Virtual YouTuber stable AkioAIR launched in March 2022 (after a Troubled Production) with five talents: planet-turned-person MEW Horizon, fairy adventurer RoaFen, apothecary/medic Athena "Athy" Nightingale, dragon heiress Kion Dojima, and mysterious cursed walker Nonoah.
What stands out about this stable (aside from their striking debut trailer
) is that, despite coming to prominence long after the vtuber scene shifted from scripted videos of characters to live-streamed Alter-Ego Acting, AkioAIR are indisputably characters telling a story. Each of their debuts starts with a mysterious interview from a Creature-Hunter Organization that either kidnapped them from their worlds or rescued them from certain death, depending on how much you believe.
After a year's Time Skip, where they have presumably ended up back in their worlds (maybe), they encounter each other and you, the chat, who act as both observers and faceless characters for the members to interact with. And with enemies from their own worlds and the researchers who isekaied them both at large, the mysterious "Lambda Alternative Reality Resonation System" putting what we see into question, and strange gaps in everyone's memory (including the chat's), there are mysteries galore to be solved before it's too late.
...Not that there isn't time to play video games, sing, joke around, and do all the things that regular vtubers do in between lore advancement. Think the late 00s-early 10s YouTuber trend of game and movie reviews that came with an ever-expanding Excuse Plot, only darker and more involved from the get-go.
On January 7, 2022, Fen graduated from the company.
On September 24, 2023, after controversy and allegations of a laundry list of mistreatment from management, Athena has also graduated, with her departure sparking a mass exodus of all of the company's remaining talents, including the two members of AkioWater that debuted on the 30th, with the last of the departures occurring on October 1st.
The company's channel is here and links all their talent's channels from that.
Tropes
- Alien Gender Confusion: MEW is nonbinary, with the explanation that planets don't have genders; she still regularly uses she/her but states that, "For humans' sake, you can call me any gender you want."
- All There in the Manual: Built into being a story-driven vtuber promotion. To get all the lore and story pieces, you'll need to follow *everyone*, not just your oshi, though Fen has the most lore dumps with her Pixie Tales and adventure streams.
- The Artifact: After the first few months, some of the talent fell off of the storytelling gimmick. Fen mentioned in her departure message that management pressured her to drop it when she was the last one using it to any frequency, as they had begun to blame it for her low numbers.
- Audience Participation: Chat is a character unto themselves, filling a different role depending on whose stream you're watching. Sometimes they have ways to affect what's going on on the screen, like answering polls or doing chat commands like the spells that Fen teaches her Fennatics.
- Big Eater: MEW claims to need to eat 40 times as much as a human, and labels her days off as "eating days" that she devotes solely to consuming all those calories.
- "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The song in the trailer is performed by the whole Season 1 generation, written by Athy, and MEW is one of the art directors.
- Doomed Hometown: Just about everyone's. Kion's entire kingdom has fallen, Fen's people have been hunted down, Athy was kidnapped and made into a Child Soldier by the people who razed her home, Nonoah brings doom everywhere she goes, and MEW is the doomed hometown, being what's left of a destroyed planet come to life.
- Dungeon Crawling: Fen does this both as a hobby and to try and explore where she's ended up and find a way home. Some early streams have her teaching her chat how to explore the dungeon properly.
- Escaped from the Lab: Everyone supposedly did during the one-year timeskip, but that may just be an illusion.
- Expy: A tall, rebellious, busty dragon girl whose last name is a Like a Dragon reference? Kion must be a hololive fan.
- Family of Choice: The members of Season 1 refer to each other as siblings.
- Flat World: MEW jokes about wanting to make the Earth flat.
- Gameplay and Story Integration: That is, the talent playing video games sometimes actually affects the story and world around them. For instance, when Fen's soul energy was sapped by her crystal and she turned into a bug for the first time, she was stuck like that until she absorbed new soul energy by consuming the dragon soul in Valheim.
- Genius Loci: MEW was once a planet and gained sentience and a humanoid body.
- Human Outside, Alien Inside: All of them, but a special mention must be made to MEW, who's introduced with an exposition dump about her physiology (her body doesn't produce waste and regenerates her cells, she can't have children, and she has a "mind core" and "body core" that are indestructible).
- I Know Your True Name: RoaFen is only her common-use name because, as a pixie, she sensibly hides her true name.
- Ironic Birthday: Fen's graduation was announced two days before her anticipated birthday celebration, and the birthday party was retrofitted to also include her graduation. The resulting stream was a
Tear Jerker even before it started as Fennatics tried to keep their smiles on.Fen: It's a happy sad. - Last of Their Kind: MEW is the last of 14 sentient planets.
- Like Brother and Sister: Fen claims that Mipi is too much like a brother to her when chat brings up shipping them should Mipi ever turn humanoid.
- Little Bit Beastly: Athena is an owlgirl, Kion has horns (being a dragon), and MEW's holographic flowers on the sides of her head seem intended to resemble cat ears.
- Mad Scientist Laboratory: The Multidimension R&D Laboratory, which isekaied the five of them a year before their debuts, detained them in a shady bloodstained lab, and may or may not still have them and the chat contained.
-
Milestone Celebration: After a period of plot-light streams, the group's six-month anniversary heralded a Recap Episode (or one per channel) for the metaplot story content, followed by a new story arc about glitches affecting reality. - Portent of Doom: Nonoah's backstory is a mystery, but she's known to be a herald of disaster.
- Power Crystal: Each of them has one, which were all found with them when they were taken by Multidimension R&D, though they all serve different purposes and look different.
- Pungeon Master: Fen is constantly making bad puns and occasionally encouraging chat to do the same.
- Secret Snack Stash: Athy hides the candy and snacks in her apothecary because she wants people to come for the medicine and not the food. She'll share with chat, though.
- Shellshocked Veteran: Athy was made into a Tyke Bomb for an enemy army, and even after escaping that life, she still has visible trauma about war to the point that even being called by her full name can trigger her.
- Significant Anagram: "MEW" stands for "Metorial Eris Wygon," but is clearly meant to evoke the word "mew" because the petal-like holograms above her head resemble cat ears.
- The Sleepless: As a planet, MEW doesn't need to sleep. This serves as an in-universe explanation for her late-night streams, though her accent infers that the out-of-universe reason is she's in the Eastern hemisphere.
- Take That, Critics!: The company channel's profile calls it a "questionable and very shady English vtuber agency," sassing back at people who had expressed doubt during auditions thanks to the Troubled Production and so-called red flags like accepting people who might only stream once a month. (The talent they ended up getting all stream much more regularly, like other vtubers.)
- Team Mom: As much as you'd expect it more from the nurturing and responsible Athy, Fen frequently takes this role in collabs while Athy gets swept up in everyone else's chaos.
- Weasel Mascot: Fen's snarky companion, Mipi Bip, a caterpillar who lives on her head.
