Following up on June’s interview with Shinri of Holostars, Maverick hops aboard the Starlight Car with Cover CEO Motaki Tanigo, AKA Yagoo, and Head of PR Ryota Aomi, also known for his work previously as the series producer for Dragon Quest. Maverick asks about the trajectory of Hololive EN in the last 5 years, how Holoearth and other game endeavors seek to bridge connections between talent to fans, and what it means to be a Vtuber corporation amidst the ever growing subculture.
The written version of this interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Maverick: As of September, it is going to be five years of hololive English. Since that time, what have been the biggest successes you’ve noticed with this branch?
Tanigo: I cannot point to one specific moment in time as the biggest success of these past five years, but since we started this branch to produce content for the US and the English speaking world, we have had many big steps in the evolution of hololive English, such as the establishment of COVER USA. Now we are doing live shows in the US, and we even have brand collaborations with US branch EN talent. I think we have such very important big steps, big moments, but I cannot point to one specifically as the best.
Maverick: On that subject, with the concert in August in the Radio City Music Hall—you’ve also done work last year with the Kings Theatre—what has been the experience of booking live events here in the United States?
Tanigo: Since the US is so big, getting the fans together in one specific place was a big challenge. Also, the costs are much bigger than in Japan. So, doing these shows in a business-minded profitable way was another challenge. But, the sizes of the venues have grown, we’re now doing the concerts in bigger and bigger venues, and this is a big success of course.
Maverick: Related to that—and this is something I’ve seen in conversations around how to still continue contributions as a fan—what has been the approach to expanding hololive as a global product during the current financial climate here in the United States?
Tanigo: With the economic situation changing—and of course the tariffs are changing—we are really doing our best to provide services that are affordable, and also enjoyable still to the American audience.
Maverick: Last month, I had the opportunity to hold a conversation with Josuiji Shinri of HOLOSTARS. That was a really great experience, and I was very glad to hear his perspective on a lot of the creation that he and the other members of HOLOSTARS do. I was curious, with the focus of a more global expansion, how do you see HOLOSTARS playing a role with COVER’s future?
Tanigo: We have two big groups of talents under our brand: hololive and HOLOSTARS. In Asia, male idol groups that are targeting a female audience are very popular, and HOLOSTARS also hits that demographic. In the US as well I see a larger acceptance and popularity for such male talent groups, and I think that will grow in the future, and I think HOLOSTARS will be a part of that growth.
Maverick: Recently, we have seen expansion of hololive and HOLOSTARS. We have seen collaborations, not only in the form of official brand collaborations in Kura Sushi or in ROUND1. We’ve also seen the concerts come up more often. We’ve also seen various talent be able to make appearances in conventions and provide a more personal experience to fans that way. What do you feel makes an effective collaboration for VTubers?
Tanigo: The most meaningful kind of collaboration, we feel, is the kind that brings the community together and makes them socialize with each other. I think a big part of the recent boom in popularity of VTubers was that during the COVID-19 pandemic, people closed off in their homes wanted connections. People watching the same VTuber, for example, would connect over the YouTube and Twitch comments and the chat, so there was that kind of text-based socialization and community spirit.
We really want to bring that online sense of community into the offline world as well. With our collaborations with Kura Sushi, with ROUND1, and with other brands in the future, and our other endeavors in the future as well, we really want to provide more opportunities for fans to come together in an offline environment and socialize with each other to create a stronger sense of community.
Maverick: What do you feel is an ongoing challenge in bridging that gap between the initial online connection, especially around the period of lockdown, into the current offline expansion?
Tanigo: When it comes to business-to-business collaborations, face-to-face negotiations are very important. Sometimes you find that between COVER Japan and COVER USA, not every connection and negotiation carries over to the USA company. So, some negotiations have to be done from scratch on the USA side. So it’s very important to explain what a VTuber is, why VTubing is a good medium to collaborate with, and what kind of target audience we have.
So, that sort of business dealing is a big challenge that we’re still addressing. With game companies you can have online collaborations, but with some other types of companies, you really need face-to-face meetings to build those connections from scratch on the USA side.
Maverick: What drove COVER to create Holoearth? And in terms of using Holoearth as an event space, what events are being planned or considered for the future?
Aomi: As we mentioned before, during the pandemic there was a need to watch VTubers on streams and on YouTube. Holoearth is the next step in that natural evolution, we believe. People that are following and supporting these VTubers have a desire to be in the same space, to go beyond the screen. Holoearth is something that will fulfill that dream, and people will be able to meet their favorite creators in the same space.
This is a very easy example: as you can see, one of the VTuber talent is standing here, and there is a line here to take a photo with the talent, just like how you would have a real-world meet-and-greet. Now we can do that, and it’s the actual talent, and it’s the fans coming together. This is a really new, revolutionary, deep and immersive experience that other platforms are not able to provide.
We want to make it so that people are able to live in, and live off of, this virtual world, meaning that users will be able to create user-generated content that they can sell for real money. So people will be able to make real-world money inside of this platform. This is a virtual world that you can live off of. We’ve created an ecosystem where users are able to license talent IP, and they can create merchandise with that IP, and they can sell that for real money, but some of that as royalties will go to the talent that they’re licensing. So this is an ecosystem where creators will grow, and also the talent will grow. Everyone will be able to benefit from this ecosystem with real-world money.
This clip is from a FUWAMOCO stream from yesterday, where they created an item mid-stream, and they put it on sale mid-stream, and people bought it, and FUWAMOCO received royalties from those sales. It’s all happening in the stream, so already this ecosystem is up and running.
In the next step of this ecosystem, this cycle that is already happening to some extent, items created by talent are made into real products in the real world and sold on Amazon. This creates an even larger cycle where fans will be able to receive items made by their favorite creator in the real world, and they will be able to wear them.
The trend of Metaverses is really limited to the virtual world, but we’re focusing on experiences. So we’re connecting these experiences to the real world, and creating a much larger ecosystem that goes beyond the virtual world. It is our hypothesis that this last link of the chain that connects to the real world is what has been missing from other companies that are investing in the Metaverse area.
We believe that it is a universal dream for someone to wish that they were in an animated world where they could meet anime-like characters, and I think Holoearth will fulfill that desire to a great extent.
Maverick: Recently the hololive Trading Card Game just released in the United States. What was the process like to bring HoloTCG over to the West? Currently there is a big collecting component, is there any plan for a competitive scene?
Tanigo: We launched the TCG in Japan last September, and we already have competitions that I also myself join. These competitions are very important for fans to come together in the offline world, and to build a stronger community. We really want that aspect of the game in the US as well. So, we do intend to have competitions in the US for the official hololive TCG.
Maverick: Something that I hear come up a lot in this interview is the connection between online and offline experiences, and really trying to bridge that gap. A recent development that I think really speaks to that is the appearance of Usada Pekora in Death Stranding 2, not only as the VTuber model, but also playing a character in the game, taking that next step as a character in that narrative. What is the plan moving forward for talent to appear in non-internet media, such as television or other games?
Tanigo: Of course, I cannot speak to future plans of such appearances by our talent. But this year has been lucrative in the sense that not only do we have Usada Pekora showing up in Death Stranding 2, but we also have Hoshimachi Suisei singing the ending theme for Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX. So now we have VTubers showing up in other mediums.
In Japan, we already had hololive talent appear on NHK TV shows, NHK being the national broadcasting channel in Japan. Of course we would love to have our talent appear on US television as well, that would be a great thing. The talent is expanding beyond the internet, and they are expanding to further mediums, to further worlds.
Maverick: Back in the mid-2010s, there was an appearance by Hatsune Miku on Late Show with David Letterman, and I don’t know if the attempt to bridge that gap fully landed for the audience back then. I do think that you find yourselves in a much better environment to have something similar occur in the future.
I just have one more question, and this I think is something that really ties a lot of these pieces together. HoloEN started back in 2020, amidst the lockdown, and was really focusing on this idea of bringing people together. Not only did the stateside experience with hololive and COVER begin there, but within the last five years we have also noticed this expansion of VTubers in general in the United States. There is a very healthy independent scene, especially when you notice any streams on Twitch or YouTube. There is a conversation around VTubing not just as one specific entity, but as an entire ecosystem.
How does it feel to see the growth of VTubers as a subculture alongside the growth of hololive itself?
Tanigo: This is a great, amazing, awesome thing.
You just mentioned Hatsune Miku a minute ago. Hatsune Miku is Vocaloid software, but in Japan, artists that make use of Vocaloid software also become famous. There is the band Yoasobi, there is Yonezu Kenshi, there are these artists that started off using Vocaloid, and they became superb artists. So there was that ecosystem of Vocaloid in Japan, and it didn’t catch up to that extent in the US. The focus was always on Hatsune Miku as a character more than anything. There was no Vocaloid ecosystem in the US.
But VTubing is not like that. Now, there is an ecosystem of VTubers. Now there will be great artists that start off as VTubers, and they’ll become great talent, great stars in their own right in the future. There are some only in Japan maybe, but in the US and other countries, new names will pop up as part of the ecosystem, and we definitely will do our best to make sure that we are ready to support these amazing artists that will be coming more and more in the future.
Maverick: Thank you very much, I really appreciated having the chance to sit here and see what has been the growth these last five years. I really appreciate getting to see your insight.
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Maverick: And just like that, we have arrived at the station. Thank you again to COVER for this unbelievable opportunity.
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The theme for Starlight Car is a super chill remix of “Aquamarine” by Magic Circuit, which is available off their self-titled album Magic Circuit over on Bandcamp.
Thanks, and we’ll see you soon.
Edited transcription by Crystal. Translations for Tanigo-san and Aomi-san by Demirhan Demir.
