What Is NIJISANJI? Japan's Other VTuber Powerhouse, Explained by Marine

Article

Alongside hololive, NIJISANJI is one of the two agencies that effectively built the VTuber industry as it exists today — and its founding choices still shape what a NIJISANJI stream feels like.

A Different Founding Bet

ANYCOLOR Inc. — known as Ichikara Inc. until renaming on May 17, 2021 — was founded in 2017 by then-21-year-old Waseda University student Riku Tazumi. NIJISANJI launched in early 2018 as a proof-of-concept for the company's app, deliberately built around Live2D character models and live streaming, rather than the 3D-avatar and pre-recorded clip format that dominated the VTuber space at the time.

The Scale Today

As of August 2026, NIJISANJI has 198 active livers across its branches: 170 in the main branch (153 based in Japan, 6 in Indonesia, 11 in Korea) and 28 in NIJISANJI EN. That international branch structure — distinct language- and region-specific rosters under one umbrella — is a defining feature of how NIJISANJI has scaled globally.

What To Know

NIJISANJI's deliberate early bet on Live2D and live streaming, at a time when 3D avatars and pre-recorded clips were the more popular VTuber format, is a big part of why the agency's culture leans so heavily on long-form, unscripted live content — understanding that founding choice explains a lot about what makes a NIJISANJI stream feel different from other VTuber content.

NIJISANJI and hololive emerging within about a year of each other (2017-2018), taking genuinely different technical and creative approaches to the same new medium, mirrors how Japanese entertainment industries often develop several competing formats simultaneously before one style becomes dominant — in VTubing's case, both approaches ended up thriving side by side instead.

What Fans Are Saying

• "Betting on Live2D and live streaming when 3D clips were the trend really paid off long-term."
• "198 livers across four branches is a genuinely massive international operation."
• "A 21-year-old founding the company behind this is wild in hindsight."

Original Japanese

• 「3Dクリップが主流だった時代にLive2Dとライブ配信に賭けたのは、長期的に見て正しかった」
• 「4つのブランチで198名というのは本当に大規模」
• 「21歳でこの会社を立ち上げたというのは今振り返るとすごい」

Easy Japanese

「にじさんじ」は、hololiveと並ぶ大手VTuber事務所です。2026年8月時点で198名のライバーが所属しています。