Choosing to Start with Josuiji Shinri – Starlight Car Episode 12

Maverick had the opportunity to sit down with HOLOSTARS Guild TEMPUS member Josuiji Shinri! Shinri is someone who thinks critically about his role as a streamer, and the way that the modern-day access to audiences can really lead to some positive impacts. Between video games and vulnerability, Shinri highlights just how his decision to take to the medium has led to ripples in the lives of others. Have a listen!

The written version of this interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Maverick: Thank you so much, Shinri! It’s a great pleasure to be here with you. How are you doing?

Shinri: Hello! Fantastic, thank you for having me.

Maverick: So, as of now, you have been two years into your career as a VTuber in HOLOSTARS. How has your approach to the medium developed since you started?

Shinri: I think one of the big things for me was trying to find out exactly what kind of a streamer I was. Generally my brand was horror games, so I kind of knew “Oh, I want to do horror games!” But at the same time I didn’t want to end up just doing the same kind of loud screamy “Oh, look it’s a jumpscare, wow chat I’m so scared!”, this type that you see so often.

So, I was looking for what would make my stream and my kind of content unique and different, even though we’re basing off the same gameplay of horror games. And I think over the past two years, playing around games with my community and seeing their reactions and responses and the feedback that I get from them, I’ve really nailed down and focused on this… well, some would say a little bit of a cursed cozy horror vibe, where even though we’re playing a horror game, everything’s still pretty chill and comfortable.

Maverick: Yeah, I think that’s a really big aspect that you lead with. Seeing some of the other members of Guild TEMPUS, there is a lot of energy, and I think the defining feature for your streams is that comfiness that you describe. How have you noticed the focus of “cozy” develop as you have also become closer with your Guild members?

Shinri: Here at HOLOSTARS, we all have our own unique talents and strengths. And I think my content really shines best when it’s looked at in contrast with the high energy and the excitableness of the rest of the boys. Especially when we do our collabs—you know how in comedy routines you have the slapstick humor guy and then the straight man, and they bounce off each other? I try to play into that. I know my Guildmates are a lot more excitable and they have a lot more energy, and they’re really great to get really hyped about everything. And I’ll be there to calm them down, and act as a potential avenue for lower-energy viewers to relate to, no matter how crazy the craziness gets.

Maverick: Not only do you have your members in TEMPUS, but you’ve also recently had the individuals from ARMIS. How has that been, to not only debut yourself in the last two years, but also have this additional cast of folks to draw from?

Shinri: It’s really opened up the number of interactions and collaborations that we have. For example, among all of ARMIS, we have Jurard who’s really high energy, screaming constantly, very loud, and has a lot of showmanship. Then you have Octavio who’s really great with his voice, puts in a lot of effort into his singing, and GB who also puts in a whole bunch of high production value, like in his karaoke recently. And then Ruze kind of shares my down-to-earth energy, although he does have a little bit of gremlin to him.

So, it really opens up more partners to collab with, more people to bounce ideas off of. We talk a lot off-stream, sharing our ideas back and forth. It’s really nice to get a wider selection of feedback and perspective from each of the members, and their different strengths.

Maverick: I can definitely notice from the amount of collaborations, that really comes into focus.

Shinri: To be fair, I don’t really collab as often as I would like. A lot of my content is really geared to being solo. But I do stop in every now and then to the boy’s streams. I will lurk, and we’ll talk about stuff behind the scenes. Most recently, the most consistent collabs I’ve been doing are with Ruze, playing some Grounded, and just kind of vibing that way. Sometimes it’ll just be little quick easy pick-up games where we’re not really trying to accomplish any task, we’re just hanging out and having a good time, just vibing with some friends.

Maverick: Your fanbase, the Koipanions, have really been eager to see not just those collaborations, but your work in general. How do you feel your relationship with them has grown since you started?

Shinri: Mostly, it’s fostering an example. To be quite honest, I actually don’t interact with my fans directly. We’re not allowed to hop into their Discords and hang out with them. So, a lot of the communication I see from the fans comes from what they tell me in chat throughout the streams. A lot of it is acting like an idol they would want to represent and support, with the ideals and values that I have. And then they carry it on to their community and how they interact with each other, and with other people in their lives. Directly, I don’t have much influence. I want to let the Kois do their own thing.

Maverick: I think that makes a lot of sense, and folks are very lucky to have you as that sort of idol. What motivates you to be that kind of individual?

Shinri: This draws a little bit from my first year. I debuted as one of the older members of TEMPUS, and I think from my past history, I do have a lot more time compared to the rest of my Guildmates. I wanted to show that it wasn’t too late to chase your dreams. It wasn’t too late to go out there and try something risky, try something scary. That makes you happy! That gives you a little bit of inspiration. Something that gives you that feeling when you wake up, “Oh, I can’t wait to do this kind of stuff! I want to see myself making progress on this kind of thing!” 

I find that it’s very easy for people to fall into the mindset of, “Oh, it’s too late for me. I had my shot 10 years ago, 5 years ago, and now I gotta hunker down and focus on just doing this one thing.” To use a Millennial term, “We gotta start Adulting properly!” 

So, I just wanted to show that it’s not too late. There’s always ways to start, there’s always time to start. There will be time, but you do have to start. That’s what inspired me, and hopefully the stuff I’ve done is also helping inspire some of the fans who watch me. I’ve heard a lot of them talking about how they started picking up art again, or they’re seeking their graduate degrees, and tuning in to my stream gives them motivation to focus and study hard through midterms and finals season. One Koipanion even mentioned that they had finished their master’s thesis defense while studying to my streams. I love hearing that kind of stuff, and that’s the kind of stuff that inspired me, so I’m glad to hear that it’s inspiring the Kois as well.

Maverick: That’s incredible! I think that focus of being someone who might be older than their contemporaries, but still choosing to do whatever it is you’re choosing to do, to say “It doesn’t matter how old I am. I want to go and do it.” That’s very, just… that’s awesome, for lack of a better word.

Shinri: [laughs] I know that my particular brand of content doesn’t apply to everyone, but at least for those who do follow along and watch my content, I hope I can act as a little bit of inspiration.

Maverick: I know you had talked about this in prior opportunities, but just this focus as well on being in tune with your emotions… how have you seen that relationship to your own vulnerability develop in this time?

Shinri: That’s definitely a personal journey for myself. I grew up as the eldest son in my family, and there were a lot of situations where emotions were not particularly encouraged. It was frowned upon to express emotions. You weren’t really allowed to feel the emotions, you had to bottle it up and just put it away, tuck it aside, and grit your teeth and get the job done for now, and then never talk about it ever again. That has led to a lot of stress in my past.

Streaming has provided me an opportunity to really experience a lot of those emotions, and re-dive back into those and let myself feel those feelings. It’s also really fantastic to have so many supportive fans who encourage that kind of emotional exploration in myself.

This is partly why I really gravitate towards horror games in general. The stories that they tell, the exploration of the human psyche, some traumatic loss—not all horror games are about horror, you know? A monster might not be a monster, but they might be the player character’s manifestation of some guilt or trauma that happened in the past that’s causing them this torment. These kinds of stories allow me to experience those emotions and ask myself, “Oh, if I were in this situation, would I be comfortable enough to let myself feel these?” The Koipanions being as supportive as they are really gave me the safe space in my streams to let those emotions out. You will see me crying on stream, you will see me getting frustrated on stream, really giving myself the chance to feel those emotions.

Maverick: Frankly, it is awesome that you allow yourself the space to do that. The openness to show that emotion, and to show yourself in whatever capacity, “Hey. This is affecting me, and I gotta cry about it, or I gotta be really excited about it.” That streaming allows you to show that off, that’s incredible as well.

What’s been a game recently that you felt has allowed for that kind of back and forth between you and the fans to develop?

Shinri: I wouldn’t say this is too particularly recent, it happened last year, but it’s a game that’s kinda stuck with me for a long time. The game is called A Space for the Unbound, it follows the story of—well, I don’t know how much I can say without spoiling it. [laughs]

Maverick: I know of the game, but I will ask to keep it broad, if only because I do want to enjoy it.

Shinri: Without saying too much, it was an incredible emotional story. A lot of my fans are actually from Indonesia, where the game takes place, so they had a lot of fun times just teaching me about the names of the street food, the animals there. There are mystical supernatural elements to it, but the biggest thing was that so much of the game was based around the daily life of a high school student in Indonesia. So it’s a lot of those, “Oh I went through that!” and then chat will be like “Oh, I did that! I drank those things with my friends during the hot summer days!” The little sodas and the little bags and everything. 

Having that connection with the fans, and having them express to me just how much it meant and how they could directly relate to this game through their own experiences, really helped me feel more connection to the characters and the story. Without spoiling, when the moment hit, it was like “Oh! Wow! I can understand why this moment hits so well.” It drove home a point that became really personal with a lot of the viewers. I still think about that game every now and then, and I would say that’s probably one of the biggest ones that stuck with me and my fans, together.

Maverick: As soon as I can, I need to get into it. One of our other contributors to the site, Franny, has played it and they also have just glowing words to say about it.

Shinri: Oh, that’s fantastic. It sounds like they enjoyed it too.

Maverick: How has recognizing that you do have an international fanbase adapted your own relationship with your audience, and thinking about what you put out for them?

Shinri: I think the big thing there is just forcing myself to become self-aware of the platform that I have. The things I say aren’t just going to be heard by people from one country. There’s going to be people internationally who listen to it, who hear it, who have their own emotional connections and feelings towards the things I do, the content that I make. From Japanese viewers who maybe watch my streams because I speak English clearly, “Oh I’m going to use Shinri’s stream to study English!”, to all the Indonesian fans who have been teaching me so much about their culture through the folklore, the scary ghosts and supernatural things, and all the food.

It hit me a good amount into the first year that wow, the audience here isn’t just from America. There’s viewers from all over the place. It’s wonderful seeing so many international viewers becoming friends with each other, commenting on social media, sharing art and sharing their passions. 

It’s a little bit of pressure knowing that so many people from so many places will be able to see the things that I say. It’s gotten to the point where I have to remind myself not to take this platform that I have for granted, and that my actions do and will resonate with a lot more people than I think. The things that I say might just be, from my point of view, talking into a microphone. But there will be so many different perspectives who will hear it and interpret what I say, in all their different ways.

Maverick: I think it’s a very responsible way that you approach that, especially recognizing that spread. To hear that you do think about that, even if it might be some extra pressure, it does sound like it pushes you towards a direction that allows you to still focus on that level of freedom that you gain from streaming, but also keep yourself in balance.

Shinri: Definitely, definitely. I know of situations where a talent will off-handedly mention their favorite soap brand, and then suddenly there will be a whole bunch of fans talking about, “Oh I want to find that kind of soap, because I want to know the soap that my oshi uses!” Or what they smell like, or whatever their shampoo is. Or maybe it could be a snack, “Oh I recently had this snack from this store,” and then people will go out of their way to try to find it so they can have that sense of connection. So even comments that for us may seem off-handed, those can and will resonate with a lot of fans, and will connect a lot of fans in ways that we can’t anticipate.

Which is why I think it’s so important for us to at least be aware that the things we do and say, even an idle casual tweet we might put out, might be received by a fan like, “Oh, that’s my oshi saying that!” It might have a lot more meaning than what we put into it.

Maverick: Has there been an interaction or a tweet that you were surprised had such a resonance with folks?

Shinri: Ummm… this one’s a little cursed. [laughs] This one’s a little cursed. During the recent Halloween stream, I was mentioning, as a joke—are you familiar with the creepypasta Eyeless Jack?

Maverick: Eyeless Jack… I don’t know if I know that one in particular. Please enlighten me.

Shinri: It’s just your usual run-of-the-mill creepypasta. There’s a really freaky entity out there, a killer, who has no pair of eyes. When you’re sleeping, you open your eyes and you look up and you just see pitch darkness, but it’s darkness because you are staring into the empty eye sockets of Eyeless Jack, who is hovering over you while you sleep. So, as a joke, I made a comment about what it would feel like to press your eyeball against that eye socket. You know, take a closer look at what’s going on there. That little moment got clipped out of context and spread around like, “Oh, Shinri’s such a freak, he has this eyeball eye socket thing going on.”

Now that’s kind of what I’m known for. The other talents will mention “Hey, Shiri, what’s that thing about eyeballs? Do you want to explain that to us?” [laughs] Because the fans will make these memes and they’ll share it and they’ll go to one of the boys’ streams and they’ll be like “Hey, Ruze, have you heard about Shinri’s eyeball thing?” And then it’ll become a whole thing within the community. That’ll be just something we toss out. When we’re on as streamers, our streamer brains kick in and we just kind of say things. But sometimes a random comment that we say will just catch fire and ignite throughout the fanbase.

Maverick: Luckily, in this case, you will not just be known as the eyeball guy, so no worries there.

Shinri: [laughs] Hopefully, thank you.

Maverick: Well… we’ll see. [laughs]

Shinri: Oh no! [laughs]

Maverick: I did want to highlight that, earlier in the year, you had put together a tournament within HOLOSTARS for Balatro. What sparked the inception there?

Shinri: It was just a fun little small tournament with the boys. Balatro had kind of taken off, everyone was playing it, all the streamers were streaming it. The Koipanions were all like, “Shinri, when are you gonna play Balatro?” So, I tried it out, I had a blast with the tutorial, and something about it just clicked. Because of the roguelike elements, everyone has their own playstyle, and as the runs go further each of their unique individual playstyles shine more and more. So, I wanted to see, if we all had to pick one game mode, how would we all differ? 

That’s what really took it off for me. I had a lot of fun with the game, and I saw the other boys were having a lot of fun with the game. I know Axel particularly loves talking about gambling a whole bunch, he loves poker. So I was like, “All right, let’s do it!” I wanted it to be as low-pressure as possible, so we weren’t trying to schedule things with 10 boys and all of our schedules all over the place. We have a month, play it on your own time, but the only requirement is that you must stream it so everyone can see your run. No cheating, no flubbing, you have to reveal all your hands publicly. You know, give the fans a little bit of content there, they can see all of us and say “How did Hakka do? How did Flayon do?” 

That was the idea that I had in my mind, and it was fun! I learned a lot from that, and I hope to do some more fun little mini-tournaments like that with the boys in the future. 

Maverick: Mentioning both the busyness of everyone on HOLOSTARS, and this being a way to cooperate without being on-stream at the same time, how else do you envision this sort of opportunity coming forward in other potential collaborations?

Shinri: …I’m gonna be honest, I haven’t really put too much thought into that one at the moment. [laughs] The conventional way of doing a collab is seen as “Oh, we’re live together at the same time, we’re bantering in live time.” I think one of the big things I’ve learned is that you can apply this kind of asynchronous collabing, where everyone is doing the same subject matter, but they don’t have to be live at the same time. They don’t have to be playing together in the same room in order for it to work. I’m still looking at some different ideas we could do. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a game, it could be something else. 

Hopefully in the future we’ll have some more of these fun asynchronous tournaments, where we’re all competing against one another, we’re all collabing with each other, but without the pressure of everyone needing to clear a certain schedule. Especially for some of the boys who may live in different time zones, when our evenings are their early mornings or vice versa. It gets a little crazy that way.

Maverick: That want for something that is asynchronous, to accommodate for everything, does feel very kindred with how we at Gamesline operate. A similar way of multiple different time zones, people having to juggle work with other responsibilities, and still putting the time in to be like, “We want to do this, we want to focus on this, how can we show up as best we can?” Hearing you describe that, it’s good to know there’s something else that experiences those pains and also those joys.

Shinri: Yeah, yeah! Even if the whole team is working on it, there might be times when you never actually cross paths, but the work that you do still comes together at the end of the day.

Maverick: Thank you for taking the time to sit with me, it’s been a pleasure, and I really appreciate it!

Shinri: Thank you for having me here! This is one of my first live interviews like this, so it’s a little nerve-wracking.

Maverick: Likewise. [laughs]

Shinri: [laughs] Thank you for the questions, and thank you for the opportunity! I really appreciate it.

∗ ∗ ∗ 

Maverick: And just like that, we’ve arrived at the station. Thank you again to COVER and Shinri for being open to this opportunity. It was such a blast! If you’d like to experience more of that cozy horror vibe, you can find Shinri on Youtube and Twitter at @josuijishinri.

I’m not typically on socials these days, but you can find me over at Bluesky. 

To support and find more of us, that’s right over at Patreon. $3 for all of our content a week early, like Unlimited Rail Works, our anime podcast. We just covered Samurai Flamenco, which was such a fun time.

At the time of me recording this section, we just introduced four new members to the Gamesline crew, and they’re going to be recording live on Twitch the newest episode of the Gamesline Podcast.

If you want to talk shop and hang with with us, you can also join our Discord.

The theme song 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. Keep an eye out, they’ll be doing some new stuff pretty soon!

Thanks, and we’ll see you soon.

Edited transcription by Crystal.