My journal

It has been a whole month since I last updated. Oops.

I've been so busy... doing nothing. I hardly have any motivation to do anything lately. Even moreso than before. All I do is watch my favorite vtubers' streams and sleep.

Looking at the English speaking part of the internet lately, it would seem that the vtuber boom has really gotten to full swing there as well. Not just watching anymore, many people are becoming independant vtubers themselves. Of course they've become very popular in the communities of other languages as well, but I don't have much to say about that since I can only speak English and (poor) Japanese. It's gotten so large that even several of my friends and friends of friends have started making or getting their own Live2D models and streaming with them.

I'm not exactly an expert in vtubers of the English-speaking world, but of the ones I've happened to stumble across I've noticed a common trend in that a lot of the Indie vtubers (independant, self-produced, not managed by a company) seem to have an obvious direct connection with their primary non-virtual internet identity. They don't try to hide who the soul is. Obviously I'm not criticising as they're individuals doing it as a hobby having fun, and there are a few very well known vtubers like that on the Japanese side as well. I just sort of wonder if the reasoning for them to be like this is due to just a personal choice, or because of a lack of knowledge on what virtual Youtubers are (or can be) as an existence.

That's of course not to say that this particular type of vtuber is bad though. Plenty of them are still good entertaining streamers regardless, like Inuyama Tamaki for example. But it's a bit different from my ideal and what I love about vtubers. I doubt a vtuber of this type could ever become a favorite of mine. Although I have no plans to, if I were to become a vtuber then only my very closest friends and those I work (such as the character designer) would ever know.

Maybe this is just an overgeneralisation on my part, but I feel like people in the English-speaking world have a harder time grasping the concept of vtubers being a separate person from their soul. The culture of trying to find out information about, and the faces of the souls of popular vtubers seems to be much more rampant among English-speaking fans. Or at least they're much less sneaky about it. I hate seeing people being overly fixated on the faces of the souls of the members of a certain popular group of girls. It's against the culture and general manners of the vtuber business, and I personally see it as just a straight-up disrespectful invasion of privacy.

I won't lie though, I'm somewhat guilty of looking for information about souls in the past. Although I haven't in a long time. I never wanted to see their faces though, that was a line I really didn't want to cross. I did unfortunately happen to accidentally see the face of one of them as I was looking at their Twitter account. The soul of a vtuber I really like. It's something that I really regret. Not because they were unattractive (they weren't unattractive) or some stupid vain reason like that. I don't care what they look like, but because it just felt wrong.

I just like my favorites being being the partially fictional, partially real characters existing in real-time in a virtual world similar to our own but separate.
But maybe I'm just dumb and romancising/idealising them too much.
It's probably that.

TL;DR stupid gross otaku-kun overthinking way too much.

When I stop being lazy I really want to make a page dedicated to my favorite vtubers. At first I think I'll just put a bit of info on them all gathered on one page, but later I might back individual pages for all of them.

I mentioned in my last entry that I was gonna start watching Akagi in the hopes that by watching it I would figure out the basics of Riichi Mahjong. I was so naive. I was hoping it would be like how I eventually figure out the rules of a sport gradually as I watch a sports anime, but it wasn't that simple... I had absolutely no idea what was happening and just gave up and learned the basics of the game the boring normal way. Thank you to the indie jp vtubers who have made tutorial videos. Makea's video for absolute beginners was very easy to understand.

After getting a haphazard grasp of the basics of Riichi Mahjong I went back to watching Akagi and could actually kinda understand what was happening, amazing! I still have no idea about nearly all of the Yaku and can't for the life of me memorise how Bakaze works but I'll get there. Also this list I came across that has all or nearly all of the Japanese Riichi Mahjong terminology is incredibly helpful. There's so many damn words (as far as I know) entirely specific to the game it's such a hassle...

picture of the day (click me!)

Happy New Year, fellow netsurfers. I hope everyone who reads this has had a good New Year.

I had a nice New Year's Eve because Gaku did a 年越し stream. He streamed through the moment it hit New Year in Japan. The time difference between my country and Japan leaves me with conflicted feelings of "it would have been fun to spend my moment of it becoming the new year together with him" and "I got to spend midnight on New Year's Day with [REDACTED] so it's okay."

All I've done with my free time since the middle of last year is just watch vtubers. It's a blessing and a curse. A blessing because I love them, and a curse because I have no time for anything else. It's hard to keep up with everything I want to. I haven't finished playing any otome games apart from a few short free/doujin titles, and I've hardly played FFxiv at all. I want to get back to playing more otome games and FFxiv but I can't find the motivation to. Hopefully I'll find that motivation soon.

Anyway I'm off to watch Akagi in the hopes that by the time I finish watching it I'll understand how the heck Mahjong is played in time for the Nijisanji Mahjong tournament. I finally watched the second season of Kaiji recently it was very good.

I ditched the miniblog because while I did want to update it more, it bothered me that it would show up on everyone's feeds if I did so I kinda just left it and if I just leave it then what's the point of a miniblog I might as well just stick to these chunky larger updates.

Gakukun did a Mario Kart audience participation stream today and I kind of wanted to try joining but then I realised I don't know where my copy of Mario Kart is at the moment... Sad. Then I also realised that I don't have Nintendo Online so I would have had to pay money just to have the chance to maybe play with him so that made me not mind as much. It was a very fun time anyway. Gakukun please do your homework and get some more sleep...

it still feels very strange to me to have favorite characters that (more or less) are real people that exist in realtime. I've never given a damn about any real life celebrities, famous actors or musicians or such. The closest I would get is my fondness of Japanese voice actors perhaps, but that's simply just a 'I like their voice acting and enjoy hearing them in many things and sometimes seeing them on shows or whatnot' kind of thing. Actually becoming attached to a person to the point I would a fictional character is very new to me. I mean they are still kind of fictional characters but... the plane of existence vtubers are on is a strange place.

Honestly recently I have been in a particularly bad place mentally and I think that possibly because of this I might have become slightly, just a little bit, emotionally dependant on them. Which is probably a bad thing because I've always thought that becoming too emotionally attached to a stranger you don't actually know like a celebrity can be a dangerous thing. But oh well it's fine I guess. Who cares. They save me from feeling too incredibly awful so it's fine especially gakukun his smile supports my heart a lot I really appreciate you sweet fox man

Hello. It's been a little while since I updated.

The lack of updates isn't entirely because of lack of motivation and ideas to update. I've also just been very busy. Compared to before I hardly have any free time to myself. I can't even properly keep up with my favorite vtubers' streams... And I haven't had time to play otome games or ffxiv at all. All I've done with my free time is struggle to keep up with vtuber streams and look at my vtuber fandom usage birdsite account.

I think this may be the busiest I've been in my life. Maybe. The most stressful too. I think my hair has started falling out because of stress. My hair as never fallen out at such a rapid pace as it has the past 2 weeks~1 month. Today I ran my fingers through my hair and a kinda small but also at the same time worringly large little clump of hair came out. Maybe I am going bald.

I hope this busy period will be over soon. I want my free time back.

マジでしんどすぎて禿げてる つら…

picture of the day

I was very sad yesterday and I still am today.

Izumo Kasumi, a Nijisanji liver, retired yesterday. I was there to watch her final stream. She retired of her own choice and on good terms, and I'm happy for her, but it still does hurt.

I'm really glad that I was able to get to know her at least a little bit before she was gone. I can't imagine how hard this must be for someone who had been following her for all over 2 years of her activities.

Kasumi was an RP heavy vtuber with an ongoing story happening throughout her career. If you don't know, RP in relation to vtubers means how much they play a character, rather than the soul(person inside, actor.) just acting as themself. This is just me, but I feel like the more RP heavy a vtuber is, the more it hurts when they disappear. The more RP heavy the vtuber is, the more of a different person they are from their soul. When one retires, it almost feels like a person is now gone.

I'm happy that she was able to see "Izumo Kasumi" through to the end, and I wish her all the best in the next stage.



If I'm this upset about her, I'm kind of scared to imagine when the time comes for Mayuzumi. I'm not sure I'll be able to take it.

It's been one month since my last update it seems. I want to update more but I have no inspiration. It's unfortunate. Also I'm lazy.

I have just been sending all my free time watching Nijisanji livers this whole time basically. Whenever I find a new obsession I seem to find it difficult to focus and put my time into doing anything else. I haven't even been playing otome games lately. And I still haven't been watching any anime. It's just vtubers all day long. In fact I'm watching Mito stream as I write this.

I didn't mention it in the previous entry a month ago, but I actually moved around the end of August. I used to live in a city but now I've moved a little ways away into a town further into the country. It's the town that I used to [REDACTED] in, so I had been visiting it very often for around 5 years up until around a year ago. Because I used to [REDACTED] in it, I was actually more familiar with it than I have been with any of the towns I've lived in. Because I never leave my home unless I have to. In just under a year the town has changed a fair bit. Definitely due to the plague. It had always been a sad looking run-down backwater town, but now it's even more sad looking. So many shops in the town's centre have closed with very few new stores coming in to replace them. It's somewhat sad seeing the town I had spent so much time in reduced to an even more sorry state. But also I'm a fan of the run-down, dilapidated, in-sambles buildings aesthetic so at least it's cool to look at. Really miss the shops that had vintage clothes though.

Since I started writing this Mito's stream ended and I'm watching Machita Chima's singing stream now. She has such a beautiful singing voice. I'm not usually that much of a fan of singing stream in general but her singing is so great even live that it's a joy to listen to.

In conclusion, Mayuzumi is still my favorite vtuber and I love him very much he's so funny and smart and cool aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
灰くん好き…好きだよ…ぶるーずハッピーアワーめっっっっっちゃよかったよ。（泣）


pictures of the day:
3d collabs with chaika in them are the best 3d collabs

Happy birthday to all of these characters.

And it's my birthday as well I guess. Went out to have lunch with my family for it, which was nice. Otherwise it was a pretty bad day. As the years go by I really enjoy my birthday less and less. I mean some of the reasons the day was bad had nothing to do with my birthday itself and it was just a coincedence that stuff happened on the same day.

Thank you to everyone for 50k site views and 130 followers. I don't express my appreciation of it much but it really does make me happy knowing that many people took even a passing interest in my little personal website that I've really only written about my niche hobbies. I don't ever write replies but I read and am thankful for every message left in my guestbook, and all the messages in the My World of Text thing too.

I want to write more about stuff, like Shachou's 3D stream which was amazing and I'll definitely mention it in a bit more detail later. But I'm struggling to gather my thoughts into words right now so I'll just leave it here.
Thank you for reading. ♡

寝て起きてまゆゆまだスマブラやってて草。大会今日だぞ黛。もう寝てもろてって言いたいけど、まゆゆそういうの言われんのあんまり好まないから言わない。でも寝て欲しい…12時間以上やって疲れてない…？

Watching vtubers, especially them playing games, so much lately has made me start feeling like playing actual video games again. A bit at least. I finally got back to playing Pokemon Shield and I'm close to beating it now. I love Raihan, Piers, Bede, and Marnie. They're all so cute. One of the Pokemon I'm using in my team needs to be traded for its final evolution to happen but I can't trade so I am reliving the suffering of no Gengar I had as a child. But this time it isn't because of no friends, it's because I don't want to pay for Nintendo Online.

Maybe now that vtubers are making me feel like playing games again, I'll finally be able to play all the games that I've wanted to play for so long but could never gather the motivation to do.

Ebio had his first 3D stream today. It was cute. He tried his best but he was so nervous. He couldn't stop fidgeting and shifting his weight left and right. It was funny when he took out his sword and tried to do cool heroic poses and ended up repeatedly clipping the sword into his head. Also ebimaru teetee. That game he played towards the end was so bad, lol. According to other listeners it is incredibly on brand for him to play random sh*tty games. I really need to watch him more. There are some people complaining about the stream because it was apparently boring to them. But I think because he is cute all is forgiven.

You may have noticed that I removed the social media links box on my homepage. All of those I had gone inactive on/wasn't really active on in the first place. And I kind of want to distance myself from using social media just because of why not. I did enjoy the time I'd spent on Fedi though. Especially talking to my Neocities mutuals on there. I don't know if you read my journals or not but if so then, hi I still appreciate you. I just didn't really like how much time I would spend on it. And although I did enjoy talking, I'm not good with interactions so there were times I'd get a bit anxious from it.

The only kind of social media thing I'm doing right now is really just my vtuber twitter account that I use to keep up with vtuber related things. And occasionally share random vtuber related thoughts. You can check it out if you want, but if you don't care about Nijisanji vtubers it'll be very boring to look at.


picture of the day

akina why are you like this?

I feel like taking a short break of just writing about nothing but my otaku media hobbies in here. It's probably pretty boring to read if you aren't also an otaku-kun. So I'm thinking I'll talk a little bit about real world things.

I say that, but I've had next to no contact to the outside world ever since my workplace temporarily shut down because of the plague. Literally the only times I've gone out in months is just to go shopping for food and that's it. I've recently developed a fascination for trying different unusual bottled and canned drinks whenever I go to the local bargain store. They always have a lot of different drinks I never see in the standard bigger stores. My favorites I've tried so far is probably mango soda and this one bottled lychee tea.

I can't think of any other real life things that I care to talk about now... Nothing has happened. I'm just a hermit who never leaves the house. I'm not even really trying to self-quarantine or anything. This is just how much of a homebody I am, lol. If it weren't for the need for food I would happily just never ever set foot outside of my home at all.


picture(s) of the day

I still really want to make a Mayuyu shrine/fanpage. There's a lot that I want to do with it and I feel like I don't have the coding and image editing/creating skills to achieve what I want though. There's so much one can do with a Mayuyu fanpage because of how absolutely perfect his aesthetic is for the medium and I don't want to half-*ss it. So many vague ideas of cool things I could do with it...

Anyway now for a complete change in topic because I feel like talking about this.

Let me for a moment talk about,
The world of vtuber shipping and my thoughts towards it.

Before I start sharing my thoughts, I must confess that I am a dirty shipper. So this is coming from the perspective of a dirty shipper.

Vtuber shipping is kind of in a weird place because it's a bit close to shipping real people. Shipping real people is definitely something I think of as weird and don't personally endorse. But vtubers (at least in my opinion) exist in this strange realm of being real people and fictional people at the same time, kinda. It kind of varies depending on how heavy or light an individual vtuber's RP is. The level at which the soul(person inside) plays a character and isn't just themself.

I think personally think that shipping vtubers is perfectly fine as long as you obey the proper manners. The proper manners being that you keep your shipping hidden away within your own circles and avoid being able to be easily found and seen by people who aren't into your ship/s. Example: when tweeting about their ship/s, shippers with proper conduct will avoid saying things that could easily come up in searches, like directly saying the vtubers' names. Really that's very normal proper non-canon shipping conduct even regarding shipping of characters from purely fictional works.

I think the important distinction to make to have it not be weird is separating the characters on the surface and the souls within. Shipping their vtuber personas is perfect fine, but if you start like, watching their souls to get together or something, that's a bit gosh darn weird.

Talking about 小難しいこと like a true Mayuzumi listener.

Anyway now that I've written all of that both because the concept of vtubers being both real and fictional at the same time really interests me, and as a way to justify my dirty shameful shipping, let me just say-
Mayuyu and Uiha are way too cute together. Uiha's stream today killed me and many others with the sheer teetee(preciousness) of it. They're just so cute they have the absolute cutest dynamic together... myuiてぇてぇ…。

It kills me every time Mayuyu is doing his usual "I have no friends" shtick or being self-deprecating and Uiha responds like, "That's not true! You have friends! I'm your friend, I care about you!" It makes me feel so warm and happy... Even if you don't ship them in a romantic kinda way, surely you can't deny them being really adorable friends.

Uiha's original song that just got uploaded today is the nicest and sweetest song... I watched it when it premiered and it was so teetee it made me cry. The fact that it was pretty much a birthday present for her from Mayuyu and partially Ars as well is just so sweet... Mayuyu wrote the lyrics for it and it was composed by the composer(Shagma) Mayuyu usually works with. BlueS teetee....... myui teetee............（尊死）


picture of the day:

(click for bigger)
I bought a bunch of old otome games off Surugaya and they arrived today. Okay, technically two of them aren't otome games. Two of them are romance games that allow you to either play as a boy and romance girls, or play as a girl and romance boys. Also I got my fancy Angelique wallet that I preordered all the way back in like January I think.

And also my Mayuzumi T-shirt. I'm very happy to be able to wear something Mayuyu related on my person. Even though I probably won't wear it much because it's now too precious to me. Maybe I should buy a second one for regular wear?

I really need to make that Mayuyu shrine that I mentioned I might make in my last entry. I've been thinking about it here and there and I think I could really have fun with it. His general aesthetic is so good for making into a retro webpage.

Speaking of Mayuyu, since his 3D reveal he's been using 3D instead of Live2D for his regular streams as well. I am so grateful because most other Nijisanji who have a 3D don't. He's chosen a style like Ange and Ichigo and I am so happy. Thank you so much Mayuyu............ 3D Mayu is so cute it's bad for my heart.


Picture of the day:

(context: yesterday when he was streaming DbD his player name was set to SEXY_HOT_GIRL)

(dont let the scrollbar make u think this post is super long, a lot is images)
Hello. I'm back again after two months. I suddenly felt a strong urge to write here again.

Maybe some of you remember the blog post I made about vtubers a long time ago? Probably not. Anyway, I've gotten into watching vtubers again. And this time I've gotten over my irrational distaste for Live2D vtubers.
A friend got into watching the Hololive girls, and spurred by curiosity I discovered the Holostars boys. Seeing them I decided to ignore my Live2D hatred and give them a chance. And then... I got into watching Nijisanji vtubers instead.

There's quite a few Nijisanji livers I like, but there is one who I like probably 5 times more than any other vtuber.

He's Mayuzumi Kai. In a short time I have completely fallen for him
If it weren't for him, and what happened today I probably wouldn't have come back to write something here for a while longer.

He got a 3D body, and had his 3D reveal livestream earlier today. And I am feeling so thankful right now that I had become a fan of him in time to get to experience a moment like this in real time. The main part of the stream was so funny and cute. And then the C and D parts blew me away.

I originally just started watching him because I liked his voice, his general demeanour, and thought he was pretty funny. But the rabbithole was far deeper than that...

If I can stop being lazy for a short amount of time I would love to make a shrine page for him. No promises though.

I'm going to dump some favorite screencaps from the C and D parts of his 3D stream so SPOILER WARNING. Also the original(nearly certain its original) song that plays during the C part is so pretty.


(click images for larger version)


P.S.
I really need to get around to watching Lain.

the one year anniversary of my website is in two days. a week ago i was planning on maybe doing something special for it, but then i put off preparing anything and now it's only two day until then. i could probably pull something off in two days... but am i going to? probably not i'm lazy. i'll probably just put up a celebratory message on the home page.

i finished Tlicolity Eyes Vol 2. i really enjoyed it actually. i'll do that impressions page for the game i swear. probably.

my best friend's been making really nice videos about obscure old video games. i really enjoy them since i like learning about weird old things. if you're interested in that type of content definitely check out his latest video.

also i finished my first run through of the current Touken Ranbu event. it's definitely the best event yet. the event maps have a whole 3 different songs original to the event, and all the songs are so good i could listen to them for ages. the last boss theme in particular is really gorgeous. the event's story is really good and interesting. i was stupid and forgot to bring Kasen when i did my run of the event, but i just finished watching a compilation video of all the event scenes, watching the ones with regular Kasen and kiwame Kasen. dang i really missed a lot of details without Kasen in my team... i bet i would've enjoyed the story even more if i was more into japanese history and could actually understand the old time-y poetry.

as someone who's been playing swords since the very beginning. it really makes me happy to see how much swords has progression. it's come so far from having absolutely no events or new content added during the first 6 months after it's release. other mobage have literally shut down sooner after releasing than it took swords to do something lmao. before the first story event in october of 2018 (keep in mind swords released in january of 2015) the only resemblance of story that was in swords was all of the swords individual citadel, battle, internal affairs, etc lines. the short special battlefield interact lines, and the special internal affairs interactions. all those lines and scenarios mostly just taught players about the characters and not much about the setting itself at all. then the first story event landed and it was just like "we're gonna raise a whole bunch of questions and answer none of them haha." i kind of really like the mysteriousness of the setting though.

anyway i just spent literally hours just looking at swords fanart


picture of the day:

why do my entries keep ending up so long-winded? (this will too probably)

the new Touken Ranbu event started and they added two new swords you can get from it. i am in love with one of those new swords. look at him. please look at him. he's so beautiful. he talks in poems most of the time so i can hardly understand a word he says, but i love him. also the music that plays in the new event maps is soooo pretty. i really really love the touch of the church bells in the song.

A month or two ago i couldn't stop listening to Zetsuai music, and now i can't stop listening to the Earthian albums. if anyone knows of any other bl manga that got image albums in the 80s/90s/ please let me know. the music for these two have no right to be as good as they are. also please hit me up if you have the third Earthian album i don't recall seeing it where i got the first and second. my favorite Earthian song is Secret Blue on the second album because it's so funky and cheesy, and my favorite Zetsuai song is Calekka.

thinking about reviving my play log page. if i do they will be a lot shorter than my page for haruka3 was lol. i say this but i tend to ramble so maybe they won't be shorter. as i think i said with my haruka3 page, they won't be reviews. it'll just be my impressions/opinions or whatever on the games. i'm not cut out for reviews i'm too dumb for that. but i wanna talk about the games i play and i don't know, maybe some one would want to hear my thoughts? from what i hear about them, it seems like the well known popular english speaking otome game reviewers aren't that good themselves. that's just me repeating what 4chan says though, i've never read reviews from any of the popular reviewers.

if i do revive that page i'll probably start with Tlicolity Eyes. i bought it a few days ago. i felt like playing an otome game on my Switch so i bought it. i kinda considered getting Olympia Soiree since it's the hot new game on the street, but decided against it. there's no point in getting the hot new thing when i have too few otome player friends to know anyone else who got it so i couldn't really talk about it anyway. so why not just get an older game i've been interested in for a while. also maybe i just felt like playing a dumb cute little game instead of a way more plot-heavy one. i've already finished vol.1 of the game and just started on vol.2. it's successfully met my expectations of a dumb cute little game. i'll talk more about it if i ever do revive my playlog page i guess. i probably will.

in conclusion, i miss the 90s and otome is a dead hobby.


picture of the day:

I've had enough of social media. At least for the time being.

There's no dramatic reason I've decided this. I just started to feel sick of how much time i would waste on it. I used to use Twitter very actively, but steadily used it less and less. I completely stopped maybe nearing a month ago now.

I'm slightly worried about it because I have some reasons I mostly only interacted with on there recently, and I'm too useless to slide into DMs. I dont want to continue using the website i no longer want to use just because of that though. i wonder if that makes me a bad friend. maybe.

Sometimes I grow to miss the time when I had no friends, real life or online. Of course if I really wanted to I could easily go back to that. But it wouldn't be the same now that I know what it's like to have friends.
I wish I weren't a super introvert who very easily gets overwhelmed by regular social interactions. I attempt to act more personable in online interactions but really it's very draining.

i don't think i've ever gone into this much detail talking about this subject with anyone, it's pretty easy to write about it here because i'd be surprised if anyone actually reads these entries in full lol.

SUDDEN SUBJECT CHANGE

i've been reading a bunch of isekai manga the past week or so. the women target audience ones. i know isekai is mostly a bunch of cute dumb wish fulfilment schlock. but goddamn do i like cute dumb schlock honestly. also i really appreciate these manga bringing back the trope of beautiful/handsome mysterious man with long black hair. if you look at my husband you can tell i like that trope haha. thank you isekai manga. if anyone's interested in checking out women's target audience isekai, the anime adaptation for the first modern joseimuke isekai LN is airing right now. it's called hamefura/my next life as a villainess. it's pretty cute. in trying to prevent her death, the protagonist ends up unwittingly building herself a harem of both boys and girls, and she's too thick to realise it. despite being dense she's a fun protagonist though. I'd be part of her harem.

maybe since i've abandoned social media i'll actually update this journal more often. i wish i could abandon discord too but i don't want to lose ALL of my friends.


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