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A Japanese virtual YouTuber has been “unmasked” from his anime avatar following a software glitch.
Recently, Japanese YouTubers have been taking advantage of motion-sensor technology that mimics body and facial movements. Essentially, they’re creating a “character” for the video instead of being themselves. The one in this story is named Nora Cat. It’s a new channel that just popped up in December, but it already has over 56,000 subscribers. The videos Nora Cat has posted so far are mostly just live streams of video game play, but it’s not a stretch to say that many of her subscribers come from young men who find the Nora Cat’s appearance appealing.
So, it probably came as a minor shock to her fans when a glitch during a recent live stream revealed the character’s originator. The people who are fans of this kind of virtual character are known as otaku, which basically refers to extreme nerds for anime or manga, and Nora Cat may lose some subscribers considering it may be hard to be attracted to a character whom you know is controlled by someone who looks kind of like you.
But, that doesn’t really appear to be happening. In fact, the number of subscribers has increased.
We’re relying on Microsoft translator for these tweets, so take them with a grain of salt, but reaction seems to be positive, with sinnlos_cat tweeting: “The number of subscribers is increasing by about 1600 a day,” and takuan_SH tweeting: “I thought that the face of the producer might flicker every time I see it in the future, but I’ve subscribed to the channel because it was a succubus as far as I actually saw the video,” and @yuki_731014_ai tweeted: “The number of subscribers who know the contents of the old man is a lot more and laugh.”
So, the opinion seems to be, ‘who cares as long as the character is still hot!’
Another odd wrinkle to this story is that there’s a trend among the otaku to enter a relationship with one of these fictional characters, known as a waifu. Which means it’s possible that an otaku could take as a waifu a character that they know is not actually a woman under the virtual skin. In fact, some people get so into this fantasy, that there are actually guides online over how to get over a waifu addiction.
So.. .is love, love? Or, should Japanese men attracted to Nora Cat be concerned that they can now see behind the curtain? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter at @WhatsTrending.
