[“Hear from our CEO, Takeshi-san, at 8 PM JST tonight!”]

There was a tweet from ‘@AnyCloverGlobal’ that was announcing that ‘Takeshi’, who was the CEO of AnyClover, was going to do some virtual press. For what, I don’t know. I didn’t click on the link in the post. I didn’t even follow ‘@AnyCloverGlobal’—it was on the top of my ‘For You’ page. It was around 8 PM on the East Coast, which meant that whatever was happening was going to happen in around twelve hours.

I’ve seen Takeshi before–he was sometimes the butt of playful jokes made by the AnyClover community. His real job, outside of being CEO, was to be the de-facto leader of AnyClover. The ‘CEO’ title already implied that, but as his employees were the face of AnyClover Entertainment, he was the face for AnyClover Corporate.

As for the man himself, I had never heard much about him. Michael hasn’t ever talked about him other than in a joking capacity. It’s not surprising, considering they’re thousands of miles away from each other, and the fact that Michael is only one of dozens, if not hundreds, of AnyClover employees. The language barrier might not be as big of a deal, since Michael, as with every other VTuber it seems, has a rudimentary understanding of Japanese, but it didn’t matter. No direct line of communication between the two. At least to my understanding.

Takeshi himself was as plain as they come. Wearing standard Japanese businessman attire, the only difference between him and the average salaryman was that he had a smile on his face. Aside from his grin, he looked like the average everyday man.

His influence, or lack of influence, on AnyClover was a bit interesting. His word as good as gold when it came to anything AnyClover, but those words were only sparsely seen.

Going back to the post, ‘@ANYCLOVER_GLOBAL’ tagged ‘@takeshi_clover’, which had to be his official Twitter account.

Clicking on it, the first thing I saw was that he had thirty-thousand tweets. Damn, maybe I’m wrong here and he’s larger than I thought. The guy had near half a million followers. Nowhere near what the top VTubers in AnyClover had, but it was about the same as Michael and Violet. A few scrolls showed that most of those tweets were him retweeting one of the AnyClover VTubers or upcoming events. The first tweet that had words typed by him was of him congratulating a group of Japanese AnyClover VTubers on their second anniversary. I’ve never heard of them–there were a lot more Japanese VTubers on the roster than non-Japanese. That tweet was three days ago. There was also one of him celebrating the concert Violet and her cohorts did a few weeks ago. I still haven’t watched that all the way through.

Scrolling further down, I came to the realization that while I was wrong about the extent of how much Takeshi uses his voice, I was right that he doesn’t usually use his own. He used his voice to amplify his employees’. It made sense–after all, people are there to see his employees, not him. There was an affinity for him throughout the AnyClover community, but that had risen from a love of watching VTubers that he, by chance of being the CEO, had given a platform to. He was liked not because of what he did, but because of the joy that he had brought to the screens of millions. His seemingly ‘hands off’ nature was particularly good, especially in an industry that’s driven by creativity and improvisation.

His lack of intention of putting any ‘Takeshi’ style into AnyClover reminded me of the bosses of motorsport teams–unlike the laid-back approach Takeshi had, racing team bosses were stereotypically autocratic with how they ran the team.

The most famous contemporary example of this that came to mind was Ron Dennis, the long-time CEO of McLaren and Team Principal of the McLaren Formula One racing team. While the team was started by Bruce McLaren, who sadly passed away testing a Can-Am car in 1970, the aesthetic revolving around the name ‘McLaren’ has more to do with the legacy of Ron Dennis. Zak Brown’s tenure as McLaren’s generalissimo has brought a return to its original form, color scheme-wise. I’m biased, but I quite like the papaya.

Ron Dennis’s aesthetic could very well be called an anti-aesthetic. His whole thing was ‘grey’. Everything grey. Once Marlboro left as title sponsor, the car turned from a beautiful white and red to a stern grey. About everything in the McLaren Technology Centre, which was built under his tenure, is grey. It’s an impressive structure that’s pleasing to the eye, but everything except the grass is GREY. A choice made by one man for one man. Hell, according to Adrian Newey, legendary designer of F1 cars who worked under Ron for a while, the callsign for Ron’s private plane was GREY as well.

Dennis, while having an aesthetic of a bad day, also enforced his vision onto everyone who worked for him. A true dictator–he had to have total control of everything under the McLaren sun. A real control freak.

What did McLaren accomplish under his iron fist? Well, quite a lot–seven Constructors’ Championships and ten Drivers’ Championships in his nearly thirty-year run as team principal. McLaren is currently second in Formula One Grand Prix wins all time, only losing to Ferrari. More than half of them came under Dennis’s rule.

When you look at who drove for him, it becomes no wonder he was so successful. First Niki Lauda, who won his last title with him in 1984. Then later on, having Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost driving for you, at the same time. Both drivers are easily top-10 all-time F1 drivers. Mika Hakkinen then drove for him and brought him double titles in 1998 and 1999. Lewis Hamilton, who Ron has known since he was a 10-year-old phenom in the UK karting scene, is often seen as his crowning achievement. In his rookie year, he almost won the world title with McLaren, losing only to Kimi Raikkonen, who had left McLaren the year before. Lewis Hamilton would win a Drivers’ Title in 2008, but only enjoyed moderate success until he left for Mercedes. That’s when he took off and became quite possibly the best driver to ever grace the sport.

Other drivers of note to drive under him were Gerhard Berger, David Coulthard (famous for his chin), Juan Pablo Montoya (who won a championship in CART and drove in NASCAR for an extended period. He statistically had a way better career in F1 than he did in NASCAR, which makes it seem strange to understand why he left F1 in the first place–that is until you understand that he was driving for Ron Dennis. Juan himself being a particularly outspoken character versus the dictatorship of Ron–a partnership that was just waiting to blow up once the ship was sailing less soundly.), and Jenson Button. Fernando Alonso also drove for him for one eventful year. That’s a story for another time.

Needless to say, Ron Dennis had the backing talent in order to enforce his will. Not to mention that the McLaren car itself was consistently one of the top-performing on the grid during that time–there was an eighth Constructors’ Title that McLaren would have won if the FIA didn’t strip them of all their points for their involvement in ‘Spygate’, the espionage controversy stemming from a disgruntled senior Ferrari employee, Nigel Stepney, sharing confidential information about the Ferrari car to Mike Coughlan, a senior McLaren engineer. The story only broke after Coughlan’s wife took the stolen confidential information to a local copy shop. The owner of the copy shop, by chance a huge Ferrari fan, saw that the near eight-hundred pages of information he was copying was of top-secret technical information about the Ferrari car. An email shot from the copy shop owner in Woking, England to Ferrari HQ in Maranello, Italy was the tipoff. They might have gotten away with it if they went to a copy shop not owned by a tifoso.

The result of the investigation, along with the exclusion from the 2007 Constructors’ Championship, was that McLaren was fined $100 million–$5 million for the crime, and $95 million for Ron ‘being a cunt’, according to Max Mosley, then President of the FIA. Max would know something about cunts, especially since his pops, ‘Sir’ Oswald Mosley, was infamously the leader of the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s. Apparently, the mutual grudge held between Ron Dennis and Max Mosley cut so deep that excluding McLaren from the 2008 Formula One season was a serious option, and was only dropped after other pleading from Bernie Ecclestone, then sole owner of the Formula One commercial rights, not to do so. A penalty as heavy-handed as that had the risk of erasing the McLaren name, one of the most well-known Formula One teams, from the fold altogether. If you take the example of the ‘Death Penalty’ that Southern Methodist University football program was handed in the mid-1980s for the crime of paying players to play for them, it’s quite possible that the risk of McLaren’s becoming extinct in Formula One was certain if handed a similar ‘Death Penalty’. College football and Formula One are two vastly different sports, but being excluded for a whole season has drastic consequences for both. SMU hasn’t been the same since. The risk of permanent damage to the Formula One World Championship was more than the need to ‘teach a lesson’. The ‘lesson’ in this case being ‘Fuck you Ron.’ In defense of Ron, as far as I know, he had no involvement in Spygate, and immediately reported it when he found out. That was his downfall–he put too much trust into his employees and assumed he had control over them, not knowing what they were doing behind his back. He may be a dick, but he was never a cheat–innocent until proven guilty!

Back on the grey tangent–the McLaren F1 car didn’t really take on Ron’s vision until the late nineties. Before then, Marlboro had their logo plastered all over the McLaren’s for two decades. Marlboro’s color scheme being red and white, combined with the fact that they were paying the bills, meant that the car had to be red and white. Thankfully it was a beautiful livery. It’s iconic. Cigarette money was endless, and while throwing money at a car won’t magically make it go faster, it gives the resources to do the research in order to make it go faster. You don’t get Adrian Newey on the cheap.

In 1997, McLaren changed title sponsors from Marlboro to West, another cigarette brand. West’s color schemes are grey and red, which made it way easier to introduce a grey-ish silver on the livery as well. A new identity brought on by new sponsors brought us into ‘Ron’s World’.

The McLaren of that time, while appearing quite dull on the surface, is still one of the fan favorites from that time. The main reason why (in my opinion) was because they won a lot. Winning is the best way for an ugly car to become pretty. The West McLaren car, while never ugly, had to leave its mark in order to become iconic. If it was average, then it would be a dull car forgotten in the dustbin of Formula One history. Two Drivers’ Titles and one Constructors’ was good enough to be runner-ups in that period–Michael Schumacher and Ferrari wiped the board between 2000 and 2004. Ironically, the title sponsor for Ferrari in that period was Marlboro, which suited the rosso corsa that surrounded the prancing horse’s body. It’s that reason why Marlboro is mostly associated with Ferrari today, even though they had a partnership with McLaren for just as long, with their logo being plastered on McLaren for way longer. Tobacco companies were banned from putting their name on the cars in the 2000s–advertisement law and all of that–it’s the reason why you don’t see any F1 cars with cigarette brands on them anymore. A win for public health, but a great loss for aesthetics.

Moving on from West, whose huge logo on the sidepod of the McLaren’s more and more were replaced with driver names (‘WEST’ replaced with ‘MIKA’, ‘DAVID’, or ‘KIMI’ for example) as tobacco ad laws became strict to the point where you couldn’t show them in continental Europe by the mid-2000s. Replacing them was Vodafone, a cellular services company, which made it two sponsors in a row that offered no services to the USA.

The ‘Vodafone’ period saw only some chances to the livery, the main one being it becoming metallic–something that increased its aesthetic value immensely. In my opinion anyway. The metallic was a style of grey, which fit Ron’s Vision.

If the metallics caught the eye, the rookie driver wringing it by its neck and almost winning the Drivers’ Title in his first year of competing instantly made it a classic. Lewis Hamilton–Sir Lewis Hamilton to be correct, but this was before he earned the title. Year two, he got his first title. A good-looking car looks even better when it wins.

A few years into the Vodafone era, Ron took a step back from being Team Principal to focus on other areas within McLaren. While he wasn’t as public anymore, his rule was still very much in function. In fact, in this period, Ron had completed his conceptualization of his aesthetic. It’s most completely shown in the animated cartoon Tooned. Excuse the funny name–most people online call it McLaren Tooned. Watching the shorts, you can see Ron’s Vision, or animators’ interpretation of it anyway. While almost everything is a tone of grey, the atmosphere and vibes are positive. Like if Cloud City was real, combined with that water world they go to in episode three of Star Wars. The cartoon is set in the McLaren Technology Centre, which is shown to be a futuristic utopia–everything inside the building is state-of-the-art, and if anything gets broken in the episode (it’s a comedic cartoon, which means the car explodes in many episodes), it’s magically fixed by the next episode. Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button, Sergio Perez, Kevin Magnussen, and others are characters in the show–since McLaren changed drivers often from season to season, each season of McLaren Tooned usually had a new cast. Other drivers, like Mika Hakkinen and a teenage Nyck de Vries, a decade before he made his F1 debut, make cameos. While advertised as the ‘next big thing’ on McLaren Tooned, his grand prix career only lasted a handful of races, being booted from AlphaTauri ten races into the season, just a few days ago funnily enough. He’s a great driver, but got a rough deal which was destined to fail. He’ll bounce back. The series is on YouTube if you’re interested in watching it.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

As for Ron, he sold all his shares in McLaren in 2017 and ceased to have anything to do with them. It’s a long story how that happened, something that I’m not that interested in getting into. Boardroom politics.

After he left, you could see a drastic change aesthetically. While his legacy will never be forgotten, his aesthetic was painted over almost immediately.

In the final years of his tenure at McLaren, the livery became more and more dull, eventually losing all of its metallic grey and being replaced with a rather disappointing black. It’s hard to fuck up black, but McLaren did during that time. The car itself, while competitive in the early-2010s, slipped into midfield and backmarker obscurity by the middle of the decade. A bad car will only make it uglier.

Once he left, the livery started to shed any traces of his vision. By 2019 or 2020 they had changed back to the papaya that they rocked so many years ago. A shout out to a different era of McLaren–one before Ron. Today, there are almost zero traces of his touch on the current McLaren organization, BUT his mark will never be forgotten. Many cars he’s been behind are on display at the McLaren Technology Centre, which by now is no longer ‘state-of-the-art’. The current McLaren CEO, Zak Brown, is more of a public-pacing, glass half-full type of guy. He is American, and is fulfilling several of the stereotypes. He definitely is less autocratic than Mr. Dennis.

You may be thinking–what the hell does this have to do with Takeshi? Well, in all honesty, not that much, considering that ‘Takeshi’s World’ is more than likely not a thing, or if it is a thing, it consists of Virtual YouTubers doing their thing, within the YouTube guidelines.

The main input that Takeshi had, other than these occasional public-facing events, were deep into the AnyClover website. Financial reports were open to the public, but were rarely read by the core audience, unless a VTuber they liked was included in the press release or if they just care that much. The main audience for these were potential investors and companies researching if collaborating with the AnyClover brand was worth the price of admission.

Thankfully, along with the financial report was a PowerPoint presentation that put those boring words into slightly less-boring images. I’ve read many yawn-inducing things at university, so a PowerPoint presentation about financial results wasn’t anything daunting…well, I say that, but a lot of this stuff was still going over my head.

The PowerPoint I was reading was in English, but at the same time wasn’t. It seemed like it was a direct translation–skimming to the bottom, I discovered that this was the case. ‘This material is an English translation of the original Japanese language material and has been prepared solely for reference purposes’ was the way they put it. The presentation used ‘VTuber’ and ‘VTubers’ interchangeably, as if they sometimes remembered that English uses an ‘s’ to separate singulars and plurals, while at other times they didn’t bother. A small disclaimer on the bottom stating ‘Information contained in this document is confidential and property. Please do not reproduce or distribute with out permission.’ was lost on me, since usually confidential information isn’t able to be Googled. Not like there were any hidden secrets within the PowerPoint in the first place. The convoluted English made the presentation harder to read, but it still got the point across. Most times this is being presented in Japanese anyway.

In the AnyClover fold, there were seventy-five VTubers in total. Around ten of them were part of AnyClover EN–Michael and Violet were the only two out of the seventy-five that I knew at a personal level. The eight other members were still strangers to me–well, I know Dusty and Yuji somewhat now, but I still haven’t talked to them in a voice call or played any games with them. The group chat I was in with them was barren, other than the occasional post about the upcoming trip. Everything about the hotel had been booked by now, and I had been given the dates to take off. I even got to use PTO on it! I’d still be paid like I was at the Hobby while trying to erase it from my mind for a few days. Sometimes having a full-time job ruled. As far as I know, the boys’ audience still didn’t know about the trip. As far as I knew, that would only be revealed a few days before the trip.

Of the sixty-five other AnyClover VTubers, the grand majority of them were Japanese. The company, being Japanese, started with Japanese VTubers, and only ventured into North America in the last two years. There are also some Korean and Indonesian VTubers–about ten of each if my count was correct. I was surprised that there were no Chinese VTubers in the fold–I knew many Chinese people (Chinese-American, Chinese-Canadian, and plain ol’ Chinese) watched VTubers, but that didn’t translate to representation with VTubers themself. At least at AnyClover. If I were in the boardroom with Takeshi, and had a good enough grasp of business Japanese to ask, that would be the second question I would ask. The first would be whatever happened to the racing sim setup that was taken away from me. But really, I would like to know why there hasn’t been any expansion into the Chinese market, despite it being a hotbed for potential new viewers along with new VTubers. There had to be a reason for it, and it wasn’t because they would potentially be segregated by website (China had their own YouTube-clone, Bilibili, which was the choice for most Chinese users. As far as I knew, you needed a VPN to access YouTube there which cut out the less tech-savvy viewers.) Perhaps it was too much trouble for its worth? The return on investment isn’t there? I’m not accepting nativism as the answer because why would they have Korean VTubers then? The answer more than likely had to do with the amount of investment it would take versus the return on it–why start a completely new endeavor on a website that only one (huge) country uses? That being said, Bilibili still had hundreds of millions of users, so it wasn’t like it was a niche website.

Moving to the ‘Financial Highlights’–AnyClover had reported an 18 billion yen in revenue for the last fiscal year. That was around 125 million dollars when converted. The yen has been becoming weaker in the last year, which meant while their revenue was growing at an acceptable rate, it looked worse when converted to the dollar. Still nothing to sneeze at, however, especially since the graphs provided showed that the revenue was increasing at a consistent rate, with no drop-off in sight. Profit was at around 2.5 billion yen, which was around 17.5 million dollars. Wow! Divide that between the seventy-five VTubers in the roster, it meant that each VTuber produced 30 million yen, or more than two-hundred thousand dollars, in revenue within the last year. Now, I’m not a VTuber expert, but I know that not all VTubers are created equal. Some generated more revenue than others. Sometimes that was the case due to longevity–the nature of corporate VTubing shields them from being involved in most controversies that ‘regular’ streamers could find themselves in. It wasn’t impossible, but a good majority of ‘corpo tubers’ knew that it wasn’t good business to constantly be embroiled in controversy. They could be dropped at any moment if one proved to be hurting the bottom line enough. The VTubers that had been around for around half a decade now straight had some of the biggest fanbases. They had the most subscribers, and while some of that contained dead subs and subscribers that had moved on to other VTubers, they were still consistently at the top of the earnings sheet. They had years of merchandise drops, live concerts, and various other revenue-producing endeavors that would make Takeshi and the rest of corporate very happy. The top five VTubers in AnyClover generated approximately twenty percent of the revenue, which to be honest was a bit lower than I anticipated. Goes to show how much AnyClover invests in diversifying and future-proofing their product. Have too few VTubers and you run into the risk of a significant drop off in revenue if one of your cash-cows decides to move on. Have too many, and you have the risk of diluting the market and losing revenue on your newer and less popular VTubers. The bottom five VTubers only generated two percent of total revenue. I assume these consisted of the VTubers who were in the latest debut AnyClover rolled out.

As to how AnyClover generates that revenue, around half of it comes from merchandise sales. That includes stuff like posters, plushies, acrylic stands, and even voice packs, which are the most frequently released ‘merch’. I use quotes because I struggled to understand how it could qualify as merchandise. You can’t physically hold a sound clip…well, you can physically hold a flash drive that has all the voice packs in the world. In that way, it did make sense. But considering the voice packs were delivered digitally via MP3, it felt a bit silly. If it sells, then who am I to scoff at it? There was a low overhead with them, guaranteed to produce a profit. The hardest part would have to be coordinating the VTubers that accepted the project and making sure they turned in their contribution within time.

Livestreaming generated twenty percent of the total revenue–superchats, memberships, and AdSense was included in this. I didn’t anticipate AdSense being a big enough contributor to even be included, but I guess it did add up if you had seventy-five channels that livestreamed at least three times a week. I know YouTube took approximately half of the superchat and membership money–everyone had to get paid somehow I guess.

Promotions were another twenty percent of the revenue. I sure hope Franatrec didn’t pay a shitton for that one stream. I did my best, but the stream setup itself was a bit slapdash. We didn’t even have a wheel and or pedal cam! I knew there were middling mobile games that did many promotions with not just AnyClover, but with NijiLive as well. The VTubers have to disclose that they’re doing a promotional stream so as to not lead their audience astray. Another tell is that these streams usually are shorter, with most of them ending soon after ninety minutes has passed. I don’t blame them, since most of those games look like hot garbage. I also knew that in Japan they did a lot more localized promotions, with certain VTubers collaborating with a bookstore or a local chain cafe, for example. Things of that nature. In America, that stuff was probably only worth it in major metropolitan areas like New York City or San Francisco.

The final ten percent of revenue came from live events that AnyClover hosted. These were events not unlike the concert that Violet and her female VTubers did a few weeks ago. I don’t think there were any live tickets for that concert, so the money from that came from digital tickets that were sold online. The concert was uploaded on YouTube not soon afterwards, so I don’t really see the point of buying a ticket for it, but I wasn't the audience in the first place. There was also merchandise related to the event, which of course drove up the merch revenues. The ‘idol’ aspect of VTubing is at its strongest here. Not only can Violet play games, but she can also sing and dance. Most VTubers can at least do one of those–usually singing. Hell, Michael even has a few songs where he has a verse. I guess it’s required of you. Another reason why I couldn’t do what he does. But back to the idol part. It further endears the VTuber to their audience, since they don’t only get to see them casually while playing games, but they also get to see them in a professional capacity. If the people at Coachella liked the Tupac hologram, then VTuber fans love seeing their oshi (however many they have) on stage. To me, it felt contrived, but it wasn’t like these women (and men) didn’t want to be idols, it’s just that they would rather do it in a digital form instead of their physical one. Considering how parasocial idol culture is, I completely understand why. A lot of these VTubers are into idols themselves, so they know what they’re getting into.

That was about as much data I could extract out of the PowerPoint without directly copy and pasting graphs from it. Most of it was a primer on what the concept of ‘VTubing’ is, how the industry has grown in the past five years, and how there is still exponential room to grow. Of course, there was a ceiling to how much revenue AnyClover could make, but from the PowerPoint, it seemed like that wouldn’t happen in the short-term. While VTubing had its flirtations with the mainstream, it was still a relatively niche subgenre of streaming, compared to the most popular streamers out there. AnyClover was still a few years out from having their own product sold in Walmart.

This PowerPoint only showed the positives of AnyClover, which there were many if you were purely thinking financially. I knew from first hand that AnyClover had at least a moderate amount of dysfunction. The whole Franatrec saga taught me that. The third question I would ask Takeshi is if they would like for me to translate their literal Japanese-to-English PowerPoint to something that didn’t look machine-translated. The fee would be a low five hundred dollars. They could spare that, right?

The level of ‘yabai’ moments consisted of things like that–nothing that the public knew about, which was obviously good. There wouldn’t be an outcry from my situation, since everything was agreed on informally, but it would most certainly be something riff on about due to the humor of it all.

Something more serious, like a scandal involving one of its VTubers, could damage the image of AnyClover. While being in a relationship wasn’t explicitly forbidden, it would not be a good look if one of them was hiding the fact they were in one. It’s the flip side of being an ‘idol’. You were for everyone. It would be a betrayal if you were more intimate with one person than everyone else. Well, I don’t think AnyClover takes it that seriously, but I’d rather not find out if I was Takeshi. He’d agree with me. The damage would be relatively minor to what could happen. In a situation like that, if it was really that damning, a termination would be the best route. It’s regressive and not what I would want to do, but considering the business they’re in, it’s the only way to save face. Either that, or AnyClover would have to firmly state their position on relationships. AnyClover fans on the aggregate aren’t as regressive or reactionary as one may seem, but there would be a falling out with an undeniable percentage of the fans. Perhaps that would be for the better, since their passion borders on obsession, but at the same time they could be the people that spend the most in superchats and buy the most merch. The humane route would be to accept the fact that your VTubers are also human and also feel desire, but Takeshi isn’t here to be humane–he’s here to generate profit to the shareholders.

Something more damning, like accounting fraud, bullying of a VTuber by others within the corporation, or Takeshi himself pursuing a VTuber could cause more damage. The first would land AnyClover more in trouble with the law than with fans, but it would still not be a good look. No one wants to be the Enron of their industry. The second would leave a bitter taste in viewers' mouths, especially with the VTubers that were involved with said bullying. AnyClover would require a facelift, maybe in the form of suspending said VTubers, or even terminating them. Otherwise, it would leave a permanent stain on the corporation. I wouldn’t underestimate the amount of damage it would leave. The only thing worse than being in a relationship to many viewers is being a bully. It would destroy the harmonious culture that AnyClover has spent years fostering. It’s something that would take years to repair, if it was possible. The internet doesn’t forget, especially if you destroy their illusion of a perfect society. The third option…well, I don’t think Takeshi would be as dumb to even attempt that. What’s the point? The man probably already has a family, so why risk that. It’s such an absurd hypothetical that I didn’t even take it seriously.

It would take a lot for AnyClover to be involved in a Spygate-type scandal. The only thing I could think of that would cause them to receive a ‘death penalty’ would be if they were caught inflating viewer-counts. Those accusations are thrown often in certain parts of the internet, but a real case of view-botting could potentially get AnyClover banned from streaming on YouTube. AnyClover is big, but they aren’t too big to fail. In a situation like that, I don’t know what YouTube could do except ban the corporation from their platform. Maybe remove the ability to receive superchats and AdSense revenue along with removing the membership function? Something like that would not only hurt the bottom-line for AnyClover, but it would also cut deeply into the revenue that their VTubers would make. It would be worth them moving to another platform like Twitch for the time being, but there’s also the risk of the backlash getting them the same penalty there, even though the offense was committed on another website. Even a three-month suspension from it would do massive damage to the corporation and its entertainers. And not to mention the bad press it would bring. They would be called AnyBotter until they folded. The damage it would have on the viewer-base…I don’t know it would do much really, since the botting would be a company decision, not a VTuber one. I hope so at least. It would detract new viewers, but I didn’t see current viewers leaving en masse.

Just as the VTuber industry doesn’t have a Ron Dennis-type figure to define the culture and aesthetic, there also isn’t a Max Mosley to regulate, police, and antagonize the corporations along with the VTubers. There wasn’t a regulatory body like the FIA to do that, and there would never be. Just like the concept of a ‘VTuber Union’ is a far away dream. Of course, the camaraderie that some VTuber groups share could resemble something like an union, but I’m afraid that could be broken real quick if it came to that.

Takeshi’s announcement stream would be happening in primetime in Japan, which was around 7 AM on the East Coast. Needless to say, I won’t be tuning in. Not for lack of interest, but because I’d rather be snoozing. Anything that came from it would be shown to me on Twitter once I got up. I’m sure it was the same old same old. Hope it goes well.