#oneaday Day 927: Goodbye Coco

Kiryu Coco, one of the many VTubers in the Hololive agency, "graduated" today, which, for the benefit of those of you who follow me more for retro gaming stuff than Japanese popular culture stuff, means she's stepped down from her role and said her final farewells, both to her audience and her peers.

I didn't watch a lot of Coco's stuff during her time while she was active — since her streams were primarily subtitled Japanese with occasional English, they required concentration rather than being something you could put on in the background.

But her influence could be felt absolutely everywhere in the VTuber community. She was a trendsetter, an inspiration, someone who knew how to push the boundaries — and someone who wasn't afraid to make mistakes.

She was one of the first to recognise that there was a significant overseas audience for VTuber videos, so she catered to that audience by occasionally speaking English and providing subtitles for many of her streams.

And she was the one who pushed for Hololive to expand into English-speaking territories, and thus she played a significant role in the explosion in popularity of VTubing as both a hobby and a profession for what is likely thousands of people worldwide at this point.

I watched her entire graduation stream earlier. She had the foresight to pre-record a number of interviews with other generations of Hololive and subtitle these in advance, so she was thinking of her overseas viewers right until the end — a nice touch. The last part of her stream consisted of her performing several songs with her "genmates" from the fourth generation of Hololive talent, and it was emotional to watch — particularly seeing her comrade Towa clearly breaking down in tears partway through the performance.

When she stepped off the virtual stage for the last time at the end of her performance, the silence was deafening, and the tears flowed. The room was filled with that sort of heaviness only felt when something wonderful that you'd come to take for granted is suddenly gone, and you don't know quite how to process the situation. The same feeling you feel when a family member or beloved pet passes on, or a precious relationship comes to an end; nothing quite feels real.

The performer behind Coco isn't gone — and the Internet being the Internet, she was tracked down pretty quickly and shown a massive influx of support from Coco's fans — but it's still hard not to feel that something, someone, important died today.

To those not immersed in VTuber culture this might all sound rather strange, silly or confusing. I'd call myself a relatively casual fan of VTubers at best — I don't watch many streams live and I don't throw money at these girls nightly like some people do — but I understood the significance of what happened today, and the genuine emotion that people felt as Kiryu Coco passed from being a legend in her own lifetime into simply being a legend.

The world moves on far too fast for all of us, though. It's hard to believe that Coco had become such a beloved presence in so many people's lives in just a year and a half. Granted, she had helped people through one of the most difficult 18-month periods in recent history, but even so, it's still strange to think of her being here for such a relatively brief period of time, and then gone again.

But life moves on, whether we like it or not, and people heal. Kiryu Coco will not be forgotten, and nor will the good she did for this world.

I wish the performer behind the world's favourite shitposting dragon all the love, success and happiness in the world with whatever she ends up doing next. She created something wonderful — and I'm sure she can do it again.