What Is VTuber Culture? Ten Years Since the Term Was Coined, Explained by Marine

Article

A decade after the term "VTuber" was coined, the medium has grown from one creator's experiment into a $5 billion global industry.

The Term Is Born

Kizuna AI uploaded her first video on December 1, 2016, officially coining the term "Virtual YouTuber" by combining real-time motion capture with an anime-style 3D avatar and her own on-screen personality. In May 2017, COVER Corporation released the "hololive" app, debuting Tokino Sora and beginning the shift from independent, individually-run VTubers toward a corporate agency model — the structure that hololive, NIJISANJI, and many other agencies still use today.

A Decade of Explosive Growth

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated VTuber culture's growth significantly, as more creators and viewers turned to online streaming. By the end of 2024, roughly 60,000 VTuber accounts existed in Japan alone. The movement's 10th anniversary was celebrated globally in March 2026, with the industry now valued at over $5 billion and VTubers regularly headlining major platforms, selling out VR concerts, and fronting brand campaigns worldwide.

What To Know

Understanding VTuber culture as a medium (real-time avatar performance) distinct from any single agency helps explain why hololive and NIJISANJI, despite being the two biggest names, are really just the two most successful companies within a much broader creative movement that also includes independent ("kojin'ei") streamers and countless smaller agencies worldwide.

The shift from Kizuna AI's independent-creator model to hololive's corporate-agency model in 2017 mirrors a recurring pattern in Japanese entertainment industries, where a genuinely new creative format pioneered by an individual gets rapidly formalized into a talent-agency business structure once its commercial potential becomes clear.

What Fans Are Saying

• "Wild that this whole industry traces back to one person's first video in 2016."
• "$5 billion is a massive number for something that started as a niche experiment."
• "The shift from independent creators to agencies like hololive really changed the whole shape of the medium."

Original Japanese

• 「2016年の1本の動画がこの業界全体の始まりだったというのはすごいです」
• 「50億ドル規模というのは、ニッチな実験から始まったにしては驚異的な数字ですね」
• 「独立系からhololiveのような事務所モデルへの変化は、業界の形を大きく変えましたね」

Easy Japanese

「VTuber」は、アニメ風のアバターを使って配信する文化です。2016年にKizuna AIさんが始め、2026年3月に10周年を迎えました。