Note: I’m not into Vtuber culture, but I can recognize and understand some things about it mainly because they are so popular it’s basically impossible to escape them if you’re into otaku culture as they pretty much are a part of it, so I’m not going to be biased for it.
This anime is an advertisement for the Strong Zero beer- uh, I mean, it’s about a Vtuber breaking character and getting popular because of it as the title says. I'm surprised no one pointed out inside the show the little comments that are in the streams, because this show follows how Vtubers work, they even did their own live2D models of the characters for the show and use them from time to time where they could simply use regular animation all the time. While it also shows them outside of streamings, they usually don't change from how they look in their avatars, I could be cynical and say that it is to keep the illusion that Vtubers are still their personas outside of streams or that the studio was lazy and couldn't bother doing designs for how they should really look, but it is pretty obviously none of those, it’s because the show isn't focused on that, this isn't a show that has Vtubers on it, it’s a show about the Vtubers.
This show is pretty silly, it’s a complete slice of life show where you don't have to expect a plot, the characters can change a little in their relationships but it never goes to a point where you'll miss much, as it is basically a collection of streams which I guess most if not all are based on streams made by actual Vtubers and you'll probably see some characters and say that they remind you of some Vtuber you know. It’s also one of those anime where the comedy can vary a lot in quality, but it will never reach a point where you will be laughing a lot from them, if you understand the culture you will surely be able to enjoy it more, because the moments that landed the most for me was stuff like in that episode where they shouted "MAKOTO" and then showed the "nice boat", or the episode where they were playing an online card game where the studio even made an entire small animation for Rias Gremory and references to other TNK anime which I watched and loved, I mean, TNK animating Rias Gremory in the year 2015+9? I didn't even remember the last time they animated her, while other jokes are as bad as the adult baby fetish ones which I can only guess is one of the fetishes the author has as it had two episodes on it. If for some weird reason you were expecting something about the "dark side" of vtubing or anything of the sort here, then you aren't watching the right anime, there are some darker moments like Awayuki being forced to drink to keep capitalizing on her new drunk persona or when they doxed her, but those are played as comedy sketches that don't impact the characters or the setting much.
I can't understand why Vtubers are so popular, if anything they remind me that when I was like 12 there were some YouTubers that would do Let’s Play videos that my classmates would talk about, I never got into those because 1) I wasn't interested in that 2) I didn't have Wi-Fi back then, so watching things on YouTube was pretty difficult, so I wouldn't be able to do it even if I was interested. The only difference I can see from Vtubers to Let’s Players is that these are behind cute anime girl avatars, and it's not like I didn't try to watch things from them, I remember when I tried watching one of those Vtubers stream, I watched it for like 10 minutes or so, and while I guess it wasn't so bad, I just cannot possibly get what would be so interesting about watching it for hours to get all the popularity they have right now. If anything I'm surprised this anime isn't more popular given it’s about Vtubers, something extremely popular nowadays to the point of dominating the Comiket just behind a plague like Blue Archive, but this show doesn't even get much fanart, I guess it would be because Vtuber fans aren't even interested in anime or they could just watch their Vtuber instead of watching an anime about completely original Vtuber personas, or maybe the overlap of fanbases just isn't as strong as one would think, as Vtubers are much more similar to watching any other streamer than watching anime. If anything, this show is about what Vtubers can only dream to be, actual anime girls.
It's not like I could expect TNK to do this anime, they are one of the only studios that can constantly put out good ecchi anime and they don't do many works per year despite not having impressive animation or anything, so I can just wonder why they chose a light novel about Vtubers to adapt it, I could be disappointed on it as there are other ecchi shows that aired alongside this one like 2.5 getting censored, however, the reason why I'm not really disappointed is because you can see that they really were having fun doing this show, it surely won't change your opinions about Vtubers but you can see how much they appreciate the culture and the last episode is pretty much a testament to that.
Thank you for reading.
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