>>55043122First oshi was unironically Kizuna Ai. I found her just before she truly blew up and created the VTuber craze. Thought the idea was definitely novel at the time. I made sure to watch all her videos at the time, though this was back when you had to wait awhile for people to translate on her own accord. Shout out to those guys btw, they unironically did a lot to build up the English side of the community back when everything was JP-centric. Her content was mostly skits, but she did stream, though they rarely were longer than 30 minutes to an hour. I would just sit there and listen to them, but you got a sense of her personality even if you didn't speak Japanese because she was so animated compared to most Live2D models. I wouldn't really say I was Gosling over her, but I really did enjoy her skits, her gaming stuff, and even the music which came a bit later.
I wouldn't say I gave up on her, more so I just grew to watch other content. It was around the same time her content definitely slowed down because of the focus on her music. There also was of course the controversy around the different girls voicing her instead of the original AI. I remember that being a shit show literally everywhere on the internet. I just lost faith in the company surrounding Kizuna Ai, though definitely not on AI herself. But it just didn't feel the same as it once was. It became so corporate. Or maybe I just noticed it was corporate.
I'll admit though, her Last Live did make me cry. It brought back a lot of memories that I had realized where 5 years ago. Time flew really fast and now Vtubing is where it's at, for better or worse.
I dunno if I really have an Oshi anymore. I mostly just watch Gura and Fauna. But like I said, VTubing has felt very corporate these days. Even 2views and so called "indie" VTubers tend to feel like factory copies of each other. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing though. It is just how it evolved. I'm still having fun even if the concept isn't novel anymore like it once was with Kizuna Ai. But yeah, she'll always be my first "oshi" even if that wasn't really a concept in vtubing at that point.
