Kadokawa showed off a new trailer for the upcoming VTuber Legend: How I Went Viral After Forgetting to Turn Off My Stream. The anime adapts the light novels originally written by Nana Nanato, which were first published in 2020. TNK’s new comedy seems perfectly timed to take advantage of the latest entertainment craze, which is still going strong during the show’s expected premiere in July this year.
Virtual YouTubing is a rapidly growing sector complimenting the anime industry, so it’s no surprise that authors and studios wanted to cash in on the phenomenon. The new trailer, hosted on Kadokawa’s YouTube channel, shows that VTuber Legend has some promise in its presentation, but it remains to be seen whether its jokes can land.
Nonetheless, with VTubers as popular as they are, fans will likely be accepting of the subject – and the inherent comedy of a drunken princess. While hardly one of the most anticipated anime of 2024, VTuber Legend still has a chance to surprise and impress viewers.
One-Punch Man Season 3: News, Story, Characters, & Everything We Know So Far
One-Punch Man’s long-awaited third season has been announced. Here’s everything that’s been publicly revealed about the new season so far.
VTuber Anime Delights In Character Contrasts
Produced by TNK, based on the light novels written by Nana Nanato
J-Novel Club, which licenses the English version of the novel, provides this synopsis for the story:
Twenty-year-old former wage slave Yuki Tanaka now works among her idols: the streamers of Live-On, one of Japan’s top VTuber companies. As the gorgeous, polite Awayuki Kokorone, she delivers only the most ladylike content. Unfortunately, her subscriber count and savings are at rock bottom. One evening, after Yuki thinks she’s ended her stream, she cracks a few cold ones—and more than a few crude jokes—while watching Live-On’s video archives. But her viewers hear it all, and clips of her bawdy, drunken commentary go viral overnight. Yuki thinks her career is over…until her manager reveals that everyone at Live-On has been waiting for her to snap all along and gives her free rein to drink on-stream. Now free of all feigned purity, she jumps right into her new “rowdy drunk” character and is welcomed into the fold by her fellow Live-On VTubers, who turn out to be just as crazy as she is! With her views and finances skyrocketing, Yuki’s work—for the first time in her life—is actually fun!
The TNK adaptation is being led by Takuya Asaoka, marking his third directorial work. It’s also been reported that voice actor Ayane Sakura will be performing as Yuki/Awayuki. Perhaps one of the most logical inclusions is the presence of Live2D motion tracking, the software that powers the movements of VTubers while streaming. As Anime News Network Reports, Live2D JUKU and nizima LIVE are providing assistance in this regard. As can be seen in the trailers, Awayuki’s Live2D rigging provides the anime with elements of mixed media, portraying the fictional streamer as she would if she had actually performed online.
Other scenes in the trailer so far focus on Awayuki (and her other VTuber colleagues) rather than the performer behind it, but the anime delights in portraying the character as a person in costume. Seeing a gorgeous princess down multiple beers and sing karaoke is hard not to grin at. That is to the show’s advantage, as this is something only animation can do. That, as well as the willingness to create original Live2D models for the characters, means the show has some personality and interesting visuals, which it will need to stand out as one of the first anime about VTubers.
There are still questions about whether the anime will be able to land jokes four years out of date. While VTubers are new, their culture and perception have changed dramatically since 2020. The gag of Awayuki discovering she’s more popular when playing against type, while funny, is also familiar ground for VTuber audiences today, who are accustomed to seeing such entertainers only pay lip service to their personas. In this sense, VTuber Legend presents an unusual challenge for Awayuki and her cohort, who are not just competing against other anime later this July, but also other, less fictional anime-style streamers.
