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"VTuber agency from Japan that makes fans go wild, the world over!"
「Hololive Project」
hololive is a Virtual YouTuber group founded and operated by Cover Corporation. Although marketed as a team of idols, members of the group primarily make Let's Play and variety content livestreams on YouTube (except for Hololive CN members, whose main platform was Bilibili). The main channel also produces scripted 3D anime shorts featuring the members' fictional avatars.

Cover Corporation, established in 2016, was originally focused on the development of AR and VR technologies. Hololive was originally the name of a smartphone app developed by Cover in 2017 that allowed for 3D motion-captured virtual character live streaming (inspired by Kizuna AI who kickstarted the VTuber world in 2016). Cover initially envisioned Hololive as a platform that other streamers would use, and their first talent, Tokino Sora, was intended as more of a tech showcase. However, from 2017-2018, Cover Corp gradually shifted the direction of the Hololive project from a streaming platform to the idol-styled VTuber group it is famous for now, after Nijisanji's skyrocketing popularity inside Japan demonstrated the potential for VTuber streaming.

From 2018-2019, hololive rapidly gained popularity within Japan, China and Indonesia (and elsewhere in Asia), significantly expanding its talent pool across several waves or "generations". The group also garnered attention in the West after several translated clips went viral. A now-defunct Chinese branch was established in late 2019, marking hololive's first attempt to directly reach non-Japanese audiences, and this was followed by other branches with Indonesian and English-speaking talents. As of January 2024, hololive boasts a total of 86 active talents across six branches: hololive (the original Japanese branch, also referred to as JP), hololive DEV_IS (a second Japanese branch focused on music), hololive Indonesia (ID), hololive English (EN), HOLOSTARS (a third Japanese branch with male talents), and HOLOSTARS English.

In February 2021, Cover released a teaser trailer for hololive Alternative, a media project to present the women of hololive in a new world. The first full version of the PV was then released on May 21, 2021, with a second PV released on June 11, 2022. A Twitter manga entitled HoloEarth Chronicles Side:E ~Yamato Phantasia~, a story taking place in Alternative's setting penned by Kosuke Kurose (of Goblin Slayer manga fame), was announced on June 4, 2021 with Chapter 0 released on the same day. The manga can be currently read for free in the Holonometria archive, with translations to English and Indonesian.

holoearth, a hololive Alternative tie-in Survival Sandbox game, was showcased on November 2021. More general information about the game was revealed on June 2022, alongside an official trailer.

On April 10th, 2024, the company announced the hololive Official Card Game, a Collectible Card Game developed by Cover in collaboration with Bushiroad. The game will be released in September 2024.

See also NIJISANJI, another famous VTuber company, as well as VOMS Project (JP) and VShojo (EN), two independent VTuber groups.

hololive spin-off works:

  • Aquarium — A Visual Novel featuring Aqua Minato as the main heroine and Marine Houshou and Fubuki Shirakami as recurring side characters.
  • Fuwamoco Morning — Triweekly morning Talk Show hosted by FuwaMoco (Fuwawa and Mococo Abyssgard), featuring reoccuring segments such as a summary of Hololive news, "Pero sightings" where viewers submit Pero edits, "Doggy of the Day" where viewers submit dog photos, Mococo's "Pup Talk", and feeding natto to Mococo.
  • Hakos Baelz Ch series:
    • Bae Watch — A Visual Novel style Schoolgirl Series created by Hakos Baelz, starring six high school (rat) girls: Murasaki, Itsuko, Hatsuna, Fumi, Miyu, and Shiika. All of the characters are voiced by Bae herself, with YAGOO guest appearing as the teacher in the first episode.
    • Bae-Gemite Domination — A Talk Show style series, where Bae invites guests from Hololive JP, Holostars JP, and staff (like YAGOO and A-chan), to try out tasting Vegemite and give their thoughts on the controversial condiment.
    • FeBAErary 2024 "BaeTV" segments:
      • Bae-Cademy' — A series simulating Bae attending a different school period each stream.
      • A Smol Show — A mock children's Edutainment Show hosted by Smol Bae performing children's show activities. Claims to be a 'family friendly' show.
      • Khaos Kitchen — A Cooking Show where Bae cooks onstream via handcam.
  • Hololive Alternative — A multimedia sub-franchise.
  • hololive - Holo no Graffiti — A Surreal Humor 3D shorts released weekly, starring all of the Hololive girls. While initially was exclusively for the JP brach, HoloGra gradually incorporated girls from all language branches.
  • EN Tabletop RPGs:
  • hololive ERROR — The horror-based game and accompanying web series.
  • Legend of Polka — A Talk Show-slash-Variety Show hosted by the titular Polka Omaru and her assistant, Itzutsu.
  • Jump UPROAR!! — A variety show featuring the titular UPROAR!! boys.
  • Noise Complaint — A Self-Insert Fic started by Pavolia Reine of hololive ID during Minecraft stream, which is progressively expanded by other idols.
  • Watame Did Borderline Nothing Wrong — A series of shorts featuring Watame doing things that should get her in trouble, but end up not getting her in trouble anyway.
  • holoX MEEting!, a manga written by Omcurry G.K. and art by Anmitsu Okada, now on Shonen Jump+.
  • X (hololive) — A Visual Novel created by Machina X Flayon of Holostars EN, focusing on the truth behind his backstory as TEMPUS's pilot. The prologue was released as an animated short on his channel.
  • Solved with a Bang! Koyori-chan — A series of shorts involving Koyori causing an explosion every episode.
  • Doppelganger — A Visual Novel featuring members of HOLOSTARS English -TEMPUS-.


hololive provides examples of:

  • all lowercase letters: The group's name is officially "hololive", although English forum threads often feature alternate capitalization (Hololive/HoloLive).
  • Alter-Ego Acting: All of hololive's talents "act" out at least one distinct fictional character within their streams, with the degree of fictionality being highly variable.
  • American Kirby Is Hardcore:
    • The Japanese cast's characters are all a variation of many different motifs, most of them cute or beautiful. For the English-speaking casts? 1st Gen is based on an Eldritch Abomination motif, 2nd Gen outright consists of pseudo-divine avatars of concepts such as space, time, and nature, and 3rd Gen's members all have something about them that makes them a danger to humans, and pulled a jailbreak from an Extranormal Prison. Mind you, they're still very cute.
    • This also applies to the Holostars, while a couple of the Japanese guys have edgier concepts, like MaFia, Tempus is based on an adventurer's guild and has a very detailed lore summary which describes combating otherworthly threats.
  • Animation Bump:
    • A character getting their 3D model debut is considered this as they get high quality 3D virtual reality models they can perform in a full virtual space with.
    • hololive's "Live2D 2.0" update gave many Live2D models more expressive faces and better face tracking.
    • Fubuki and select members of 1st gen showcased a "Live2D 3.0" update throughout July 2022, featuring things like improved motion tracking, facial animations (e.g. tongue sticking out, jaw movement, shading as the actor leans towards the camera), various animated Manga Effects, and a couple of different types of Wingding Eyes. The update also gave them the option to add arbitrary images to their model.
  • April Fools' Day:
  • Artifact Title: GAMERS and Vsinger were both titles originally given to certain members to distinguish them from the rest of the company, denoting their content as being more geared to either playing games or singing, but over time this distinction has almost completely eroded away. The GAMERS have participated in Idol activities as well as released original songs, while the Vsinger activities aren't much different from their peers in both streaming games and singing songs. The launch of Dev_Is more than anything shows the title of Vsinger is dead, as it is a branch fully focused on music, but none of the members are called Vsinger. The final nail in the coffin came on Oct 08, 2023, with the official announcement that the Vsinger project, PROJECT: HOPE, was closed, IRyS the sole member of the group was combined with council, forming a new unit called -Promise-, this along with AZkI and Suisei being in Gen 0 meant there was no longer anyone with the title Vsinger in hololive.
  • Artistic License – Law:
    • The Judge Magni skit video has holoTEMPUS act in a civil case. It quickly goes off the rails as Judge Magni changes court proceedings on the fly, especially when flattered, orders the bailiff to hit the defendant, asks the sides to argue on unrelated to the case questions, makes the defendant to lick spit from the floor and in the end sentences Altare to 50, then 70 years of torture, then to give a Baby Talk on Twitter.
    • Hololive Super Expo 2022 featured an interactive booth with a civil case between Aqua and Okayu on the matter if the former should be considered the latter's "lawfully wedded wife" or "mistress". The visitor acts as a judge and can choose between two endings. Of course, there's almost no legal procedure and is up to the visitor's preference. The vote in Aqua's favor is featured on Koyori's channel.
  • Ascended Meme: Has its own page here.
  • Augmented Reality: The official "hololy" app uses this, allowing people to project hololive's 3D models onto real life backdrops and take photos of them.
  • Bilingual Dialogue:
    • The "UMISEA" animated shorts, pairing Marine & Aqua of Hololive Japan with Ina & Gura of Hololive English, have each character speaking in their native language. They're able to understand each other thanks to a magical translator scroll that Aqua discovered.
    • In the Holo no Graffiti shorts, English or Indonesian members speak their own languages and nobody has a problem understanding each other. There is no explanation provided, but Graffiti generally makes no logical sense anyway.
    • This goes the same with the stars* collection where Holostars English members speak in their own language except for Axel and Jurard who speak in Japanese.
  • Bilingual Rhyme: Mori Calliope is good at mixing English and Japanese together, as demonstrated in her debut song "Excuse My Rudeness But Could You Please RIP?"
    To my surprise, snatching lives toriaezu kinshi (forbidden for the time being)
    Nice try, stoppin' the motherfuckin' Da Vinci
    Of human erasure, can't stop the pace, sir
    Make sure when "standing off" my rhymes slay first
  • Biting-the-Hand Humor: Plenty of jokes are made not only towards YouTube, but also to Cover Corp and specifically YAGOO.
  • Bland-Name Product:
    • In the short scripted anime videos posted on the Hololive channel various items are this, and some of the streamers use them on their own.
      • Boxes from "Holozon" instead of Amazon.
      • "Virtual Blood Virtual Drink" which is a knock-off of Red Bull energy drink.
      • "Yaboo! Answers" instead of "Yahoo! Answers".
      • "HoloMERE tissues in place of a brand called Cashmere.
    • Luna plays a game called Holovaders during her 3D debut stream, a parody of Space Invaders with hololive members replacing the aliens.
    • Ina has on her desk a bottle of Dr. Oopsie, which riffs off the real beverage Dr. Pepper.
    • Miko does this to hololive itself in one of her Grand Theft Auto Online streams, where her company is named "LMAO hoguchilive". Explaining the joke
    • Some of the ID girls (Moona and Reine in particular) have referred to Indomie instant noodles as "Holomie."
  • Brand X: Some of the stock props used for stream setups include generically named or labeled items.
    • Watame's set for chatting streams includes packs labelled simply as "Wata Chips", formerly "Potato chips", that look to be a tube like Pringles.
    • Suisei's nigh-omnipresent apple juice box is just labelled "RINGO" ("apple").
    • Calliope originally had a bottle of red wine with no label, only the bottle shape and color of the "liquid" being an indicator that it was wine at all, before receiving a "Death's Embrace" wine bottle prop as a gift from a fan, with just the name and scythe logo on the label.
    • Reine's recurring yellow and red potato chip bag is simply labeled "POTATO".
  • Calling a Rabbit a "Smeerp": In the EN branch, due to Kiara's fanbase often being depicted that way, it is common to refer to any chickens the girls encounter as "KFP Employees", regardless of whether or not they have anything to do with Kiara or KFP.
  • Cast Full of Gay: A majority of idols tend to show lesbian, or at least bisexual tendencies, albeit with some purely straight exceptions, such as Noel. This is especially notable with idols such as Miko, Matsuri, Korone, and La+, whose lust for girls tend to be defining attributes.
  • Cast Full of Pretty Boys: Most of the members of Holostars save the original version of Arurandeisu,Oga and Shinri.
  • Cast Herd: Enforced. New hololive members make their debuts in "generations", and intergenerational collab streams are only allowed a month after debut. They are also often categorized by their nationalities such as hololive Japan, China, and Indonesia. The talents also sometimes form smaller groups like the Onee-san Gumi (Marine, Flare and Noel) or the Bakatare trio (Fubuki, Flare and Watame). Following the establishment of UMISEA (Gura and Ina from EN, Marine and Aqua from JP), there has been an increasing interest in the deliberate formation of new international herds, common suggestions including holoBirds (Kiara, Mumei, Reine, Subaru, Lui), which ultimately became an official unit under the name Holotori, holoRodents (Baelz, Pekora, Risu) and holoDeath (Calliope, Rushia, Ollie). Besides UMISEA itself, all these groups include at least one member from each of the branches, so it's a good thing there are so many polyglots in the company.
  • Clip Show: The hololog videos on the main channel are short Clip Show episodes consisting of highlights from hololive's various streamers.
  • The Corruption: In hololive Alternative, there is an energy of sorts known as "stigma", which causes living beings (humans, ayakashi, and kami alike) to become more malevolent or generally induces negative behavior. Stigma corruption is generally invisible in humans, but if the stigma is powerful enough, the human host develops an ominous black aura and Tainted Veins that are only visible to spiritual beings such as kami. On the other hand, ayakashi visibly transform into black creatures with rectangular markings all over their bodies. The duty of a kami is to eliminate the stigma in the area, which has the additional benefit of granting them more fame, thus increasing their aura, and thus prolonging their lives.
  • Creator Backlash: Played for Laughs in-universe. Some of the girls who manages to make it big will sometimes watch their debut streams, and will cringe on how they used to be before their current personality. Matsuri in particular is just as confused as her audience on what kind of character she used to be before her current personality.
  • Crossover:
    • With Azur Lane. A select few hololive members show up in-game, redesigned as shipgirls, and the hololive event's campaign makes various references to the livestreaming shenanigans said characters were having at the time of the event's release (mainly their antics on their private Minecraft server).
    • There has also been one with World of Warships with Fubuki & Marine getting special commanders with their own voiceovers.
    • Suisei appears as a unique card and deck back in Vanguard Zero, a mobile game for Cardfight!! Vanguard.
    • BanG Dream! Girls Band Party! held a limited time promotion that acknowledged Gawr Gura's meteoric rise in popularity within Hololive by allowing players to obtain the "Gawr Boost Drink" item. Gura was already a massive fan of the game before she joined Hololive, so she was elated to see herself mentioned in the game.
    • In addition to the obvious collaborations with other hololive members, there have also been crossovers with vtubers from other companies, such as Watame's ongoing collaborations with Hinokuma Ran of Ani Mare.
    • Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny has five free DLC characters that are hololive-themed palette or model swaps of certain Player Mooks. Fubuki is "Fubuking" the Prinny, Rushia is "Ruusha" the Succubus, Flare is "Torte" the Psychic, Watame is "Watamee" the Evil Eye, and Polka is "Polpol", a female Mage.
    • The ending theme for the The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated! anime is sung by Aqua, Subaru and Nene, credited as "NEGI☆U".
    • Ina, Kiara, Pekora and La+ were, for a limited time, recruitable units in Valkyrie Connect.
    • A Super-Deformed Mio, Fubuki and Ayame appear as inflatable decoys in Earth Defense Force 6. They have their own voice lines and animations (which the EDF soldiers will enthusiastically react to) and take Clothing Damage when getting hit, often chastising the player for letting it happen.
    • Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis featured the likenesses and voices of Fubuki, Ina and Shien as limited time paid cosmetics.
    • Among Us featuring costumes based on Risu, Gura, Marine, Korone, Moona, Okayu, Mio, Fubuki, Pekora and Amelia.
    • The Japanese version of Sonic Frontiers launched with a set of pre-order DLCs that change a good chunk of the game's sound effects to various Unsound Effects (and the occasional actual onomatopoea, like ring pickups), all of which are voiced by Korone.
    • Counter Side features the members of HoloEN's first generation as part of its roster of playable characters.
    • Dragon Quest Treasures features Pekotte, a Killing Machine designed after and voiced by Pekora.
    • Asphalt 9: Legends features a Hololive special event, featuring livery designs of Miko and Luna for the Porsche 911 GTS Coupé, Porsche 918 Spyder and the Aspark Owl. Both also have the race countdowns that are voiced by the two said members.
  • Cuteness Overload:
    • What happens when you put Gawr Gura and Anya Melfissa together in the same live stream? An endless feedback loop of each other saying the other is cuter, and a chat that just cannot handle it all.
    • Similarly, Polka Omaru and Fauna Ceres running into each other in the Minecraft server by chance while both of them had streams running eventually culminated in the two completely melting down over each other.
  • Department of Redundancy Department: Gura, Ina, Aqua, and Marine formed an aquatic-themed group together called Umisea, which is the Japanese word "Umi" (which means "Sea"), and the English word "Sea". Acting as the translator, A-Chan pointed out how that they're basically named "Seasea" or "Oceanocean."
  • Digital Avatar: A few of the group's original idols (Sora, Miko, and Roboco) use a 3D model for their streams. note  Nowadays, newer talent is represented by 2D artwork animated via Live2D, although they may eventually get a 3D model once they reached 100,000 subscribers.
  • Digital Bikini: Some of the members' 3D models have the possibility of giving a Panty Shot when the camera is at certain angles. However halfway of 2021, the models prone to these have had their panties censored to pitch black, emulating the black Modesty Shorts Amane Kanata has on hers.
  • Distressed Drink Jitters: At the start of the 2024 Hololive New Year Cup, an annual Mario Kart tournament between the talents, hosts A-chan, Towa, and Okayu spent a few minutes looking at the loading screens of each talent in the race. When they got to Suisei, they were very tickled to see that she'd changed the toggle that gives her model hands holding a controller to make them shake as if she was nervous, along with characters on the screen reading "I'm not nervous".
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • Sora, AZKi, Roboco and Miko had 3D models since their debut, possibly as an artifact of the times when hololive was merely a tech demo for their motion tracking app. 2D models became the standard after the first generation made their debut. Once in a blue moon, this discrepancy crops up when any of those four collab with their juniors - the other party can be seen using their "Home 3D" avatar to maintain a consistent art style, since the four of them don't have an old 2D model to switch to.
    • As Sora explained on an episode of HoloTalk, way back in 2017 when she was the only talent, most of her livestreams took place on Nico Nico Douga instead of YouTube. Her YouTube content at the time also moreso took the form of Kizuna AI-styled highlight reels, as that was the most prominent form of VTuber content on the site in those days.
  • Enemy Mine: How it went down in S2 of Hololive's internal Rust war, with nearly all of the idols who played the game forming an alliance against Pekora and Koyori. This alliance predictably fell apart instantly after Pekora was eliminated.
  • Everyone Went to School Together: Nakiri Ayame, Yuzuki Choco, and Murasaki Shion from holo JP Gen 2 all come from and attend the Demonic-Realm Academy. Surprisingly, this would be expanded upon when Uruha Rushia from Gen 3 was revealed to also hail from the Demonic Realm Academy.
  • Famous, Famous, Fictional: A teaser PV for Summer 2023 Splash Party features an Easter Egg in form of an airport departure board that listed fictional locations based on talents' official lore (Pekoland, Iolyptos, Underworld, Atlantis, World Tree, etc.) along with various real life ones related to the talents or the agency itself (San Francisco, Montreal, Sydney, Jakarta, Vienna, etc.).
  • Fan Sub: Official translations of full streams are often in short supply (in part due to YouTube removing the ability to provide subtitles on other people's videos right around the time when Hololive was beginning to gain popularity) which leaves most non-Japanese speakers dependent on fan translators.
  • Fantasy Kitchen Sink:
    • hololive's earlier cast of characters are relatively normal as far as idols go. However, as the generations go on, the established backgrounds for newer Hololive members run on a gamut of fantastical settings: From knights note , spellcasters note , elves note , robots note , animal girls of various species note , to aliens note , demons note , goddesses note , virtual beings note , Anthropomorphic Personifications of concepts note , and actual animals (in human form) note . The fact that more and more fantastic characters are joining hololive is something that gets lampshaded by Marine after the 5th generation's debut.
      Marine: The human ratio dropped down!
    • Even some of the talent that were meant to be normal humans at debut have gotten in on this, with things like Haato/Haachama being Two Siblings In One (with Haachama explicitly stating that she's not human) and Subaru claiming to be a human, a duck, a humanish duck, a swan, or a bird god on various occasions (and claiming to age only a tenth of a year for every human year that passes). In fact, unless you count Marine, there hasn't been a regular human without any fantasy or sci-fi twist added to Hololive Japan since debut Subaru in Generation 2 (unless you count Iroha, in which case, holoX broke the pattern. Indonesia has never had someone who was a regular human note , and English only had Amelia, until she revealed herself to be a time traveler shortly after her debut.
  • Flanderization: Gura in the UMISEA shorts is always dropping an "a" like it's a Verbal Tic, when in reality she's barely done it since her debut. Justified, since that trait of hers is far more popular among the Japanese fanbase and was likely written in specifically to appeal to them.
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus: We never get to fully see for whom Kiara is making Valentine's Day Chocolate in her "Heart Challenger" music video, but if you pause the video at exactly 3:46, you clearly see that the person receiving it has black nails and pinkish purple hair (which heavily implies it's Calliope Mori).
  • Fun with Acronyms: A few sets of members get acronyms based on who's involved.
    • FAMS: Fubuki, Ayame, Mio, Subaru. Formed shortly after Mio's debut. If Okayu and Korone are involved it extends to OKFAMS.
    • SMOK: Subaru, Mio, Okayu, Korone.
    • Calli, IRyS, and Bae have their podcast, "Chad Cast", which in addition to deriving its name from the slang term "chad", stands for "Chaos, Hope, and Death".
    • Gura, Fauna, Mumei, and Kronii also have their own podcast, "Snot Cast", which stands for "Shark, Nature, Owl, and Time".
    • BLT: Botan, Lui, Towa.
    • Altare's podcast with the rest of Tempus is abbreviated NTR — It's not related to the Netorare Genre, it's National Tempus Radio!
  • Hotter and Sexier:
    • Some of the girls approve of the fanservice fan art based on them. They even use them as their stream thumbnails. The more traditionally idol-like they are, the more likely they are required to stay away from such impurity.
    • For new outfits, however, due to the Youtube algorithm becoming extremely aggressive in banning characters with exposed skin, this is sometimes inverted. For example, Choco's exposed cleavage became covered up in her Live2D 2.0 model, and Mel received an entirely new cleavage-less outfit altogether at the end of August 2020.
    • Inverted with Kou Mashiro, Polka's official artist, who drew very fanservice fanart on his Pixiv and Twitter. His official art for Polka is relatively tame compared to his other works, but not too heavily sexualized to the point of NSFW.
  • Incorruptible Pure Pureness:
    • Some of the more innocent idols are friendlier than others, and they are often contrasted by their Axe-Crazy generational partners, and is most likely the Only Sane Man. While they may be Not So Above It All, they don't do things that may be deem too crazy.
    • Suisei is one of the notable Zigzagged idols in the group. She dislikes Rule 34 fan art, but she never aims to be a traditional "seiso" idols in the industry, like how Sora is. She wants to be an idol for her own benefit as it is her dream to be one.
  • Idol Singer: Much of the content that hololive's individual members put out is hours-long Let's Play livestreams, but they're all undeniably talented vocalists. A small sampling of the songs they performed at their first live concert, "Nonstop Story", can be found here.
  • Improbably Female Cast:
    • The whole group is female. The only male that ever gets regularly referenced is hololive's CEO, Motoaki "YAGOO" Tanigou.
    • Inverted in regards to the Holostars division, which consists of entirely male Vtubers.
    • Downplayed when taking collabs into account. It is not unusual for certain members of Hololive to collaborate with Holostars members, and on even rarer occasions, collaborating with male V-Tubers from outside Holostars, or even non-virtual men.
  • Innocent Swearing:
    • On the whole, the Japanese cast doesn't know a whole lot of English (exceptions being Coco and Haato) but know enough of the language to pick up on some small phrases and words. This results in moments where they will use a Precision F-Strike or worse, derogatory slurs, without really knowing what they're saying or how offensive the words actually are. The latter seems to be exclusive to whenever one of them plays Grand Theft Auto V, specifically during the ending cutscene of the first mission where Lamar Davis says the "N-word" in a way that is almost singing it, resulting in loads of the hololive members repeating it because of the musical tone.
    • Inverted by Coco, who is English fluent and regularly swears, with her outro video clip spelling out then saying a variety of English swears. She also likes to try and get others to say swearwords they don't understand. Also by Miko, for whom "FAQ!" (a deliberate misspelling of "fuck you") is now a catchphrase.
    • Suisei is one of the few idols who knows how to swear in English, and she is very aware on how to use it properly. This often surprises many fans despite one of the consistent members who calls herself an idol.
    • Kiara attempted to get Gura to do this during a collab when they talked about how Gura had briefly taken German lessons, by asking her if she could say "Verdammte Scheiße" Translation, but failed because Gura knew what "Scheiße" meant.
  • Intentional Engrish for Funny: On occasion, Coco's viewers will intentionally post badly mangled mixtures of English and Japanese because they know it annoys her.
  • Jaw Drop: Due to the limitations of Live2D at the time of writing, a given talent's virtual avatar is only capable of rather simplistic facial movements, such as blinking or passably emulating emotions. Full lip-syncing is not a thing yet, so most of the time, their character models will just sit there with their mouths hanging open, if they're not smiling or frowning. This happens a bit less on 3D model streams, but it still has its moments.
  • Jiggle Physics: For most of the well endowed characters, particularly those with exposed skin. So common even the talents refer to it as having "Boing Boing". Played with in the case of Polka, whose chest doesn't jiggle as much due to her form-fitting outfit, but it's her thighs that do most of the wobbling whenever she moves...though this is played straight in her 2.0 2D model where the chest also jiggles.
  • Kayfabe: Some hololive creators like Mori Calliope notably put a stronger emphasis on maintaining their in-fictional characterizations (while most of the VTubing scene had moved away from Alter-Ego Acting). The creator and the audience generally resolves contradictions between in-character lore and real-life experiences by making up justifications on the spot, often comedically.
  • Mascot: Most idols have these, whose imagery typically represents their fanbase at large (e.g. Ina's Takodachi), though there are also several mascots who exist independently of the viewership as well (e.g. Fauna's Nemu, Kaela's Galon, etc...). Special mention goes to Iroha, who was collectively adopted by the Hoshiyomi as their representative due to Suisei's insistence on not giving them a mascot to identify as.
  • Mass "Oh, Crap!": The moment Sora innocently uttered "Motherfucker" on Coco's weekly Reddit shitpost review is the moment Coco, the chat and (probably) the staff started panicking, with everyone jokingly declaring YAGOO's dream as officially dead.
  • Modesty Shorts: Initially averted as early 3D models had detailed panties on characters with skirts. But as YouTube began cracking down on explicit content, all the models would replace the panties with black spats.
  • Multinational Team:
    • Hololive has active Indonesian and English branches, as well as a defunct Chinese one.
    • Among the JP members, Coco Kiryu is part-American, Haato Akai is part-Filipino, and Kanade Otonose is Korean.
    • The English branch has members in the United States, Australia note , Canada note , the Philippinesnote  a native German speaker note , two Korean speakers note  and a native Spanish speaker note .
    • UMISEA is their first collaboration foray into themed subunits across the different language branches, grouping Aqua and Marine from the Japanese side with Ina and Gura from the English side. Other inter-branch themed collaborations include holodeath (Calliope, Ollie, Rushia) and holotori/holobirds (Kiara, Reine, Subaru, Mumei, Lui).
  • Name Order Confusion: The Multinational Team can sometimes cause confusion on what name order they're using. Haachama thought that Amelia's given name was Watson until their second collab.
  • The Noseless: There are a few characters, like Coco and Aki, whose nose is very small even by anime art style standards and is incredibly hard to see on their model. Their audiences jokingly make a big deal out of a "nose reveal" when their models receive an update to make it clearer.
  • Ominous Visual Glitch: Stigma in hololive Alternative, along with the general dark energy, is often accompanied with dark rectangles littered throughout, almost like blocks of missing textures. Streaks of it also either have the same dark rectangles or are missing in some horizontal lines, almost akin to static.
  • Out-of-Character Moment:
    • Generally inverted. Like most virtual YouTubers, their characters' setting is more of a suggestion than something that needs to be followed down to the letter, so they're technically always this. They follow their characters more closely either for comedic purposes or for their 3D debut streams.
    • On the other hand, when it comes to breaking their characters by the use of their natural voice instead of their character voice, this is arguably played straight. There has been a few occasions of such cases and it is usually when they are startled or concentrating intensely.
  • Painting the Medium: Watson's debut stream involved a section with her "injecting" the viewers with her drugs, which was shown by various audio & visual tricks such as audio distortions, flipping the screen, using magnifiers, going off-model and inverting colours.
  • Parody Commercial: The commercials in AsaCoco News and Ame in the A.M. are parodies of real commercials. The "Neko Neko★Finyance" commercial is a more straight-up example, animated in Minecraft for use on the August 28, 2023 edition of AsaMio.
  • Percussive Therapy: A lot of the members will hit their desks in moments of frustration or when made fun of. Translator & clippers have their own running joke of adding a "losing hitpoints" effect to their videos when this happens.
  • Pineapple Ruins Pizza: A running gag is Subaru Oozora declaring "I approve! Justice!" when asked about pineapple on pizza. When up against Hololive members who dislike it (e.g. Aki Rosenthal), she'll even use it in taunts, such as, "I'm gonna make you eat pineapple pizza!"
  • The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Despite many of the cast members having rather colorful character backgrounds with clearly defined jobs, they never seem to actually do these jobs, ever, outside of throwaway skits and gags. This includes a Necromancer who (mostly) never resurrects the dead, a literal Pirate who never partakes in any piracy (or even have a ship for that matter), a Grim Reaper who never kills anyone, a knight who never fights monsters, and more.
  • Product Placement: Sponsored streams are very common. Sometimes they are stranger than the simple "members play the game for an hour" standard.
    • "Curry Meshi vs. hololive" features the eponymous Nissin product front and center, with the various hololive girls getting addicted to Curry Meshi almost like it's a drug addiction. (Amusingly, this animated short is relatively sane compared to Nissin's other ads.)
    • On January 30th, 2021, Gura sang a mini karaoke that served as an advertisement for the global release of Princess Connect! Re:Dive. Gura goes into detail about the game, starts off by mentioning the 40 anime waifus available in the game and wondered if the chat was about to erupt into a waifu war.
    • Inverted in the case of Taco Bell's "Nacho Fries" commercial, where Gura appears on a billboard in the background as a Freeze-Frame Bonus.
    • In late 2020, Luna played the remaster of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, complete with a custom level that the developers had made, where the skatepark when viewed from above was a giant Luna. During a sponsored stream for Xbox Game Pass in April 2021, she played two different games that were available on the subscription service, Microsoft Flight Simulator and Forza Horizon 4. In Flight Sim, Luna had no idea how to play because of the poor tutorials and language issues, but she managed to turn on the autopilot, describing it as her butler flying the plane, flew around Tokyo before crashing into the ground due to the autopilot not being capable of landing the plane properly. While playing Forza Horizon 4, her driving resulted in her going at maximum speed while completely out of control, doing massive jumps and at one point driving on top of a lake, screaming the whole time.
  • Pseudo-Romantic Friendship: Several. Unsurprising, given the Improbably Female Cast.
    • Okayu and Korone are Sickeningly Sweethearts that have known each other since before they joined hololive.
    • Marine and Rushia are in a similar boat, although they aren't as openly affectionate.
    • Matsuri and Fubuki, mainly early on in their careers. The fact that Matsuri repurposed the Louise copypasta for Fubuki should say a lot.
    • Pekora and Miko are Vitriolic Best Buds, with some of their fans insisting they're Tsundere for each other, and also knew each other before they joined hololive.
    • Noel and Flare flirt regularly on frequent collab streams, with multiple Minecraft dates and a real life inn tour taking them to multiple date spots. Noel also displays the occasional comic yandere tendency for Flare around the rest of the third generation.
    • Haato specifically designed a room in her house in Animal Crossing: New Horizons to be her and Watame's little love nest. There were also infamous incidents such as when she was quizzed by Choco about Watame's birthday and the chat joked that she forgot her wife's birthday.
    • Coco and Kanata, since moving in together and for a while before that, have a dynamic that can be best described as a married couple. Marine points this out on her visit to their apartment that Coco's demeanor is much like the man of the house while Kanata acts like her doting housewife.
    • Botan and Lamy, due to their personalities meshing well together. Botan goes out her way to heal Lamy in multiplayer games, and the latter is usually shown hiding behind Botan whenever she has no idea what is going on or being scared at horror games. In fact, during G5's Craftopia stream, Lamy tends to scold Nene and Polka's behavior like an angry mom while Botan enables their behavior like a very loose dad. When they played Minecraft together on a busy day, Botan deliberately chooses to sleep next to her, to Lamy's surprise.
    • Kiara and Calliope from the English branch straddle the line with this, despite Calli's insistence that it's one-sided. Calli tends to be more abrasive only when in Kiara's presence while Kiara flirts with her to exacerbate the situation. Despite this on-screen dynamic, Kiara and Calli have shown to support each other whole-heartedly behind the scenes (such as Calli giving Kiara equipment or Kiara hosting a collaboration on Calli's channel due to her own equipment being lackluster), even agreeing on a hashtag to share fanart of themselves as a couple.
    • Kronii and Mumei also have this dynamic, though it's less tsundere than kuudere that Kronii attempts to be. Generally she'll try to tease Mumei only to inevitably end up as the one who's flustered, either by Mumei's sincerity or by her giving as good as she gets.
    • When the English branch first debuted, Gura and Amelia had this vibe, with Ame doing a song cover with altered lyrics called "Gawr Gura Doesn't Know I Exist" and Gura frequently saying that the song she's about to sing (which inevitably will be a love song) reminds her of Ame. As the number of interbranch collabs has increased, however, Gura is now in a long-distance relationship with Shion, leading them to get married in Minecraft.
  • Random Events Plot: In December 2021, several of the EN girls, plus Reine from ID, began a sort of impromptu collaborative writing project in Minecraft. They started out with a simple Reine Shipping fic and then would write their own spinoffs or continuations thereof. The result is this trope, with the plot direction changing on a dime, characters randomly appearing or disappearing from the story, going on tangents about bidets, being teleported around, attacked by hordes of foxes, or turned into vampires.
  • Recycled Title: hololive is the name of Cover Corp.'s proprietary face tracking app (to make their Live2D models work) as well as the name of the group itself.
  • Restart the World: The HalloweEN horror anthology very strongly implies the universe the lore of the talents is set in is the result of Ina successfully achieving this in a previous timeline, also hinting that this is the real reason Myth and Council have powers due to the unseen force she attracted (implied to be the viewers) altering reality.
  • Revision: Considering how brief the official hololive website is when it comes to introducing the talents, revisions happen when the talents themselves expand on the backstories of their character over the course of their streaming career. This leads to a bit of Archive Binge where the only way to know more In-Universe details about a character is to find the small moments where they offhandedly mention these small expansions to their story. For example, you wouldn't know that Kiryu Coco's tail is actually fake or that Ayunda Risu is actually two characters just from reading their entries on the official website. Thankfully, a lot of these revisions get added to the Characters page as they are revealed.
  • Ridiculously Cute Critter: Most of the fanbase mascots are this, but some standout examples are:
  • Roger Rabbit Effect: Not on hololive's own official platforms, but the talents will occasionally appear next to live actors in Special Guest or Dualvertisement promotions on other channels.
  • Running Gag: Has its own page here.
  • School Festival:
    • Mio and Miko hosted a sports festival in Minecraft on November 21st, 2020 featuring almost every member of the main branch up to 5th Gen note  along with holoID and Sora as a guest team. The event lasted around 5 1/2 hours with perspectives from Miko and the team captains Pekora, Haato, Aqua, and Fubuki.
    • They hosted a second sports festival in Minecraft the following year on November 6, 2021 featuring an extended roster of the main branch up to 5th Gen plus the foreign branches. Just like the previous year, the event lasted around 5 1/2 hours with perspectives from Miko and the team captains Pekora, Fubuki, IRyS, Subaru, Aqua, and Bae.
    • They hosted a third sports festival on November 6, 2022 featuring three teams, with Subaru leading the yellow team. The event lasted for 3 hours and 7 minutes with perspectives from Miko as the official; Fubuki, Kanata, and Towa for the first half of the festival; and Suisei, Pekora, and Botan for the latter half.
  • Secret Identity: Like other major VTuber groups, official communications from the VTubers take great care to prevent possible leaks on the alternate online identities or real life identities of the people who play the characters. note  Despite this, there are instances of performers being identified while off-camera through happenstance (friends and family discovering them or fans hearing them speak). Such interaction has been noted to be an appreciative but minor annoyance at best.
  • Schizo Tech: Joking about this being the case for the joint hololive Minecraft server is a common Running Gag among the EN girls and their fanbases. Built up over several years by dozens of idols, the JP part is a sprawling, vaguely futuristic metropolis, filled with modern-style architecture and buildings and many technological conveniences like automatic lights. Meanwhile, the relatively new EN section resembles more a feudal hamlet with the occasional bit of crude, industrial era-type machinery. Calliope Mori in particular is prone to stressing that she often feels like a cavewoman living next to aliens from the future. Upon visiting the ID server, Ina had pretty much the same experience. A couple of days following Ina's visit, Mumei and Baelz did the same, with the latter basically turning into a depressed zombie upon seeing Moona's colossal storage vault complete with automatic item sorting, later once again using the caveman analogy.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Show Within a Show:
    • "AsaCoco" ("Morning Coco"), a Parody News segment run by Coco, complete with commercials and segments run by the other members such as Luna's English Learning Corner.
    • "Holotalk", a late night Talk Show-type show hosted by Kiara where she interviews various hololive members on the JP side using her fluency in both Japanese and English to communicate to both audiences.
    • With Coco's graduation, two hololive members have taken up the slack. Haachama, upon returning from her hiatus on July 24th, 2021, continued her Reddit Shitpost Review under the same name. Meanwhile, Amelia launched a new show named "Ame in the A.M.", a Spiritual Successor to AsaCoco as a Parody News morning Talk Show style segment with parody commercials. Ame in the A.M. would be discontinued and Koyori would instead be the one to truly take Coco's legacy, by launching "AsaKoyo" ("Morning Koyo") every Tuesday and Friday morning for four seasons. There is also Mel, who launches "AsaMel" ("Morning Mel") a Thursday morning or two from May 19, 2022, occupying the original AsaKoyo Radio spot. Haachama would later launch "Haato na News" starting October 2022, airing irregularly on Sunday mornings. AsaKoyo would later be relegated to only run on every Tuesday morning beginning with Season 5. Ame would later return with a new Sunday night program called "Weekly Watson", where she reviews her weekly activities in a similar manner to Bettel's "Week in Review".
    • "AsaMio" ("Morning Mio"), which is a simple chatting stream held on Monday mornings by Mio, with occasional news within hololive every now and then.
    • "Hanakishi Radio", the first example by Holostars, a morning news segment run by Miyabi and Temma.
    • With the debut of hololive Indonesia Generation 3, Kaela started launching her own spin of "AsaCoco": "Pejuang Senin" ("Monday Warriors").
    • Iofi holds regular Monday night art streams titled "Senin Produktif" ("Productive Monday").
    • "OhaSuba" ("Good Morning Suba"), a Saturday morning chatting stream hosted by Subaru, with occasional news from within hololive just like Monday's AsaMio.
    • "Sunday Muscle", Noel's Sunday morning chatting stream.
    • From October 19, 2022, Ollie would launch her own Wednesday morning news and talk show titled "RadiOllie", which runs on a biweekly basis, although, as of 2023, she streams this on an irregular basis.
    • "Kanatan Roadshow", which is Kanata's series of members-only movie watchalong streams.
    • "Koyori's Recommended Movies," a successor to "Kanatan Roadshow" hosted by Koyori.
    • "Mamah Moona", a special early morning talking stream hosted by Moona every 3 or 4 days during the Islamic holy month of Ramadhan, before the dawn prayer.
    • "Bae-Gemite Domination", where Bae challenges different members of the Japanese branch and Cover staff to try tasting Australia's spiciest sauce, vegemite.
    • "Holoyoi", where Calli invites different members of the Japanese branch for a nighttime drinking stream.
    • "FUWAMOCO Morning", a talk show hosted by Fuwawa and Mococo every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning. It often features the Misunderstanding Corner, where they issue a correction or apology for a mishap in a previous stream.
  • Singing Voice Dissonance: Unless their names are Sora, AZKi, and Suisei, it's easy forget that the girls are idol singers. Their speaking voices heavily contrasts their singing voice, such as Towa who has a nasally voice, but has a powerful singing voice.
  • Slice of Life: The 3D animated shorts on hololive's main channel often have this kind of plot, although they also usually have some sort of Surreal Humor aspect to them. The sheer strangeness of their skits got lampshaded in the main channel's 1st anniversary video, which is simply a Fixed Camera Clip Show highlighting some of the more unusual things that have happened in hololive's break room. For the Holostars boys, this is done with their own spin of the shorts titled "stars*collection", airing on Holostars' main channel.
  • Song Parody: The "HAACHAMA COOKING SONG♪" takes the beats from the TKG song (a song about cooking up a Japanese dish Gone Horribly Wrong.), strips off the lyrics and replaces them with Haachama's brand of insanity.
  • Spear Counterpart: One of hololive's sub-divisions, holostars, is comprised solely of male talent.
  • Spirit World: Makai. Roughly meaning "Demon Realm", Makai is stated to be the birthplace of a relatively large number of hololive members. Confirmed inhabitants of said world includes vampires, witches, Onis, demons, Necromancers, imps and succubi. Besides earth, this is largest shared 'world' that hololive members hail from.
  • Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: From "Myth or Treat":
    Ina: In the graveyard we will be.
    Kiara: If you're looking for a scream.
    Gura: Singing songs that make you Pee-A-R-T-Y, hehe.
  • Super-Deformed: A feature present in almost every branch, but most prominent among the EN and ID members, the majority of whom have their own chibi models, typically referred to as "Smol", that are refined versions of fanartnote  that would be used while streaming or during special occasions. Occasionally, these super deformed selves would spin off into their own supporting characters separate from the main idols themselves, as exemplified in the cases of Smol Ame and Smol Ina.
  • Tamer and Chaster: Some of the girls' official artists actually drew fan art Hentai. For the girls themselves, they keep it very low-key and try not to heavily sexualize the talents they are artists of. Aqua in particular requests her artist to downlow her chest after she complains about her chest getting bigger.
  • The Teetotaler: Although some of the girls were notable, or in some cases notorious, to drink alcohol on-stream to varying degrees, none of the ID girls were as much touching it in their streams or even in IRL meetings. Justified, as their culture and laws prohibits them from drinking openly in public and on-stream.
  • Unaffected by Spice: The Indonesian girls, relative to everyone else, have the reputation of being extremely resistant to all sorts of spicy foods, especially Moona who is known to bring her own spices when she travels. Even Reine, who is said to have the lowest spice tolerance of all ID members, still manages to baffle Subaru by comfortably eating spicy rice crackers and curry that the latter struggles with.
  • Unlicensed Game: My Busty Girlfriends, a so-called "erasure game" that featured a piece of fanart showing Choco, Noel and Marine front and center for its cover art... and that's as far as the game's involvement with Hololive goes. It was ostensibly released in August 2021 (although there is no option to actually buy it) with one hololive news channel putting it in the spotlight a month later. It's apparently the result of a Kickstarter campaign by the same developer for an unlicensed Hololive Dating Sim, which unsurprisingly was shut down by Cover Corp. for copyright infringement after bringing a lot of attention and money.
  • Unusual Halo:
    • The default version of an angelic Virtual YouTuber Kanata Amane from has a golden four-edged star-shaped halo.
    • IRyS the angel-demon Nephilim has a halo that consists of three small stars that can turn black or white.
  • Unwise Owl: Nanashi Mumei, the Guardian of Civilization and Barn Owl flips between this and The Owl-Knowing One on a regular basis. She is the keeper of all the wisdom that comes from watching over Mankind's development over the countless millennia. However, with it comes the ability to outright forget mankind's accomplishments as well, as even her own knowledge ends up lost with the decline of civilizations. Right in her very debut, she introduced herself three times over in quick succession because she couldn't remember if she introduced herself. She is a bit scatterbrained and has the tendency to "forgor" things. Even by her admittance, her current name is simply the last one she can remember.
  • Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises: Also referred to as "gangimari", this is a Live2D feature available to a decent amount of idols, who typically use it as an indication of great shock, or that it's time to get dangerous.
  • World of Badass: With characters ranging between a Dual Wielding-proficient oni, the insanely strong leader of a knight order, a freaking dragon in human form (not anymore though, thanks to her graduation), a pupil of the Grim Reaper himself, and a Nephilim capable of blanketing an entire city in either light or darkness with something as simple as a Badass Fingersnap, it's safe to assume that the world the hololive girls inhabit is this.
  • Your Size May Vary: Since the 3D models are based on a combination of the character's artwork and the performer's real body, their heights may not be consistent canon. For example, Kanata's 3D model is noticeably taller than Watame's despite Watame being 2 cm taller, while Mio towers over nearly everyone despite officially being 155 cm tall (at least until the official site changed it to 165 cm with heels and discounting her wolf ears).

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Kronii's Spider Encounter

Ouro Kronii encounters a spider in her room. Much screaming ensues.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (7 votes)

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Main / SpidersAreScary

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