>>85862181no it's not
my perspective is that vtubers are a unique new thing that people don't really know how to contend with; they are halfway between the real and the fake, a facsimile of a being that is simultaneously some kind of fake anime character being performed but also informed by and made out of the person themselves. 2.5 dimensional, on the border, a liminal existence.
People argue endlessly back and forth over the two sides of 'vtubers are just a real woman with an avatar and you're some kind of incel scum for not caring about the person' and 'vtubers are purely a theatrical performance combined with a service, like a modern day digital geisha and fully unreal, a living waifu voiced by a seiyuu'
but the truth is that the vtuber is neither; the appeal of the vtuber, the thing you enjoy the most when watching, is the new existence that organically emerges from the interstice of the two aspects of the mundane boring fleshy and flawed human-blooded, snot-filled, crow's feet-having woman behind the screen and the abstracted moe and kawaii anime character coming together.
This is why twitch thot 'vtubers' who are just real women who use an avatar sometimes seem so unremarkable and why some vtubers like Fuwamoco who truly /become/ the character seem also so alienating to the average vtuber fan at the same time - and this is why only Amelia Watson will be Amelia Watson in the context of being the time-travelling deerstalker-donning anime girl of Hololive, and not whoever she is afterwards.
