I wish to joke that sure figures comprise a pre-history of VTubers. Anybody who performs into the concept of a digital character or alter ego, partially or in full, counts: the Wizard of Oz, Max Headroom, Sharon Apple (Macross Plus), Kevin Flynn (Tron), and so forth. However one particular person on my foolish record is outwardly making a comeback: Jem from Jen and the Holograms. To have fun her fortieth anniversary, she is returning with six new songs, together with an prolonged model of the principle theme from her unique cartoon.
Jem and the Holograms is a TV collection from the Nineteen Eighties, focused at a younger feminine viewers. The heroine is Jerrica Benton, the proprietor of a music label who additionally performs as lead singer of Jem and the Holograms. What makes Jem a “proto-VTuber” is the truth that she makes use of a particular holographic know-how, a sentient pc named Synergy, to create an alternate persona for the stage. Identical to modern-day VTubers, she releases music movies of her unique songs on this guise.
And whereas this is likely to be mere coincidence, I observed that the newly recorded rendition of the Jem and the Holograms intro is a size that has at all times been uncommon for American cartoons: about 90 seconds, the identical as a a normal anime opening or ending.
(Or maybe Synergy is the VTuber?)
One other attention-grabbing wrinkle is that, very like the return of the VTuber boss of bosses Kizuna AI this yr, this Jem revival options her unique singer: Britta Phillips. One of many greatest and most painful classes the VTuber neighborhood realized in AI’s heyday is that the followers don’t settle for a special human behind the avatar. These entities are usually not considered as “character designs” or “ideas” with interchangeable performers; the persona in entrance and and the individual backstage collectively kind a VTuber. It’s extra sophisticated in Jem’s case as a result of she had separate singing and appearing voices, and there was a 2015 live-action film, however there’s nonetheless a way right here of the OG coming again.
Although definitely not meant to be an instance of the way forward for VTubing, this Jem factor makes me marvel what shall be attainable sometime. For a type of leisure that’s arguably not even 10, what is going to 40 years of VTubing even seem like?
