Shueisha collaboration with hololive for Spring 2022 Manga Festival announced

Japanese VTuber agency hololive collaborates with manga publisher Shueisha for the latter’s Spring 2022 Manga Festival, which is scheduled to run from April 11 to May 15. For this purpose, 35 VTubers from the hololive franchise have been invited to recommend three manga titles, which fans would have an opportunity to read in a free trial. The recommendations would be among the 305 manga titles which could be read for free during the entire festival.

In addition, a special collaboration stream in hololive’s official channel on April 23 will feature hololive talents Polka Omaru, Darkness La+, Noel Shirogane, and Hoshimachi Suisei to create their own original manga.

The top choice among VTubers seem to be Spy x Family, which anime adaptation began airing on April 9, 2022. This was followed by Hunter x Hunter and Dr. Stone, both of which also received anime adaptations. Notably, Nanashi Mumei from hololive English -Council- (stylized as holoCouncil) recommended Tokyo Ghoul thrice. In a recent stream, Mumei explained that she intended to only have a single recommendation.

Eleven of hololive’s talents, meanwhile, received special illustrations from Shueisha’s manga artists.

Their recommendations can be accessed in the Haruman!! 2022 website.

In relation to this, American publisher and distributor Crunchyroll has dedicated a series of interviews featuring the members of the holoCouncil starting April 19. Besides the interviews, they also got to recommend their top anime.

A VTuber or virtual YouTuber refers to an online talent using a 2D or 3D avatar as alter ego in creating content. It was believed that Japanese VTuber Kizuna AI was the one who popularized the term, calling herself as one in her introduction video on December 1, 2016. Nonetheless, virtual idols who utilize similar technologies such as Hatsune Miku and Ling Yuan yousa, among others, have been around prior to her debut.

As motion capture rig and streaming technology became more affordable and easier to manage, there has been a noticeable increase in interest in the VTuber industry. Data technology company UserLocal has reported the existence of over 16,000 VTubers as of 2021. Meanwhile, ranking website Playboard saw that 9 of the ten most super chatted YouTube channels in the world last year were by VTubers, all of which were hololive talents.