chronology for better understanding. Choujin Joshi (超人女子), or Superwomen, launched on October 6, 2017, as a sports variety show, pitting women with exceptional athletic abilities (like marathon runners or climbers) against each other in physical challenges to showcase their “superhuman” feats. (It should be remarked that the underlying motivation for this tangent is to contrive a pretext for mentioning the anime, Iwa Kakeru! Sport Climbing Girls {いわかける！- Sport Climbing Girls -}, a work of considerable merit that deserves your attention. Yes, it has cute girls.) On September 14, 2018, the program was succeeded by a sequel titled Choujin Joshi to Zukejyo (超人女子とズケ女). The element “zuke” derives from “zukezuke” (ズケズケ), an onomatopoeic adverb signifying bluntness of speech, a disregard for politeness or the interlocutor’s sensibilities. Within the show's framework, “ズケ女” designates women of candor and directness. The term characterizes the guest MCs, specifically unfiltered, forthright female comedians such as Ookubo Kayoko (大久保佳代子) and Makoto (誠子), the latter performing as one half of the manzai / conte duo Amakou Inter (尼神インター).</p>

Seven Years</h2>
On January 17, 2019, the program underwent a further rebranding, receiving the unwieldy new title: Superhuman Girls and Zuke Girls Present: Superhuman Girl Warrior Gariben Girl V (超人女子とズケ女プレゼンツ超人女子戦士ガリベンガーV), and redebuted in the usual late-night slot (1:29-1:59 AM). The start date requires carefulness, since official Japanese TV pages employ the broadcast-date convention of Thursday deep night; consequently, summaries may cite January 17 or January 18 depending on whether they follow TV scheduling convention or calendar time after midnight. The safest wording is that TV Asahi launched the renewed program on January 17, 2019 broadcast date in the Thursday deep-night slot.</p>
TV Asahi’s announcement designates this as a “significant renewal” (大幅にリニューアル) and characterizes VTubers as “beautiful-girl-type virtual characters who stream and make videos” (VTuberは、動画配信を行う美少女系の仮想キャラクターのこと。), citing that “they began gaining attention around late 2016 with figures like Kizuna Ai of A.I. Channel” (A.I. Channel（アイチャンネル）のキズナアイなど2016年後半ごろから注目され始め), “and have since established a solid position as a major genre in the YouTuber world” (YouTuber界の一大ジャンルとして確固たる地位を築いている。). The title constitutes a pun derived from gariben (ガリ勉), a Japanese slang term for a student who studies obsessively hard. The “超人女子とズケ女プレゼンツ” prefix disappears from official archive pages by April, during a cleanup of legacy branding from the prior program. Later, on June 6, the show’s official VTuber mascot, Buiko (ブイ子),[11] debuts, and the program evolves from a mere broadcast slot into a VTuber culture node with a stable YouTube presence and an active community.</p>
The first substantive rescheduling occurred on April 4, 2021, when the show migrated to a weekly Saturday slot at 12:05 AM. This was mostly a change in visibility, not a premise reset, though according to Oricon’s article,[12] “beyond the lecture content delivered by specialist guest instructors, the show will feature a secondary audio commentary by QuizKnock, the genius collective YouTuber group led by Izawa Takushi (伊沢拓司).” As Kotouge comments, “With the broadcast time moving earlier than before, I'm really worried that people will find out I'm involved in a weird show. I'll keep doing my best to make sure not too many people end up watching it.”</p>
Pixiv Encyclopedia[13] attests a further 30-minute displacement later that same year, in October, to 12:35 AM, followed by a reversion to the Thursday late-night slot on April 4, 2022. The real structural shift, however, arrived on October 15, 2022, when the show moved to Saturday at 6:30 PM. テレ朝POST[14] announced the move, along with the show’s new title, “Puzzle-Solving Warriors!,” or Nazotoki Senshi Gariben Girl V (謎解き戦士！ガリベンガーV). The article divulging this change notes that the show “has now amassed 178,000 subscribers on its official YouTube channel and 49,000 Twitter followers (as of September 2022).” With this act of mainstreaming the program transmuted from a late-night VTuber-education show into a national early-evening program, though official promotion emphasized the preservation of Gariben Girl V’s essence and its “late-night atmosphere” (深夜の雰囲気).</p>
Perhaps that was the issue. The show returned to Thursday late night in October 2023, although it retained the old, educational structure, according to episode archives. The prior identity endured until October 2, 2024, when a further time slot change coincided with a more radical retitling that brought along the termination of the “VTubers-as-students” paradigm. The new designation was Garibenture V (ガリベンチャーV),[15] broadcast every Wednesday in the late-night slot at 12:15 AM. “ガリベンチャー” constitutes a portmanteau compounding “venture” and “adventure.” The institutional allegory transformed from a classroom into a venture concern, with Kotouge anointed CEO and VTubers or entertainers cast as hirelings. The first episode,[16] titled “Viking's Kotouge Establishes a Company?! A Mysterious New Program Finally Launches” (バイきんぐ小峠が会社設立！？謎の新番組がついに始動), already sets up the new direction with its topics (company rap {社ラップ}, for instance), and while VTubers still do appear prominently in the episode description (“A fresh take on adventure, experimentation, and discovery featuring humans and VTubers!” {人間とVTuberの新感覚な冒険＆実験＆発見バラエティ！}), it is at this juncture that many began to discern a divergence too abrupt and to perceive VTubers being progressively demoted from central participants to side-characters.</p>
The demarcation is unusually clean because the official back‑number pages on either side preserve the format language. The September 5, 2024 archive[17] describes a beatbox lesson from SARUKANI members with VTubers learning from special lecturers, and the September 19, 2024 archive[18] still refers to Kotouge as instructor, who clashes with VTubers over popular hobbies (and tries Beyblade for the first time {Unrelated, but Mariah from Beyblade was my first anime wife. I was just starting elementary school, and 2D already won me over.}). The October 2, 2024 archive recommences as Garibenture V and catalogues segments that more closely approximate a late-night variety project lab than the antecedent lecture format.</p>

The Conclusion</h2>
The announcement that the program would end in May 2026, followed in June by a new AI-focused show titled “AI large-scale operation,” or AI Daisakusen (AI大作戦)[19] inheriting the same time slot, gave the conclusion the appearance of a natural and perhaps inevitable endpoint to a trajectory spanning roughly a septennium. At the executive level, TV Asahi has characterized AI Daisakusen as a strategic response to the persistent pressures of television production, notably those arising from cost, time, and technical complexity. The project purports to examine whether recent advances in generative image, video, and text models can compress production cycles, empower smaller teams to create visually ambitious sequences, and produce characters and formats flexible enough to be repurposed across multiple platforms. The transition does not indicate a repudiation of VTuber culture so much as a recalibration of focus. The initiative is actually quite consistent with the broadcaster’s ongoing emphasis on experimental programming practices. Where Gariben Girl V functioned as a testing ground for integrating virtual performers into television, Garibenture V served as a bridge to AI Daisakusen, and AI Daisakusen redirects that exploratory mandate toward AI-assisted production processes. That Kotouge Eiji has been retained as host, and that the time slot remains unchanged, signals an intentional continuity of tone. What defined the predecessor was a hybrid sensibility in which technical inquiry, subcultural themes, and the dynamic of a corporeal performer responding to non-human entities coexisted within a single format, and this sensibility appears to have survived the changeover. In this respect, the new program represents an evolution of an established format. It’s logical, really. But isn't that logic a little unsettling?</p>
TV Asahi kept everything except the VTuber, replacing it with AI and thereby implying, whether intentionally or not, that the two entities occupy the same level of beinghood. The VTubers were never co-hosts in the sense that Kotouge was; their role was to be a presentational frame, and to ground facts provided by the expert within a novelty act. With this, the question becomes kinda inevitable: what does it mean when an institution that spent seven years performing recognition of an entity as a person reveals, through the act of replacing that entity, that what it was recognizing all along was a structural position rather than a specific being? The program constructed VTuber personhood through the conventions of variety television, only to demonstrate that this construction was merely format-level. The VTubers, it turns out, were themselves presented instead of being presenters, or perhaps more accurately, were deployed as a mode of presentation. But they were, at the same time, employed as working talents in terrestrial television. So, following this trail, and simplifying our previous question, what becomes unavoidable is to unpuzzle at what level a VTuber really exists. Is VTubing an art form, or is it the artist? If VTubing is an art form performed by the person inside, then replacement by AI constitutes job loss. If the VTuber itself is a being, then replacement constitutes ontological cessation, because what is underway is the supersession of the VTuber by another entity that occupies the same liminal space. It is TV Asahi‘s seven-year treatment of VTubers as beings that makes the second reading legible, and what transforms it into an eschatological question, from a VTuber phenomenological standpoint, is the act and implication of replacement itself happening at the entity-level.</p>
The ease with which AI-driven VTubers are assimilated into existing fan communities is itself a significant sign that this may not only be an institutional categorization, but actual fan sentiment, as it demonstrates that the VTuber, as a cultural form, is not reducible to the human subject who may or may not inhabit it. Neuro-sama is not cherished in spite of her artificiality. She is cherished qua VTuber. The community’s affective apparatus does not distinguish origin. This retroactively destabilizes every human-driven VTuber’s claim to an ontological status stemming from the human inside. The architecture of the form was always already agnostic to its substrate, waiting for something sufficiently vivid to inhabit it. But whether this truly constitutes a threat depends on how we understand “VTuber” as “entity” in the first place. If we hold that the VTuber is, at bottom, a wrapper around an external identity, then the menace dissipates, for the audience’s reception remains structurally invariant and it’s ultimately the audience that adjudicates the category of the “real.” If that’s the case, then Gariben Girl V's pivot from VTubers to AI in the exact same format is completely logical and defensible.</p>
Consider the range of what currently falls under the “VTuber” label: human-operated VTubers in which the operator functions as the acknowledged authorial agent working through the avatar; human-operated VTubers in which the character-entity has accumulated sufficient autonomous narrative existence to exceed the intentional control of its operator; AI-driven VTubers in which no human authorial subject exists behind the wrapper; and hybrid configurations in which AI and human agents co-produce the entity. Each of these already inhabits the word “VTuber,” whether we have furnished that word with permission to hold them or not. Our charge is to forge a definition ample enough to ratify what usage has already enacted. For “VTuber,” it now appears, is no mere label affixed to a single species of being. So, where do we start?</p>

Footnotes</h2>
[1] KAI-YOU, “VTuberが多数出演した「ガリベンチャーV」5月で放送終了電脳少女シロも感謝を綴る,” March 11, 2026, kai-you.net/article/94862.</p>
[2] ガリベンチャーV【公式】 (@/garibenV), “視聴者のみなさまへのお知らせ,” X (Twitter), March 11, 2026, x.com/garibenV/status/2031656379799224661.</p>
[3] 電脳少女シロ (@/SIROyoutuber), “7年間続いた番組が５月で終了となります...,” X, March 11, 2026, x.com/SIROyoutuber/status/2031661597056442643.</p>
[4] Azusa.exe [@/q_d__b_p], “バーチャルYouTuber四天王まとめたった,” X, December 20, 2017, x.com/q_d__b_p/status/943477296203055104.</p>
[5] Pixiv Encyclopedia, “バーチャルYouTuber四天王,” accessed April 9, 2026, dic.pixiv.net/a/%E3%83%90%E3%83%BC%E3%83%81%E3%83%A3%E3%83%ABYouTuber %E5%9B%9B%E5%A4%A9%E7%8E%8B.</p>
[6] Nicovideo Dictionary, “バーチャルyoutuber四天王,” accessed April 9, 2026, dic.nicovideo.jp/a/%E3%83%90%E3%83%BC%E3%83%81%E3%83%A3%E3%83%AByoutuber %E5%9B%9B%E5%A4%A9%E7%8E%8B.</p>
[7] Mogura VR, “VTuber運営企業一覧代表的なグループやプロジェクトまとめ【2023年7月版】,” July 27, 2023, moguravr.com/vtuber-management-companies-list/.</p>
[8] Pixiv Encyclopedia, “ガリベンガーVのゲストVtuber,” accessed April 9, 2026, dic.pixiv.net/a/%E3%82%AC%E3%83%AA%E3%83%99%E3%83%B3%E3%82%AC%E3%83%BCV% E3%81%AE%E3%82%B2%E3%82%B9%E3%83%88Vtuber.</p>
[9] TV Asahi Post, “バーチャルYouTuberが頭脳を鍛える新番組、水木一郎がOP曲＆ナレ担当,” January 17, 2019, post.tv-asahi.co.jp/post-74052/.</p>
[10] TV Asahi, “第1話「エベレストの謎を解明せよ！」,” ガリベンチャーV, backnumber, January 17, 2019, tv-asahi.co.jp/garibenv/backnumber/0001/.</p>
[11] Pixiv Encyclopedia, “ブイ子,” last revised June 14, 2019, accessed April 9, 2026, dic.pixiv.net/a/%E3%83%96%E3%82%A4%E5%AD%90.</p>
[12] Oricon News, “『ガリベンガーV』土曜深夜にお引っ越し小峠英二「変な番組に関わっている事がバレる」,” March 12, 2021, oricon.co.jp/news/2186969/full/.</p>
[13] Pixiv Encyclopedia, “超人女子戦士ガリベンガーV,” last revised March 9, 2019, accessed April 9, 2026, dic.pixiv.net/a/%E8%B6%85%E4%BA%BA%E5%A5%B3%E5%AD%90%E6%88%A6%E5%A3%AB%E3% 82%AC%E3%83%AA%E3%83%99%E3%83%B3%E3%82%AC%E3%83%BCV.</p>
[14] TV Asahi Post, “『ガリベンガーV』深夜から土曜夕方に大幅昇格！バイきんぐ小峠「なんて時間だ！」,” September 9, 2022, post.tv-asahi.co.jp/post-195787/.</p>
[15] Oricon News, “新番組『ガリベンチャーV』今夜放送スタート終了発表の『お願い！ランキング』人気企画もここに集結,” October 2, 2024,oricon.co.jp/news/2347643/full/.</p>
[16] TV Asahi, “第1話「バイきんぐ小峠が会社設立！？謎の新番組がついに始動」,” ガリベンチャーV, backnumber, October 2, 2024, tv-asahi.co.jp/garibenv/backnumber/0194/.</p>
[17] TV Asahi, “第51話「ヒューマンビートボックスを学べ！SP」,” 謎解き戦士！ガリベンガーV, backnumber, September 5, 2024, tv-asahi.co.jp/garibenv/backnumber/0190/.</p>
[18] TV Asahi, “第53話「小峠教官vsVTuber人気ホビーで大激突SP」,” 謎解き戦士！ガリベンガーV, backnumber, September 19, 2024, tv-asahi.co.jp/garibenv/backnumber/0192/.</p>
[19] Oricon News, “テレビ朝日、6月から新番組『AI大作戦』発表 AI制作の部署新設で「未来のテレビに備える」,” March 11, 2026, oricon.co.jp/news/2441259/full/.</p>