Indie Vtubers

 

There's a few of these, and most of them are related to Mori Calliope, as mostly my recommendations are based on who enters the ecosystem of those I'm already watching. Mori tends to shout out friends from her former scene a lot though and through a couple of remix contests has also gained a few followers who I see other dead beats recommending - a combination of all the above has led me to three of these.

 

There are thousands of vtubers in Japan, and at least hundreds outside of it. I sometimes come across a vtuber from a smaller agency outside of the big 2 of Hololive and Nijisanji if they're doing ASMR or something, but ultimately I enjoy this stuff because of the really talented entertainers, and as much as I'd like to support everyone with a cute anime Live2D rig, that is not possible. These are a few select ones that I have watched some streams from this year:

 

Milky Queen

(calliope mori but british)

 

Milky being my favourite independent vtuber is kinda natural for a Dead Beat but she's there off her own merit. She's one of Calliope Mori's closest friends and if I remember stream stories correctly, is in large part responsible for Mori existing (as in, applying to Hololive and getting in) and being the person she is today. Calli often talks about off-stream activities (mostly tea outings) that she gets up to with Milky. It's very easy to see where that comes from, she's an incredibly lovely person who deserves more views. She's also very British, as in, appears to be Japanese-British from what I know, and blessed with a lovely, comfortable, unmistakably British, voice. Currently she shares her channel with two other girls who are part of a small group together, but she often does solo streams and has a Twitch channel that I try and catch if I'm ever able to. Particularly her singing streams of course.

She has a few banger original songs like the below:

and she did a fantastic cover of USSEEWA with Calli which is on par with the original for me:

 

BOOGEY VOXX

This pair are a rap duo who'll have at least one song, but probably two in my song countdown this year, as they collabed with Mori twice. They also do good songs on their own, and really only do singing streams as they're focused on putting out a lot of music to a hopefully ever-expanding audience. They did really well after doing a cover of 'RIP' when Calli hosted her remix contest last year.

 

Ririsiya

Ririsiya is a bit more representative of the average Japanese indie vtuber, has a nice looking anime model, even though hers has a unique colour palette, does singing and occasionally games, and uses the vtuber stuff as a vehicle to release pop music and fund a music career. Riri has a lot of viewers from outside Japan though, especially relative to her Japanese size, because she first came to prominence by doing a great remix cover of Calli's 'RIP' when Calli hosted a remix/cover contest last year (look, a pattern!). As deadbeats are a particularly music oriented fanbase, some of them stuck around. I look over every once in a while, she's quite a quiet girl but she sings well and her chat has dubbed her a snake because her 'mm' sound is fairly sibilant which is rather cute (and something she's embraced), and she's released a couple of great original songs this year:

 

 

(cw for the next one: politics)

 

Eris (of EristocracyTV)

I sorta debated putting Eris in as she's something very different to every other vtuber I watch, in fact, I'd say she's only a vtuber in name. All the things that generally come with the culture, building off of anime entertainment for content, don't apply to her. She's a political streamer first and foremost, and if I were going to include those, I should really include Vaush, who is the political streamer I watch the most. But, 2D > 3D here. And I wouldn't normally mix vtubers and politics, in fact, I often live in fear that either will ever bring up the other, but the few times it has happened it has been remarkably positive.

 

Eris herself, she streams at bad times for me but the reason I really like her and keep checking up on her is that she bills herself as a History streamer, which is rare enough on its own, but something I'm always going to listen to. A lot of her content is based around her Jewish identity, which is also always valuable for me to listen to given its relevance to political discourse whenever something happens over in Israel/Palestine. I've joined her discord, the Calliopean Club and though I just lurk, I like that it's a place that bills itself as about learning knowledge and values education, filled with sources and people having, from what I've seen, reasonable disagreements. Politically, she's a bit more centrist than I am but always comes across as an interesting person willing to listen and educate and temper the online left politicosphere. I'll link her chat with Vaush recently, which was quite a good one talking about current issues - and indeed a bit about the virtues of Vtubers.

Hololive

 

And back to the leaders of the pack, the leaders of the space, the corporation controlling most of what the West thinks of as Vtubing (though competitors VShojo are aiming for a niche that isn't necessarily limited to anime, but their content appeals to me less and it's on Twitch which I don't like watching as much as Youtube streaming anymore...). Still a fairly reasonable corporation from all accounts, and still taking up MOST of my vtubing watching, but we'll see how it goes over the next year.

 

Again, italics mean they debuted in 2021 or so close to the end of 2020 that I chose not to cover them. Which for Indonesia includes their second generation, who have just celebrated their second year anniversary and have probably made more people outside Indonesia aware of Indonesian culture than perhaps any other ambassador for the country I've ever heard of.

 

Hololive Indonesia

 

Gen 1 (Area 51)

 

Moona Hoshinova: Out of ID Gen 1, Moona is the only one I've really kept up with, Risu has cute shorts but outside of that I only find myself watching her at big collab events and Iofi has great 'pagi' (good morning in Indonesian) tweets that I often like but I only occasional see things I like from her. For Moona, I've started tuning regularly into her #MoonaUtau, unarchived karaoke streams where she sings a bunch of mainstream songs that read like the UK charts from about 10 years ago. Which is about the only era I was really paying attention to the charts. She also released a very beautiful original song at the beginning of the year that I haven't listened to enough times to make it to my top 100 songs but always captivates me whenever it finds its way onto shuffle. I should listen to it more, this is stunning:

 

see, this is the sort of thing she sings at her karaokes, always a must catch if I see them live, as the VODs are deleted:

 

Gen 2 (Holoro)

 

Kureiji Ollie: I've got Ollie notifications on Twitter. She tweets a lot but it's worth it because it's almost all freaking out over when any of the other Hololive vtubers (and often vtubers outside of Hololive too) do anything exciting. Which makes her a useful conduit to knowing what's happening ever, all done with an excitable, tireless hunt for cute things.

 

Ollie is a zombie girl in her lore but is anything but slow and boring, I sometimes tune into her streams, Minecraft mostly, just for a bit of energy, pick me up, deafening my ears with excitable zombie screams that could be used for metal, that sort of thing. I also appreciate her for doing maths streams, which are a refreshing oddity that are good for reviewing some of the old concepts, and chess streams that... it's just great to see a vtuber able to look at a chess game and not instantly combust in confusion, okay? She loves the game and while she is ranked way lower than I am and I do often see her miss things I'd pick up on easily, she's competent enough that I don't feel total pain (for reference I'm ranked around 1300 in chess.com, she's ranked about 1000 places lower) and her passion and the reach that her and the chess streaming world colliding have done has been enough to make her a favourite:

 

though as the video below shows, there are some other vtubers coming in that, while not as good as Ollie, at least know the rules

 

Pavolia Reine: Reine I've really come to appreciate for being a no-nonsense, relaxing and refined presence to contrast with Ollie. The other Gen 2 member, Anya, I wish the best but haven't seen her do much that'd lead me to click on a stream. Reine does a lot of interesting stuff though, she's streamed a whole lot of Zero Escape, that I haven't watched as I don't think it's the best streaming game if you'd rather play it like I would, but I have to appreciate the taste, as with many of these I like checking out her doing Minecraft sometimes and her brunches where she eats a different kind of (often Indonesian) food are great disguised chatting streams. She's also done a couple of (Minecraft) fishing collabs with Calli (also great disguised chatting streams) which I watched all the way through and loved:

 

then there's GATE: Open Start, her first original song which has some great production beats:

Hololive Japan

 

I need to watch more Hololive Japan. My Japanese-learning side would really like to have a Japanese favourite, and I do, I have many favourites, but content I fully understand tends to win out. However, I do understand the gist of the average Japanese language stream these days, and I'll go all in whenever I see them doing a karaoke or endurance stream. As before, there's LOADS, there are now 36 current Japanese Hololive members. I'll organise them by generations and go through the ones I can think of something specific to say about what I've seen them do this year.

 

They almost always stream in my evening, so every evening there's often at least something interesting on that I am free to watch if I'm not doing anything else. Which means I've passively consumed a lot of this stuff.

 

Gen 0 (originals and outside gen additions)

 

Hoshimachi Suisei: I think if I had to choose, I'd say Suisei is currently my favourite Japanese member. She's currently in my avatar, with some very cute glasses, but there's a reason I chose her specifically. She represents a comet, or stars, which aligns perfectly with what sorta became my internet identity by accident and a love of stargazing. She even has an unofficial duo name with Mori, Death Star, which if anything, is what I should refer to myself as when thinking of a cross-fandom name. Like with Mori, the reason I've latched onto Suisei is a recognition of sheer talent/hard-work which make her one of the most rewarding Holos to follow and watch her career soar to new heights. She's also very music-focused.

 

She is also responsible for one of the most 'must-watch' streams I can think of, which, bizarrely, is her playing Tetris 99. The thing with vtubers that does go against what I used to watch gaming streaming for is that they aren't always gaming experts, but Suisei is legitimately a fantastic Tetris player who can sing YOASOBI (in the below clip) while styling into the top 10 (most of the time). Her Tetris is like watching a world champion play sports, except it's watching an anime girl play Tetris, gripping stuff.

 

 

She also released her debut album Stellar Stellar this year which I slightly overlooked for the albums list, because all of it is really fantastic J-Pop that can rival any of the best in Japan's charts, and indeed her releases often at least make a significant iTunes impact. I am including one song from it in my songs list but have a listen to another great one here, complete with 3D video. Suisei is I think the closest current Japanese member to being, in the old-fashioned sense, a music industry grade popstar:

 

 

Gen 1

 

Shirakami Fubuki: Fubuki, the stalwart of HoloJP, is currently about 200+ hours deep into resetting her Pokemon game to get a shiny Magikarp. I would never count her out, even if her legendary scatting video bit the dust this year. She remains one of the most amazing case-studies of someone who is both entirely a cute-voiced anime girl nerd and yet a professional, high-quality streamer who pumps out endurance content like it's nothing. In August, she was streaming every day playing some fishing game or whatever and I'd often catch those for a short while. She's very easy to just drop in on.

 

Akai Haato: I have to shout out Haato for being one of the pioneers of what is possible with online vtubing content. Clearly not down for doing things in an ordinary fashion, she switches between herself and her alter ego Haachama and throughout this year went from masterminding a body horror lore series (that sadly she couldn't finish due to outside factors) and a bunch of other short videos that add further things to her story. Whenever I look over I often wonder what on earth she's now doing but it's tonally consistent.

 

Gen 2

 

Gamers

 

Gen 3 (Fantasy)

Usada Pekora: Pekora is currently the second-biggest female streamer IN THE WORLD. I'm so proud of her. She's only not #1 because the #1 is Amouranth, and if you've heard of her then you know what she's like and why she is still ahead. But Pekora is currently leading Hololive in raw numbers (almost always 30000+ viewers whenever I see her stream, and for contrast, most Hololivers are having a good day when they go over 15,000) and is fully dedicated to being the event streamer that I knew she could be when she pulled me into the rabbit hole. I say I watch lots of Minecraft streams, and it's true, they're procedural content that is unique to the streamer, there's no risk of spoilers and the possibilities are endless. Pekora doing a Minecraft stream is genuinely such good content, filled with pranks that I always go for it. But her doing anything is, really.

 

She's still the all-ages, start here for antics channel of Hololive and you cannot go wrong with what is popular. Her English has improved a ton too, whenever the opportunity comes to test it out. She's not got the easiest Japanese to understand because of her verbal tics and... mutterings but I can still follow along

 

(the following video includes a Duck Season Rabbit Season war with Gen 2 vtuber Subaru, who's been dubbed a duck by her fans)

 

Uruha Rushia: I started watching Rushia, after passing her by for ages, a few months ago and I enjoyed a lot of what I saw. I find her one of the easiest JP members to understand and it's clear why she's... by some distance... the most superchatted channel ever, she really goes all in on caring for her Fandead fanbase and making them feel comfortable with emptying their wallets to her, you can tell that just from the vibes and the way they rib her for being flat-chested (which she always performatively overreacts to) that she's in a parasocial relationship with her chat more than most vtubers. AND THOSE ARE THE BEST KIND. She collabed with Mori and Ollie as the unofficial unit HoloDeath (as the three Hololivers representing some form of death, Rushia is a necromancer), which was a stream fully in Japanese but I was able to follow it almost entirely due to two of the members being JSL and Calli live translating but I didn't really need her lv u bb.

for an example of her solo and having fun I loved seeing parts of this cooking stream recently:

score 1 for green hair best hair

 

Gen 4 (HoloForce):

 

Amane Kanata: I think Kanata is, after Suisei, my second-favourite in HoloJP currently. Or favourite. They're pretty even. Kanata is another music-oriented one, often doing karaoke even though she sadly has some problems with her hearing, she pushes through and keeps doing them whenever she can. And that's it, her determination is what draws me to her, this plucky 'I will succeed no matter what' diligent attitude that she exudes. I also find her very easy to understand and because I have her on Twitter notifications (it started just being for fanart, I think her model is one of the best in Hololive for that, and then it became a way to know what she's doing that night) and she's often doing stuff that I'm interested in, she might be the JP vtuber I've watched the most this year - where's my Youtube wrapped to confirm? Karaokes add up. Even things like her collecting all the photos of the Minecraft sports festival and then posting so many images on Twitter that the site itself made her slow down as she tried to give every other Hololive girl their own cameraman is a good reflection of how good she is at... making me like her. Very much the cute, must protect type.

 

In part that's because of an absolutely insane run she did back in March of trying to beat Sans in Undertale. She's not the best at games, which made this take... quite a long time... as in she literally streamed herself trying to beat and dying to this boss for 40 straight hours, no breaks, split over 4 streams because YT doesn't handle streams that long. It was an incredible few days to drop in on the stream for a short while, and cheer her on, thankfully for her health she hasn't quite repeated that but I know whenever she announces an endurance stream or a stream 'till we die' that we are in for a good time (there was also a very good Minecraft Hardcore run she had several false starts at in the summer).

 

Kiryu Coco: You might have seen a headline or a trend on Twitter in June or July about Coco, and that's because she graduated. Which is vtuber-speak for quit the company and left the job. While the details aren't known for sure, she wanted to go solo (the person behind her now has a new avatar, known as KsononAir, recently got a huge Live2D upgrade, and is occasionally doing content that wouldn't fly under the banner of a company, or at least, might not), and chose to spend her last month in June doing everything she possibly could with every other member of Hololive possible. Which included a meme review with Calli, for my part, and a lot of very emotional sendoffs. Which gave Hololive fans a pattern for how graduations might go in the future as Coco was the first to ever leave on relatively normal terms (i.e. after a successful career). Fortunately no further ones seem to be forthcoming in the near future but they are of course an inevitability at some point, so it is best to prepare for them; and the upside is that as far as Coco is concerned, despite a small audience size loss, her core audience seem to have transferred to her new persona. I watched her sometimes as she has really good English, being American-born, but mostly for those meme reviews (used to be a good Sunday morning event stream) and I didn't really watch her other stuff. Nevertheless, I remember those last few streams and particularly her final goodbye stream being a huge, teary event that involved every other Holo dropping in with some words and goodbyes.

 

Tsunomaki Watame and Tokoyami Towa I don't watch that often but I should because they're two of the best singers in Hololive and Watame at least has a regular late-night karaoke show called Watame Night Fever that I never seem to be able to catch.

 

Gen 5 (NePoLaBo):

 

Shishiro Botan: Botan, the sweetest, calmest, wise FPS lion. She went through a great arc with the game Trials Rising, which is basically just hours of her giggling at wacky bike physics and sounding incredible for smiles. I don't really watch FPS stuff so that part locks me out of spending more time with her but seeing her build a ramen shop a few months ago in Minecraft was a really comfy experience and she's my top Japanese choice for a POV whenever they do an Among Us round, I know, because I remember choosing her for one and getting rewarded very well for it with a bunch of very entertaining imposter rounds:

 

Gen 6 (HoloX):

The newest gen of Hololive are just under a month old, so I won't do a proper section for them, just noting that two of them (two of the less subscribed to, boo) are starstruck by Mori (an infection known as 'Kari-senpai kakkoi!') and so I like them. Those are Takane Lui, who seems to be, in the now absence of Coco, HoloJP's best English speaker, and certainly very interested in getting better at it. In that she's on the same level as most of my local co-workers are where I work and her more advanced English inflection reminds me more of that than the more... child-like fashion that Japanese vtubers who have no knowledge of English can sound like. And Kazama Iroha, a samurai-themed girl who is living up to that reputation by being unfailingly polite and Japanese and playing Jump King which is one of my favourite games to watch streamers do now I've suffered in it plenty myself. As Mori loves Jump King too she's often been dropping by Iroha's streams, to the delight of her new junior.

 

(I haven't yet spent any money on any of these girls but reading over what I've written about Suisei, Kanata, Rushia etc... we'll see how 2022 goes, I'll probably cut back on my watching to be honest)

Hololive English - Part 1, Myth Reflections

 

We're almost at the preamble to the real focus I've had this year. I talked about all of the then current members at great length last year but the 5 girls of HoloMyth have been joined by 6 new friends this year and it's turned 5, at times, lonely, pioneers into a full-fledged friend group who've started developing natural chemistry, hopping into voice calls with each other at very unexpected times. The 5 Myths are now on merch everywhere weebs gather and have huge followings, and the six new members are working their way into the scene fairly well, not always smooth sailing but I like all of them and it's often the case that whichever one I'm watching is my non-Mori fave for the period that I am watching them. Which is a great sign.

 

HoloMyth (Gen 1)

 

Mori Calliope

 

Takanashi Kiara

Kiara is still a girl who can rope me in with her wonderful Austrian accent, cheerful demeanor and occasional bluntness. As a reminder, she is multilingual; fully fluent in German, English and Japanese and while she doesn't speak in the first on stream much it's always great when she does. I was watching her loads more last year though and the main reason that I've dropped off her a little is thankfully an understandable one, she moved back to Austria early this year and as such is now nearly always streaming when I'm asleep. And it's often RPGs which is content that I wouldn't normally watch. It's British prime-time though, so it'd be very easy for you guys to catch her! When she has a really early stream (or sometimes really late) I'll be there though, if it's a game I know something about because I really do enjoy spending time with her when it's something I'm interested in. Or one of her cooking streams or other variety streams. Of particular note though was her inviting her real-life mum onto a few streams, most of them helping out in Minecraft (as her mum is a ~gamer mum~ and really knows Minecraft) but the stream I remember best was a talking one where her mum came on call and shared some reflections on her career, some really wholesome stuff.

 

she also released Sparks, a really cool piece of pop, I like this and her Valentine song Heart Challenger a fair bit but her voice doesn't gel with me as much as some others in Holo English, but I think it's some pop that others might be interested in:

 

Ninomae Ina'nis

Ina is always at terrible times for me to catch her but is also pretty good for late-night Europeans, and the streams I've caught her in this year... she's a great super nerd, competent at most things she does in a quiet, understated fashion. I think my favourite stream I caught from her this year was a chill one where she was drawing and listening to classical music. Or another one where she went through a short game that tells the story of Dagon, one of Lovecraft's first novels about Cthulu on stream over the course of under an hour. That's significant because Ina's design is Lovecraft-inspired. She continues to have the comfiest atmosphere in HoloEN and probably has the best fanart, as she is the best artist and therefore attracts other artists (just like Calli's community has the best musicians/music nerds).

 

She also released her first original song, Violet, which took its time to grow on me but was solidified in love by a fanartist doing an absolutely wonderful animation set to it that came out just after the 1 year anniversary and now feels like the actual ending insert song to HoloMyth's first season, were it an anime. Where the opening song is obviously '失礼しますがRIP'.

 

Watson Amelia

For me, in 2021, Amelia has been the great technical support of HoloMyth, organising virtual hangouts for the girls in lieu of them all being able to go to the company studio in Japan to get their real 3D models and actually meet for the first time, when covid ends and borders reopen that will be probably the most long-awaited moment in this thing - as the only member left in Japan, Calli has refused to get her 3D before she can get the rest of HoloMyth there. An anniversary collab, a Halloween collab and recently a Christmas collab, Ame has masterminded a team of 3D artists to make it possible for small alternate models of the girls to hang out together. Closest thing to them being able to hug each other. And literally as I was writing this (Dec 24) she tweeted out a link to the world so that fans could go to a recreation of the VR rooms that we saw at these collabs.

 

Outside of her gaming streams, which I rarely watch, she's always trying out new ideas, which I will watch, including the first Hololive charity stream that I'm aware of (as a corp trying to please everyone they're a little limited in the causes they can advocate for) that raised $235k for animal charities.

 

Gawr Gura

Gura I've kept up with almost one of the most if only because she and Calli are really getting along after some slightly awkward starts - Gura figured out the way to Mori's heart was to banter with her and the two are always finding excuses to collab now... INCLUDING ON A NEW ORIGINAL SONG RELEASING IN JANUARY... ahem. The two biggest English-speaking vtubers in the world, on one song. Their cover of Kanaria's KING together a few months ago was one of the fastest view machines in all of vtuber history so I am hyped.

And of course there was REFLECT which I will be speaking about in my songs list.

 

As for gaming content, Gura is a master entertainer, even just a simple Minecraft stream is filled with jokes and clippable moments, for example the arc where she discovered Minecraft invisibility and started figuring out ways to prank other HoloEN members online and yes this is just peak Minecraft youtuber content but it's okay because they're funny anime girls:

 

Shirakami Fubuki: Fubuki, the stalwart of HoloJP, is currently about 200+ hours deep into resetting her Pokemon game to get a shiny Magikarp. I would never count her out, even if her legendary scatting video bit the dust this year. She remains one of the most amazing case-studies of someone who is both entirely a cute-voiced anime girl nerd and yet a professional, high-quality streamer who pumps out endurance content like it's nothing. In August, she was streaming every day playing some fishing game or whatever and I'd often catch those for a short while. She's very easy to just drop in on.

 

https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/dc8e9d195...cc9a5469e1e4094 :cheer: :cheer: :cheer:

Project Hope

A standalone project intended to release a Vsinger, a Hololive singer whose explicit purpose is to focus on music. In name, at least. In reality, IRyS operates similar to Calli, Suisei and other Holos who focus on music, she commonly does karaokes and she releases more original songs than the average Holo, but she also likes streaming games and there's nothing to stop her doing so if she's able.

 

IRyS

IRyS received a shedload of hype when she was first announced, as the first new Hololive English vtuber after Myth, and we'd been waiting nearly a year. She debuted in July and switftly fit in. She's actually a huge music get by Cover. Without saying exactly who she was in a past life as I do tend to follow the rules around not explicitly saying 'X was Y before', she was most famous for a cover of a certain very well-known weeb song that has managed to get many millions of views more than the original such that many searching for the song on Youtube find it before the original and some (like me) don't even notice that it's not the original. The one thing I did expect her to do was to perhaps be more of a western-focused popstar but perhaps that's not in Hololive's priorities currently. Her original music is certainly very enjoyable and one song of the three currently out from her will be making my songs countdown. The others, Diorama is a fair anime song and Caesura Of Despair is a great introduction piece to her concept as the avatar of Hope, straddling the line between the light and the darkness.

 

 

As for her personality and stream content, she has a beautifully clear voice that makes her talking and singing streams a must watch if I see they're happening, as she's based in Japan, I've made it to a few, though one she did with Calli stands out the most (in between them going to tea and having what I believe was a karaoke night out which is the sort of thing that makes me really happy to hear about). I'm serious, her singing voice is the sort that makes you feel like you're ascending. Her Minecraft content is good if only because she has a... particular attitude to building things, occasionally coming up with moments of genius like a very efficient watermelon farm that now funds the English server's diamond equipment but mostly building with dirt.

 

HoloCouncil (Gen 2)

Five new vtubers who are based around fundamental concepts of existence. The power levels got a little out of hand. But all 5 are great girls who are still getting used to streaming and any of them could yet be top-tier, I really can't choose my favourite out of the five.

 

Tsukumo Sana

A representation of space, I locked onto Sana early as a favourite because she was dropping stargazing tips before debut (and I used those to spy Jupiter and Saturn close together in a very memorable nighttime walk). Her debut was also unforgettable as she dropped a very Aussie 'shut the hell up mate' and a few days later did a very cheery stream where she played Celeste way better than I could ever. She also does a regular Horoscopes stream which I was a little apprehensive about but it turned out to be her just talking about traits where at any time 1/12th of chat get to feel special and she knows it's silly (and harmless in the way she presents it). She did have to take a month off because her dog passed away and she wasn't able to be in a cheery mood for a while, but now she's back and just as cheery, she very recently just beat the record for longest HoloEN collab with Calli while shiny hunting Pokemon together and bouncing from convo topic to topic.

 

Ceres Fauna

The first thing that comes to mind with Fauna, the representation of nature, is green hair good. After her unique voice, which afaik is her natural voice but is like if sugar was given audio. She bills herself as an ASMR specialist (and she's good at that) and is very good at games, enough to know gaming lingo, practices speedrunning Minecraft and I actually do try and catch her playing games I don't know much about. She feels quite underrated because she doesn't really shout out her accomplishments, but I've always had a great time clicking on a stream of hers and the few times she's given hints about what music she likes... it's emo and she is a huge Calli/Gura fan so is a little starstruck by both of them.

 

her comedic tone is great too, as she can keep tone in her voice very level as she suddenly turns yandere, as below:

 

Ouro Kronii

Kronii, representing time (or a BIG CLOCK) is a voice appreciator's dream, as a former voice actress she has a very well-trained (and relatively deep) voice that makes her streams incredibly pleasant to listen to, and pretty good game taste as well, streaming things like Superhot, Frostpunk (a game I never thought I'd see a vtuber play) and getting addicted to Minecraft (by building a legitimately incredibly well-organised underground bunker that's completely hidden and seems to serve as the centre-point for Council activities over on the Minecraft EN now). She's had a few troubles with being confident enough to show her skills on stream and I haven't caught her streams so much in the last couple of months but based on one I caught recently it seems like she's settling in fine with banter and moving past an initially funny but probably forced out of nervousness schtick where she pretended to be narcissistic.

 

I watched Interstellar for the first time with her and Sana, (time and space, geddit?) and it was a great experience as that was a movie that I knew I'd love but had passed me by - watchalongs are great content as I'll say again when I get to Mori.

 

Nanashi Mumei

I remember that Mumei, the guardian of Civilisation (and an Owl, it seems like she was designed for me), initially seemed the shyest of the bunch, to the point where I was really worried that she was so quiet after debut, but she's turned that around and is probably the Council member I've ended up seeing the most of lately as well as the best adapted to Hololive (and what seems understated but is probably my favourite Twitter writing style, calm with a slight sardonic edge). Part of that initial shyness was that it seemed like she wanted to do history streams and maybe even play Civilization but those plans had to be put on hold because it's a little risky. She's developed a fantastic sense of humour though, where most of what she says is sweet normal girl talk but can shift into a metal horror nightmare at any moment. In any case, she seems to be cultivating what I'd say currently seems like the strongest Council fanbase of Hoomans, I'm not sure yet whether I'd count myself among them (I'm definitely a dead beat above everything else but any of the rest I like I'd put myself in at least on the fringes) but I think she's in the strongest position of the 5 for the future given how often she suddenly drops streams on people and is doing whatever she feels like now, including the most random and variable unarchived karaokes.

 

all this and she's also still in school for a master's degree.

 

plus she's BASED (musically):

 

basically there's been some excellent fanart of Calli, Mumei and Fauna in emo/band-girl aesthetics and I need more of it. all of it.

 

Hakos Baelz

An embodiment of chaos and a rat, Baelz, or Bae, really shines in collabs, providing the chemistry and glue that holds Council, and whoever else she chooses, together (her and IRyS have a great thing going at the moment). As an Australian like Sana, her schedule is pretty good for me too, so I catch her every now and again. Her karaokes, though she rarely does them, are her best content for me, she has an absolutely stunning singing voice to complement a speaking voice that is very distinct.

 

I just watched her singing carols yesterday and though it was unarchived, her singing Christmas classics was really excellent.

 

 

Top... 31... vtubers (I counted, not including Calli or any without their own sections)

Complete: 3/5

(next... a year with Mori Calliope)

Calliope Mori, 2021, and me, a Dead Beat

 

You might remember that I wrote an awful lot about how much I adored Calliope Mori (or Mori Calliope, or Calli, or Mori, or Ope, or Mo. Ri. Calliope) this time last year. Ever since then, there's been a little nagging thought in the back of my mind about how I go about following it up, because the truth is, those first 4 months of Mori turned out to be the weakest 4 months of her vtubing career. Clearly I saw something I loved early on, but every single time she gets better and better I think about how I gushed about her 12 months ago, and how many superlatives I'm going to have to throw in to do this justice.

 

I also keep getting prouder and prouder of her for improving musically, for improving as an entertainer, for improving even just in games, and proud that I stuck with her this long and I am still so much in love with what she is doing, her music, her entertainment, everything about her, and the incredibly lucky circumstances that I'm in where I'm able to be at the majority of her streams live while working a full-time job and not entirely being an anti-social loser. I never normally stick with something this long and not have it waver in my affections at all, I never normally get so caught up in a celebrity/online personality, but Mori is... different.

 

She's the kindest, funniest, most talented (in certain areas) person and someone who has been a positive and motivating influence on me over the last 15 months that I've been following her closely. We even had very similar life paths in terms of family structure and situation and the journey we've taken to get to where we are, living in a distant country. She's a famous creative and I have struggles to do creative stuff but OTHERWISE.... When I speak of motivation I'm definitely in part referring to motivation to create or do something worthwhile. And that she constantly acknowledges how lucky she is really endears me to her.

 

I mean, I don't NEED to write anything, to be honest, and my messages to her over the year probably mean that she's aware of the appreciation I have for her, and she won't be reading this (or at least that'd be very embarrassing if she ever does somehow). I get a comment read in her chat semi-regularly, and she has read my name on the few occasions I've decided to send super chats. But I want to. To have for myself a bit of a record of what's made her so special this year, and hopefully for the years to come.

 

She most likely knows I exist, at least that I'm part of her core audience who will be there to support her, and she reaffirms that with a lot of love sent our way for those who do stick by and support her. But this gig, it's like having a favourite artist, but also getting regular access to them and spending time with them as a person and seeing their journey. It's very rewarding to be in.

 

Especially since I financially support her (though by no means am I anywhere near a major donator, just a monthly membership and the odd low-value superchat), I budget my support of her (and I do hope all other Deadbeats do the same, as does she no doubt), but I support her very willingly as she reinvests large parts of it into funding cool things for her career, like songs, animated music videos and a comfy chair that allows her to stream longer. And things for the people she loves. And whatever else she wishes tbqh... for me, I spend a lot of time with her, IMO I'm getting a great deal.

 

I am able to catch her so much as while she has varying streaming times, she most often streams either on my lunchtime, where I have a break to sit in my room/plan lessons if necessary, or late at night, and obviously this helps a lot with building the connection. She also rarely guerilla streams and so is predictable; I genuinely do plan (a little) around her schedule. A factor is of course where I am, I'm close to her timezone-wise, I've never liked being the sort of person who goes out much, and in a foreign country that just becomes worse. While I do normally go out about once a week, it's much more comfortable to sit inside and connect socially there.

 

So, with the reminiscing, I first thought about talking about her best streams this year, but because they're all connected to each other, if they were out of order, it'd end up being very incomprehensible as a straight countdown. So instead this will be a journey from January to December, Calliope Mori's best streams over the course of a year, and a general incline in quality from the start to the very end.

 

January

 

There are three major streams from January that stick in the mind, The Room watchalong, her Crash Bandicoot finale, and Morillion, the stream where Calli passed a million subscribers. Outside of this, she also did her first ASMR streams, originally a rather scuffed one that ended up being more of a talking stream and later a really well-done one, but there are better ASMRs to come. She also did her first endurance streams.

 

Calli does watchalongs occasionally, but she has slowly trended from watching gangster movies to watching "bad movies" on her stream, and it started with this one. I'd actually never seen The Room in full, so it was great being just as incredulous as she was, I remember laughing a lot in that one, particularly when Calli started imitating various Wiseau mannerisms ('you're tearing me apart Lisa' - Calli doing this got clipped into a Twitter post that THE Tommy Wiseau saw and liked!). It was followed up by watching The Disaster Artist, which was less of a laugh but a very interesting look into the circumstances behind... Wiseau.

 

 

Then there was Crash, which I believe counts as Calli's first endurance stream. She quit her day job at the end of December, and while she'd done a few runs of it before, I wasn't expecting her to spend so long beating Crash, 7 and 5 hours respectively over 2 January streams. In that I left the stream about 2 hours in, went to class, came back and she was still streaming! Ever since then I've really loved endurance streams on hard games like this. She was playing Crash 4 on a certain retro style that made it really hard - despite what she says about being 'not good at games', that is a lie, she's more accomplished than I am in most respects. It's really gratifying to watch her try at these very difficult games and then, eventually, see her succeed, and that's going to be a common theme here.

 

Then Morillion. What I'd call Mori's first big production stream. This stream is a little special to me, as it's where I decided I was enjoying her content enough to pay for it and so I did something I've hardly, if ever, done for free online content before, and opted to pay for it, joining the membership before the stream started (as in, I just clicked on it now,

, you can see that my joining membership message shows up in the chat). I'd also just gone on holiday and so I scheduled this Monday to be entirely spent watching this stream, as she'd announced a full schedule for a 12-hour stream beforehand - she knew she was approaching a million and the plan was to hit it in the stream.

 

While all of it was good and I was there for all of it, the part I remember the most was where she started playing Skyrim and towards the end of the scheduled Skyrim portion of the stream, hit 1M and gave an emotional thank you to everyone who'd been following her. This was about 4-5 hours in.

 

 

Then, finally, after a bunch more games (Blasphemous, a great metroidvania that I am still working my way through), Mario Kart, after chatting, after karaoke of some acapella anime songs, after over 11 hours of straight streaming with her fans, she said goodbye and disappeared, but came back for an encore to deliver the perfect ending to an endurance stream, answering a request to say 'ara ara'.

 

 

As she's done several hugely long streams since, Morillion perhaps doesn't seem so standout now but it really was at the time. Especially since I was legitimately there for all of it and it took my first time membership and first time superchat (when she reached a million) - since then I had a few problems with sending superchats so I didn't actually start sending them again until just this month.

 

The final big thing in January she did was release her best song so far, Off With Their Heads, which I have a lot of thoughts about but I want to save something for my songs countdown. That happened at this time too.

 

(January had a lot of things happening, I think Feb, March, May, June and July might be shorter, the other months though... CONSIDERING I remembered so clearly the major streams from the oldest month on the list...)

February

 

If February had a theme for streams I enjoyed it was the TakaMori month, where Kiara and Mori did a bunch of collabs where they met in real-life before Kiara left Japan (off-collabs). This included both of them going to Hokkaido together on a trip and sharing a fair portion of it with their fanbase, including some photos of the scenery (not themselves) and stories about going to an onsen (hot spring baths, which I have been to in Kyoto, but must be a very different experience in snowy winter Hokkaido).

 

(one of my favourite pieces of fanart shares an artist's recreation of what it might have looked like if their RL selves looked like their characters:

 

 

It also included them playing Papers Please together - Calli later this month continued this series on her own and started a joke about her being the sheriff (complete with slipping into a thicker Texan accent) - it was this, her acting like a Dad to the son in the Papers Please game, as well as a readalong of the manga 'My Dad is the Queen of all V-Tubers' (title tells you the plot) last year that made people who aren't as invested in her start calling her a dad as a nickname.

 

(brief diversion about common in-jokes, particularly Dad Calli)

If it's relevant I don't mind it (as in the Papers Please stream), it doesn't entirely not fit as Calli often gives off mature, advice-giving vibes, and it may finally be dying down but her regular fans don't call her that at all and that's very noticeable. That's just how it is in the Vtuber spaces, funny clips get shared around and then less invested people start repeating that joke to be funny until it becomes horrifically unfunny, but those who focus in on one community develop their own separate in-jokes that are very high quality and I'm sure big fans of other vtubers have great jokes that are incomprehensible to outsiders, while the funny clippable names I've heard about now feel trite for them, and hence I try not to do shallow references whenever I go to other streams. If these people are having fun I won't stop them, it's just things like saying 'Hi Dad' when you could just say 'Hi Calli' or titling a reddit post 'Dad Calli's gonna razzle-dazzle with that new fiery elegant outfit!' about a post of her LITERALLY getting a red ballroom dress outfit that make me sigh a little. The sheriff thing though, that's still very funny whenever she brings the accent out, because people don't think about it until they hear an old western drawl.

 

Then there was a watchalong of Shrek 1 & Shrek 2. As Calli has the best taste, she loves Shrek, and everything about Shrek and it was a great excuse for me to rewatch these movies that I hadn't seen in years with both Calli and Kiara.

 

The final, and the best Takamori (off-)collab (they've done a few normal collaborations since but a lot less often) was a concert together, singing a mix of their own songs and popular songs, half unarchived: the English pop songs, including Kiara choosing to sing Leaving On A Jet Plane and choking up... she kinda played herself there

 

there exists a clip though and the title says it all, it's even audible:

 

The other half was archived, which has their own songs and the Japanese songs. There's also Kiara reading a letter to Calli in here that is very emotional, reminds me of when I've written letters to friends I've left behind.

 

March

 

Even though I entered Off With Their Heads to BJSC that month, this was actually a pretty quiet month for Mori. She was playing Omori, a series I decided not to watch because it seemed like too good of a game and I wanted to experience it for myself first, I've now bought it and after I've finished (maybe sometime in 2022 who knows) I'll go back to her playthrough of it. She also released Ibasho, a song in collaboration with game series Princess Connect, which was fine but not a song I've gone back to so much, it's a bit more generic anime than most of her work.

 

There were a few good drawing streams where she drew J-Chad, the name she gave to her manager, who by all accounts is a very cool lady who puts up with all of Mori's requests and is generally styled like a business-lady from Helltaker (a series that I ADORE the art for)

 

the below is a direct result of that drawing stream, Mori's art is awesome and has a very particular style:

 

There were also a couple of Minecraft streams this month, Mori plays Minecraft very infrequently unlike most other Holos as while she can have fun with it, she isn't keen on doing it all the time, and prefers other styles of games, but she found her first good niche within it this month, fishing, which is just sitting back and chatting with chat, which she IS good at - this was helped with a collab with Reine, who introduced her to this concept - a collab partnership called #Deadbeaks that still turns up on occasion and is always a good time.

 

 

This month was quiet because Calli was working on some very big things for the start of next month...

April

 

April was huge for Calli, for the very obvious reason that it's Mori Calliope's birthday month! 4th April, 4/4 is the birthday of the Grim Reaper, as 4 is the number of death in East Asian cultures. Every Holo talent has a birthday, where they get a few things done for them by the company, often release merch and bait a big yearly monetary present from their fans. For my part, I did drop a lot on her birthday merch, which was one of the best collections that I've ever seen a Holo get for their birthday. It's a vinyl, a poster, a voice pack, and an... ahem... pillow cover. I actually sent them all back home to the UK as I'd heard the delivery would take months and I couldn't guarantee that I'd be in the same place where I am at the time. They took until October to arrive so I was a little justified, even though I am still in the same place, at least I won't have to worry about transporting them back though, they're in a safe place (still boxed as well!) at my parents' place. I'll see them when I go back in 2022, perhaps having ordered whatever Calli decides to do for her birthday this time.

 

As well as birthday merch, that vinyl was her 2nd EP, Your Mori (which was #1 in my albums countdown), 4 (+1) new songs, that got a release party this month, including a wonderful live show of all of the new songs.

 

The month actually started with an April 1 collab, at which, the first alternate outfits for the English branch were revealed. These weren't actually official outfits though, but small models based off of walfie's (a well-regarded fan-artist) cute interpretations of them. Calli's small version she normally uses alongside sunglasses and lots of bouncing - one of my favourite things about her is her willingness to stretch the limits of Live2D and move her model all over the place if she gets in the mood.

 

The birthday party itself was a great celebration of the first paragraph plus call-ins from friends, including Ina being very funny and summoning the spirit of Calli's mentor Death-sensei:

 

I think my favourite stream this month was the Lyric Dive on Your Mori. Lyric Dives are always the best streams as they're long talks and analyses of my favourite music. Particularly this really helped with me liking 'Red', which has some fantastic lyrics and was the first main 'single' off of the album, as it got a video this month.

 

There was a lot of other stuff going on, a

, each better than the last (and ASMRs are one of the best for going back to rewatch, particularly with Calli's gap humour where she switches between being angry/cool and sweet on a dime), a memorable Minecraft trip in which Calli ventured into a wintery part of the Minecraft world to do some ice fishing but ended up building a log cabin instead. There was, infamously, a watchalong of two Adam Sandler movies, a guilty pleasure of Calli's. I, having only seen Click years ago, hadn't really appreciated how bad Adam Sandler could be and Billy Madison proved that, though Calli's reactions to its awfulness made it worth it - the other, Happy Gilmore, was a little better and genuinely seems to be... okay but two Sandlers in one day was a little much for me.

 

 

She also went through a Shadowverse training arc, this month sponsored (if I'm remembering correctly). Now I play Shadowverse on occasion and I really am good at trading card games like it. I was a little worried because it's a game where backseat gamers can easily rule a streamer's experience but to Calli's credit she, at least in this early stage, showed an interest in the game an d a determination to get good at it and later on in the year would return to it after reaching a finale for this month where she matched up against Kiara.

May

 

May started with the reveal of the first (real) alternate outfits for HoloMyth, and though I'm biased, I think Calli got the most distinctive and the best of the bunch, a full-on casual 'rapper' outfit that contrasts loads with her original reaper outfit. She tends to use this for streams where the vibe is a bit lighter or modern entertainment focused, and it's a really versatile one, as shown below, with removable cap and jacket, and can have sunglasses added, for whatever mood she's feeling like. Plus the ponytail is a great vibe. It also led to a great new load of casual fanart for her, I think it really helped her look more comfortable on stream and it's probably my favourite of her three current outfits.

 

 

Spiral Tones, a collaboration with Rikka of Hololive's male branch Holostars was released this month which was really cool to see Calli breaking down some barriers. Spiral Tones is a very catchy song and I've gone back to listen to it several times.

As was the first of her big covers (at least I think so?) Roki, a cover of a vocaloid song where she makes sure to make it her own by including a rap verse. I think Roki is one of the best still that she's done in this style and it was really cool seeing her start out alone in the music video but was joined by a full band of HoloMyth at the end.

She also started a few games like Everhood, as well as a huge project, a full tabletop RPG where Calli would be DMing and the rest of HoloMyth would be playing characters, but the full potential of most of these would only come in later months.

 

She also took a bit of a break towards the end of this month (she doesn't take enough breaks honestly), leading into the start of June.

June

 

June had its... difficulties for Calli. Which I'm only saying because this was both the most recent month where I'm going to be anything but entirely positive and the trials of this month seemingly started flipping switches in her that caused her to fall in love with what she is doing. First up was a collaboration with Gura that had a large amount of technical difficulties - they were trying to play Cuphead but the multiplayer in that game is so bad with desyncing that it's not really viable when the two players are on different continents. As such, they played a little bit of Phasmophobia instead which was fun but Calli was down a bit after that collab and initially privated the stream (due to her own high standards) before releasing the Phasmophobia part. They had a collab on River City Girls later on in the month too, and if it wasn't apparent already, Gura and Calli's great current relationship really started to take off here.

 

This was followed by a collab with big anituber Gigguk. Now I've followed Gigguk for a while, don't really watch his videos anymore but he's a funny chap and he and Calli were playing Shadowverse together, I enjoyed that collab a lot, it was great to see them both having fun and riffing off the Shadowverse setting, a game I enjoy immensely, I'll say. Calli's been on his popular podcast, Trash Taste, a couple of times before and since. This was a little controversial in the corners of the internet that like to see vtubers as pure/just hate anitubers but who cares about that lot, really?

 

There was also the Reddit review with Coco (actually this was in May but I remembered it happening in June), where Calli, having wanted to collab with Coco for ages, stumbled a little bit in nervousness while going through some memes - but again this was something I thought was great fun and only saw criticism of it later with people comparing it to how other guests on Coco's review had behaved.

 

Anyway, despite those trials, I was really busy and didn't see a whole lot of the rest of the streams that month, outside of some excellent Shadowverse streams where Calli dueled fans - something I tried for but of course that would have been a long shot, but I was around for the unarchived karaoke at the end of it, where Mori finally started returning to singing on stream, and all the better for it. This was the one rough patch in an otherwise fantastic year.

 

 

actually a little word about those Shadowverse streams because it's probably better to leave this off by nerding out about the game I love that Calli streamed this month. So Mori initially tried a couple of decks, like Bloodcraft, Shadowcraft and Runecraft, but she settled mostly on using Last Words Shadow, which has a bunch of good skeletal and death cards including, weirdly, a card called a 'Bubbly Reaper' that is an anime girl with pink hair. Curious. I used a version of that deck myself for a while when I played Shadowverse more often this summer, though I eventually settled on a Bloodcraft deck, which Mori also eventually shifted towards, as well as an old Runecraft deck that waited for the late game. Mori, for her part, did a stream with a professional Shadowverse coach as well to help teach her the game this month.

 

I'm not sure that many look back on Calli's Shadowverse streams fondly, as it's not the most popular streaming game, but I do. Not just because I like the game and actually know what's going on (most complaints I see tend to revolve around that), but because despite it being a game that's horrible for backseating and will have many people yelling at you to do the right play if you stream it, Calli took some of her determination, ignored them and, though I never expected her to stream it as much as she did, streamed it regularly enough that it became a stalwart for her for a few months, in the end becoming a decent player, and having fun with it too. Which is the most important thing and shows some early signs of what she'd do with later gaming streams that were almost universally well received.

July

 

July started with the graduation of Kiryu Coco, which affected all corners of Hololive, Calli included, as with all members she appeared with the rest of Myth to do a final talk, Coco was the Hololiver who Calli had seen the most of before Hololive and looked up to when nerves got to her about how to act.

 

It also brought EN's first new friend in the form of IRyS, ten days later. More friends is very important to how fantastic Calli's been in the second half of this year and IRyS gave her a HoloEN friend in Japan now Kiara has left.

 

I don't often watch horror streams but Night Delivery was a very short game that Calli played at the beginning of this month with a couple of fantastic screams/riffing on the delivery driver situation that the game places you in. This was followed swiftly by a summer ASMR, a really nice chill one, and a, wait, hold on there...

 

That normal ASMR really did exist, but what I think I'd rank as the best single Calli stream all year (though it's had some tough competition lately) is another ASMR that came later. Entitled Cursed ASMR, this was an astonishing moment of creativity that I had to share it with everyone I could think of who's even slightly amenable to my vtuber interests, because I was barely alive from laughing so hard. And because my ears were bleeding.

 

 

I do recommend watching it (while taking heed of that warning in the title, she wasn't kidding), it's one of the shorter streams at only an hour long, but it's one of the funniest simple showcases of Calli's sense of humour and comedic skills - and a satire masterpiece on ASMRs. I started watching it again to remind me of how it went and I think I'm trapped watching the whole thing again. Quite possibly a great introduction point to her that holds up.

 

She also did another very experimental stream this month, a literal staring contest. That's it. Well, reading copypastas and trying not to laugh after a little while, but primarily just Calli staring at the camera. Very good stuff.

 

 

And finally, to finish off the month, the final big stream she did was the first official session of the tabletop RPG for HoloMyth - after having done some tutorial streams with each of the other girls as an introduction to their character. Admittedly I am a bit behind on these (I'm not that experienced with tabletops) but Calli was a really good GM at least for the tutorial streams and this first one, setting up the world and explaining all the concepts pretty well. In addition to great singing streams and an art stream where she was drawing Suisei.

 

Confidence back, July seemed like it was about Calli rediscovering what she wanted to do in Hololive and having a good bash at creative, funny streams.

August

 

Mori summer, sprinkled with intermittent breaks (good) including a trip back to her homeland of Underworldian USA at the end of the month, during which she still streamed on her break (dork - though for real it's a sign that she loves what she's doing which is a great part of her continued appeal). This included such tidbits of fun such as her mother entering the lore with a point that I hate that I can't refute:

 

@1430338509739421696

 

(and apparently watching her stream an early morning collab of Mario Kart in her parents' living room, later saying 'I didn't want to interrrupt', which is very cute

 

In-between the breaks she did an excessive amount of gaming. Chief among these were an Everhood finale, where she went 10 hours, a very unusual length for her even at this point trying to master a dastardly hard rhythm game that I've tried fan versions of and come nowhere near close, but she did it, I had to go to sleep for this one but it was very good.

 

And, and, the other great one was a finale of Bloodstained: Symphony of the Night. Metroidvanias are one of the areas where Calli shines, and they're a damn good game genre that I try and master every now and again, and I somehow ended up watching all of this one - I was still on holiday, you can't blame me. It was so good for those who stayed invested the whole way through though. Back up a little.

 

 

Mori said she'd beat the game this stream. She was still quite a way away from the end when she started, but that was fine, plenty of time, the whole day. The thing is, with Youtube streams, there's a little peculiarity. Stream up to 11 hours and 59 minutes and Youtube will archive the VOD forever, which provides a nice hard limit for the majority of vtuber streams, weird 24 hours endurances aside which might not be meant to be archived anyway. One second over 12 hours and the VOD is lost, it cannot be archived. So about 10 hours in, it became apparent that Calli would have to go pretty fast if she wanted to beat the final boss. She started fighting that boss around the last hour. Then, the boss kept hitting back, kept beating her, time was being lost to loading screens. I thought she wouldn't make it, this was real heart in mouth stuff that I've rarely if ever seen on a gaming stream (making another stream would kill her promise to beat it that stream). Especially as she failed right before I thought there'd be enough time to clear. However, literally on the last possible clear within the time limit, she beat it, with mere minutes to spare. This is the sort of thing that you couldn't believe isn't scripted, but there's no way it could be. I doubt it'd be as good an experience watching it now but seeing that sort of clutch live, with having spent hours seeing her work through the game beforehand to beat it that stream, was the best feeling. She did start another stream straight after but only to recover for an hour and read a few superchats. And I will never let her get away with calling herself 'bad at games' after this - she's awesome particularly at platformers, she just has strengths and weaknesses like any gamer.

 

She did one of her best karaokes to date with Milky Queen, finally introducing her friend to the world of Hololive at large, that among other things drove me to start loving Ado after they did an excellent cover of "Usseewa" together, she did her first barbecue cooking stream where she set up a camera over her barbecue equipment and talked while grilling, as well as another fun talking stream in a summer pool party backdrop - this one came just after the 5 new friends of Council had debuted so we got a few thoughts on them.

 

 

basically after a few months where I was sorta 60% focused on what Mori was doing, this month rocketed it back to 100%, I think I might have missed one or two streams at most, this whole month. And it only gets worse (better) from there.

 

send help (don't I'm comfy here in hell)

September

 

September was Mori's first anniversary, where she, along with the rest of HoloMyth, celebrated one full year as streamers. For Calli's part, as well as a fantastic anniversary party with the rest of the Myths, she also did a reaction to her own debut, where she wearily and cynically berated the cutesy debut that she did, which was filled with far more high voice and "teehee"s than she would ever normally do. It was also a great reminder of how much she's improved in confidence and skill at talking off the cuff, outside of her great reactions to her old self.

 

 

She also started the game that is probably most synonymous with her at the current time, Jump King. She did only play it once this month and wasn't that good, but it's going to be a huge part of the final 3 months. Mori wasn't the first Holo to stream Jump King (she was inspired by Pekora's 36 hour trial of determination earlier in the year) but she definitely fell in love with the game the most and influenced a bunch more to start taking it up. More about that later.

 

September was huge on Minecraft in the Holo world as big technical things were taking place in order to connect the English server and the Japanese server (with the Indonesians starting their own server finally on the side), for Calli's part she created a few big projects, a carnival with a stall each themed after her genmates in Myth, and, with Ina, a fully-equipped onsen with stone baths below including magma baths, lava baths and a soul sand sauna, finally getting a few death-themed bits into Minecraft. When the Japanese members came over to visit this onsen was one of the prime attractions.

 

Near the end of the month, the first in a series of unique karaokes. Now Calli has musically, while keeping her rapper persona alive, has trended more towards improving her voice for singing and she has improved vocally a TON since debut. However, rap is always something she's going to be doing and she did an unarchived rap karaoke with a great lot of rap classics. Still no Rap God, but next month...

 

September ended with 'end of a life' being released, and if you don't know my feelings on that song already, stick around for my songs countdown x

October

 

Calli lives for her edgy persona as the Grim Reaper, so she specifically made October a busy month, all building up to a big finish on Halloween. It started though with a lyrical dive into 'end of a life', where she really dug deep into what the lyrics meant to her and why this was such a personal song and she almost didn't release one of the best songs of her career (to which everyone was very relieved that she did). On a personal level, this is where my favourite 'Mori read my comment from chat' moment came from. Those are always good because it makes you have a little special feeling of being noticed among thousands watching, but I remember I specifically highlighted the lyric 'and disappearing into the mists of "never happened" is the me that I can never befriend' as my favourite in the song, and Mori agreed with me, at least said it's one of her favourites. There are many great lyrics throughout the whole song but that's one I find particularly evocative and I hope she's still proud of it.

 

Included in spooky Reapertober was a series of watchalongs of Halloween movies. Now I only made it to the first, as they were scheduled Sunday night US time, and I work Monday mornings, but I was on holiday for the first. It was fun seeing her laugh maniacally at the effects in Evil Dead, and things like Evil Dead 2 and Final Destination are still up there if I ever decide to put myself through a horror film again - I normally don't like horror but Calli can give me a reason to watch it.

 

There was the full HoloEN Among Us collab in which Calli was the undisputed star, again from my highly biased vantage point. Featuring, among other moments, Mori Calliope, imposter, reporting a body that she didn't kill and proudly opening the meeting with 'AND THAT ONE WAS ME' (attempting to say that she reported the body)...

 

 

Then there were the karaokes. She started doing a rebroadcast of unarchived ones, so the rap karaoke I watched again. She also did a specific angst one, where artists like Linkin Park, Panic At The Disco and My Chemical Romance made an appearance, finishing with an encore of the coolest possible song ever, Dragonforce:

 

 

though I should note that she accidentally muted herself as she came back in which was very funny and led to her doing this in chat in the rebroadcast:

 

 

Then she did an endurance rap karaoke, practicing and perfecting 3 songs, Eminem's "Godzilla" and "Rap God", and the PokeRap. In that order of difficulty. Rap God is probably the technical hardest but PokeRap has... all the names of Pokemon. This took hours but it was very enjoyable watching her perfect them, leading eventually to this beauty:

 

 

(it does have a few different lyrics to get rid of all the dodgy lyrics for content purposes but that leads to great Mori-relevant lyrics like this stanza:

 

You get too big and here they come trying to

f*** with you like that one line I said

From "Reaper ka Rapper" Dead Beats EP

It's the one when I will explain Yagoo chose 5 idols, we were unsigned

Put 'em all in a line

We can't be AKB48 but it's probably fine

 

)

 

she also did a member's only karaoke and Fall Guys, she did this again next month but these were very good, as is all members' content, I haven't mentioned so much of member's content so far as she changed the membership rewards this month that upgraded my pleb T1 membership from 1 (normally just chatting) stream a month to 3 streams a month (she had been the only HoloEN to do different content for different levels of membership but changed it this month and it's been so much better with 3 streams). I shall make sure to not share any clips that may exist from those, just to be respectful, as it's exclusive content.

 

The final big thing she did for this month was continue Jump King, which unintentionally led to one of her best streams of the year. She decided that Jump King was a game that was good for talking to others, so she left voice chat open to see who'd turn up. After a few hours of trying and falling a lot, IRyS came into the chat and started having an incredibly natural conversation with Calli - the two had had a great karaoke in... September I think and had hit it off ever since, and not long after, Bae also came in. The three of them just kept talking for hours and hours to the point where they were distracting Calli from failling in Jump King, Calli would set up most of her future Jump King streams to also be sitting in VC (as well as some other appropriate streams) and the three of them made plans to make an actual podcast... releasing early next year.

 

 

Seriously one of the best streams of the year. Later Jump King streams also had people turning up, including Gura having an incredibly strange conversation, Kiara reigniting some Takamori fun and Ollie cheering Calli on at the very end of the game - an hour after Ollie left, Calli finally surmounted Jump King, the main game, with a time of 18 hours - and the reason I posted one instead of two of these yesterday was that I decided to finish the game, also with a time of 18 hours.

 

The final week of October (including my birthday) was the busiest of all, as four songs were released in four days. Four songs, in four days. Two of them were collaborations with Mori's friends BOOGIE VOXX, Crown, and my favourite of the bunch, Graveyard Shift. They'll get their time in the top 100 songs. There was also a collab with three of the Indonesian girls, covering K/DA's The Baddest, and finally a song that Calli wrote for the rest of HoloMyth, somehow, amidst all of this crazy stuff she was doing (+ recording songs for next month + singing lessons + stream preparations + whatever else), the first full HoloMyth song. It's just a silly little Halloween thing with lots of references to streaming culture but also it's fun. It was released for the full Halloween collab where all 11 EN members entered the VR space for the first time.

 

 

October was a crazy month. Calli said November would be a much quieter month to make up for it. Unfortunately (or fortunately for dedicated deadbeats), Calli lies.

November

 

Calli started November by finally finishing Doom Eternal, a game she'd been playing on and off since debut but had swore to finish - wasn't a series I was watching closely but have to hand it to her for finishing a series that she could have easily left in the past.

 

There was a great normal ASMR to return us to bliss, and a watchalong of the film Ghost Rider. As a skeleton on fire, Ghost Rider has been present in Mori lore for a while - initially to explain away motorcycle noises outside her old place of residence. I'd never seen it before and it was surprisingly good for a Nic Cage film.

 

 

The rest of this month was basically three games, but all of them entailed Mori streaming long hours and going even further with endurance. Most relevant to my interests, and perhaps the most painful was the first Jump King expansion, New Babe+. It's like the first bit, but way harder and far more punishing, there isn't even a convenient checkpoint. Mori got stuck in certain areas a lot, particularly the fourth area, the poisonous wind village which led to lots of encouragement needed. Voice chat collabs became less frequent, though Mumei and IRyS showed up to talk for a bit, eventually Calli figured out she did need to focus more on these harder DLCs. She beat New Babe+ though, in a very emotional long drawn out thing, and though this was just at the start of December I think, I'll put it in here - and I only remember that because I sent a superchat to her for beating it.

 

 

She also started playing Earthbound, which was a game I initially had no interest in, but it's a childhood favourite of hers, she gushed about it so much that the streams were super fun to watch anyway, it's clearly influenced modern RPGs (the Undertale before Undertale was Undertale, basically), it's just a great little tale about some friends saving the world, filled with all the right sort of positive nostalgia.

 

And then the final one was, well, EVERYONE started playing this near the end of November, Pokemon: Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl (Calli had BD). In typical Mori fashion though, she didn't make it easy. She went for a Nuzlocke, although she only abided by the no-fainting rule as she didn't find the rule about catching the first wild Pokemon you saw in a route fun. This still led to some heartbreaking moments when her Piplup (named 'Biggie Smalls') and the Gengar she put so much effort into getting (named 'Ghost Malone') fainted in crucial battles. And in the end she got a fantastic edgy team, led by a Dusknoir named 'Grim Shady' and backed up by a Garchomp called 'Notorious GIB', a Crobat called 'Jay Z-ubat', Murkrow (Murkrowmore), Houndoom(Snoop Doom) and LuxRayJ. I don't even Pokemon that much and this was fun to watch, at least some of, I didn't watch all of the grinding, that's not me. But it also leads to a great moment for next month.

 

Finally, her and Bae did a really cute pet review, and she released a song with producer TAKA INOUE, which has become a minor radio hit in Japan - also features a real-life cameo of Mori in the video :o

 

December

 

The finale of Mori's month, of Mori's year, was... well, hold on.

 

There was this cover of Usseewa with Milky (already linked it but let's do it again) that was fantastic and actually was Nov 30th but I swapped around the New Babe+ bit so that's fair.

 

 

Then a second Youtube Music Live show, there's been a few of these official concerts throughout the year but it's always a good time hearing her perform her own songs live. Including a lovely message from her.

 

 

After finishing Earthbound, Mori topped off that series by doing a really really fun cooking stream where she made a bunch of recipes from the official Earthbound Cookbook, that, in keeping with the strange humour of that game, seems to have strange but very edible recipes such as hot dog sushi and a 'Third Strongest Drink' which seems to be a vodka lemon and coke, at least at its base.

 

I don't normally highlight the chatting/super streams because while I enjoy them perhaps the most out of all Calli streams, they are just chatting about future plans a lot of the time but this one does stand out most particularly because it was a Calli stream that happened while I was asleep - her sleep schedule has gotten wrecked lately - and I still watched most of it because it was really fun.

 

Continuing with the endurance streams, Mori started the second DLC for Jump King, Ghost Of The Babe, but this eventually broke her (she's taking a break and will get back to it), as it's even harder than most and she was spending so long in the first stage, the bog, that she started becoming British and writing a musical about Jump King. I'm not kidding, though this probably happened because of an absolutely excellent musical karaoke that she'd just done, see below for example:

 

 

The musical arc continued to infect other streams, as she was shiny hunting for Giratina (to be named Gira T-Pain when she caught him, finally), but after 10 hours of the first stream started an impromptu Hamilton watchalong. She'd already planned to do a Hamilton endurance karaoke after skipping out on any Hamilton songs in the endurance streams, and I have been absolutely obsessed with Hamilton since I watched it last year (as has she, apparently) so I gladly watched it again to finish off yet another 12 hour stream. She got the shiny on the next proper dedicated stream for it, which was the collab with Sana that I mentioned in Sana's section, which was filled with absolutely delighted Calli screams when she got it after a mere 1680 tries ('my beautiful teal baby' I think is the quote).

 

She also finally got a new outfit, her red dress outfit that is adorable, and features an interactive wine glass. She also set up a new setting, the Bar Calli (to be renamed in a members' stream, we decided on a name but I can't remember if it's public yet, as well as deciding on the drinks) that plays host to some of her karaokes. The Jazz Karaoke she did was beautiful and really shows how much she's fallen in love with singing now, she ended this unarchived one with an unforgettable thank you that hit my heart even more than her usual thank yous, that she wants us to be the wind in her sails and see her succeed, and to proudly say 'THAT'S MY OSHI' (gladly, so vicariously gladly)

 

 

She's been doing Eikaiwa, English-language learning streams for a while now, which I find actually useful for my teaching activities, at the very least giving me a tone and speed of voice that I can imitate for my students, because she tends to focus on funny English slang for the actual vocab. This month she finally got JP Holos on and the first up was new member Lui, who I mentioned has really good English, which was a really good collab.

 

The Hamilton endurance stream was awesome and one of my favourites as she spent a good deal of time perfecting 'The Room Where It Happened', 'You'll Be Back', 'Guns & Ships' and 'My Shot', the latter two of which are currently challenging for my favourite Hamilton song, in no small part due to Daveed Diggs' (of clipping.) excellent work in the original performance as Lafayette. Below is a compilation of her 100% runs. Including a very British take on King George's song (of course).

 

 

After a fantastic holiday party - in which she put in nearly every deadbeat who sent an artwork of an ornament in on the tree, making me wish I'd tried for something, though she said she'd do it again next year - she finished off the year with a specially produced three-part comic series from anime arthouse Merryweather Comics (you might know them for their Internet Explorer waifu comic), Jump King speedruns and a members' piano concert which featured some beautiful singing going against piano tracks.

 

 

but seriously watch this, this is insane, from the woman who initially took hours upon hours to beat this to literally top 500 in the world (check speedrun.com if you don't believe me), I hope to be there someday:

 

And the thing is, December was an awesome month of content, but I can't help but remember that it wasn't supposed to happen. Calli had originally planned to go back to the USA for Christmas, to meet several family and friends, but sadly the good conditions that had allowed her to go over in August weren't in existence in December and she had to cancel her plans. And this incredibly, brave, strong person only took a single day off to recover her mood before jumping right back into scheduling a bunch more content (and thankfully taking a few days off around Christmas to have time with real-life friends, many of whom are also non-Japanese natives stuck in Japan). She's even now working incredibly hard for lots of stuff to come out in January and I do hope that her vows of 'this time the streaming will be the thing to take a cut' come to fruition. I want to see her happy to stream for us, as good as it all is. And I really hope she can go back to the USA and see all the people she wanted to see this time around very soon - just as I also want to go back to the UK very soon (this year, I will for sure).

 

uh so if you read any or all or none of that that's very cool, I will not be stopped, I look forward to stanning this lovely, beautiful, determined, kind, talented, brilliant human, ahem, Grim Reaper in 2022 just as hard as I have over 2021 and I will leave you with some of her own words of encouragement:

 

@1476608193078120449

 

4/5

 

complete

 

(songs coming in the New Year, and now I'm actually pretty much off work for a little while so that WILL HAPPEN)

Top 90 songs

 

I could only find 90 (when rounding it to a multiple of 10) that I wanted to shout out. So 90 it is. They are variously collected from my interests and my last.fm most played list, although arranged in a different order according to my own feelings.

 

This will have a bit of overlap with my BJSC list and all I ask is that you do not query if there are any inconsistencies with the order, because all of these songs are GOOD/GREAT and this is just what happens when you have two countdowns with the same songs, sometimes some of the songs below the very top tier end up in a slightly different order. And some of the ones on my BJSC list didn't make the cut for reasons I forget. THAT JUST HAPPENS.

 

I will most likely, as I always do with EOY lists spend a lot more time talking about songs that I know few people here know than songs that most people here know, but there are a couple of chart hits in here. That's just because I know everyone's said all there is to say on big hits (and if this has a purpose outside of for myself it's to encourage people to listen to my favourite stuff that they don't know) so I'll just pass over them very quickly unless I have anything specific to say.

 

There are more Japanese chart hits in here than there are global chart hits. At least I hope, gawd. Imagine how embarassing that'd be if there weren't. Japan best chart nation, no freaking CONTEST, lads. I would have started a chart thread for it but when I thought about doing that my laptop decided to commit sudoku (no, I am not kidding, that is literally what I was doing on my laptop when it died this year and I decided the idea was cursed). But there's not many chart hits of either kind.

 

 

90 - YOASOBI - Monster

89 - PinocchioP - Because You're Here

88 - Lil Nas X - MONTERO

87 - Victoria - growing up is getting old

86 - Takanashi Kiara - Heart Challenger

85 - Worakls - Storm

84 - Little Violet - Taking You With Me

83 - YONAKA - Ordinary

82 - FAKE TYPE - BEELZEBUZ

81 - Jeangu Macroy - Birth Of A New Age

 

A couple of Eurovision entries, the criminally underrated Dutch entry that called to reinvigorate Eurovision while making references to the uncomfortable legacy of colonialism, and the Bulgarian followup entry to my favourite of 2021. And a chart hit from Lil Nas X that I was pretty favourable towards (I am pretty favourable towards Lil Nas and I played this for slightly longer than I would normally play such a big hit). And the best BJSC winner of the year, the powerful Storm.

 

Onto the songs that are probably a little less known generally. The 90 is the theme for Beastars, a season I haven't caught up with yet, but it's typical YOASOBI pop brilliance, filled with a dark creepy hook, and it's right behind my favourite vocaloid producer, PinocchioP, doing a theme that he did with Hatsune Miku earlier this year, which is beautiful as nearly all Miku stuff is.

 

My favourite song by Austrian HoloEN vtuber Kiara is actually her valentines release, a beautiful song that actually does make use of her higher voice and a pleasant instrumental to deliver a very cute love story (in Japanese). This release got a little fvcked over for her in view count so I had a lot of sympathy for it, particularly because the video builds to a climax that I really appreciate.

 

'Taking You With Me' is a result of a brief electro-swing obsession at the start of the year. It gets a lot of unfair stick as a genre, the songs are almost always fun and 'Taking You With Me' has a very longing feeling to it.

 

YONAKA and FAKE TYPE make their first of multiple appearances, YONAKA are a great rock band and FAKE TYPE fill in the electro-swing role again, though BEELZEBUZ is a bit more... challenging on the ears... though perhaps the FAKE TYPE song I can think of that is least like that, a great melody and bassline. I love them because of their unabashed attitude and image, this is a right tune.

 

80 - Kairi Yagi - Sing My Pleasure

79 - Louis II - Glorious

78 - Icon For Hire - Brittle

77 - Ado - Readymade

76 - GO_A - Shum

75 - BABYMETAL - BxMxC

74 - Hoshimachi Suisei - Stellar Stellar

73 - Ikimonogakari - BAKU

72 - Silver Sphere - football game

71 - Wolf Alice - The Last Man On Earth

 

I already mentioned 'Sing My Pleasure' in the anime section but I decided it's too good of a song to just leave over there, one of the most powerful anime openings I've heard in recent years. Similarly 'Stellar Stellar' from Suisei is growing on me a lot, maybe it'll be my favourite from her in time, it's certainly very lyrically relevant to her and her long, difficult journey to becoming a globally noticed star (iTunes worldwide slayer) but she has one more song to come here.

 

One of the most long-lasting things with me from the edition of UP this year was the bizarre country-rap 'Glorious'. Indeed, Louis II reminds me of another royal-themed folk-pop musician from ages ago that I liked a few songs by: King Charles. They even sound very similar from what I remember, though 'Glorious' has a bit more of the gospel tendency. If I had a nickel for every time etc...

 

Icon For Hire are always good value and their 'Brittle' soundtracked a decent part of my summer along with a few other rock songs at the same time. It's one of their best in years and definitely one of the best types of pop-punk I heard this year, with some great production under it.

 

'Readymade' is Ado at her most electro-swing-y, the first of three songs she has here. It's got some great instrumental bridges and her trademark emotional vocals that I love so much. More about that later. And there's an entry from BABYMETAL, a rap-rock song that they released last year and has an absolutely fantastic rap bridge from Su-metal, who's still killing it as the leader of the group, I'd have expected BABYMETAL to be finished by now, and in October they did release a statement stating that they'll disappear for an uncertain length of time, so they may be all but done, but they did leave us this. And another of my favourite Japanese bands make it in with BAKU, which was a fine song on its own but came alive with the dancey CORSAK remix that they released very recently (don't listen to the Sakura Chill Beats tag, that's a lie).

 

A third Eurovision entry here, Shum, which I know we all remember coming absolutely alive on the Eurovision stage. It wasn't quite in my unshakeable top 3 but it got pretty near there after that. And finally, a great autotune pop song, 'football game' that is very addicting to listen to, and the beautiful 'The Last Man On Earth' makes it in as I decide to give Wolf Alice a showing in the songs chart, I do like 'Play The Greatest Hits' a lot but this has to be the best on that album.

 

 

Good to see that "BAKU" is actually on your top, alongside "SHUM".

"Monster" is good, but I prefer "Kaibutsu" more.

Edited January 2, 20223 yr by Cow Cow