Wen | Reliable Editorial Board, author | Soda
"In the past five years, it is a really honorable to be able to connect my life with everyone, and I like you and the world the most!" Trippy Ai put on the original dress, said thanks over and over again, choked up several times, and began to perform the last two songs of this concert, "Again" and "Hello, Morning", and the world's first virtual anchor Kizuna AI Trip Love came to an end.
From its birth in November 2016 to its dormancy in February 2022. It took more than 5 years for Trip Love to tell people how far a virtual idol played by a real person can go.
From claiming to be the world's first Virtual YouTuber (virtual UP master), to being the first virtual anchor to disclose their own 3D model material for free, to becoming an ambassador to visit Japan. From announcing that the four doppelgangers caused controversy and caused the team to unrest, to announcing that a farewell concert would be held and the event would be stopped. For an artist, it is not long to retire after 5 years of practice, but as a virtual artist, the trip to the peak has experienced everything that most virtual idols cannot reach.
On this road of love on the axis of time, countless fans have left their enthusiasm and love to her forever, and have given every moment of their time with her to the memory storage.
"The First VTuber"
On November 29, 2016, Trippick Ai uploaded the first video on YouTube, and due to the mis-voting of the operation, the first video was not a self-introduction, but a process of signing up for social media. Although in the end, Trip Love did not complete the account registration in the video, but successfully left the audience with a "stupid cute" virtual two-dimensional impression. A seemingly random greeting "Hey ~ do more grinding!" "(Hello everyone), which later became a characteristic sign of tripping and greeting the audience.
At that time, when YouTuber was popular, countless creators became popular by uploading videos such as personal life vlogs, music performances and singing, game guides, etc., and even games such as "YouTuber Life" that simulated the life of video creators appeared. In Japan's two-dimensional field, due to the lagging development of the niconico platform and the decline in user experience, many UP owners choose to turn to a more international YouTube platform, driving the gradual relocation of second-dimensional residentials.
The appearance of tripping love coincided with this wave, in the first self-introduction video, tripping love called himself "two-dimensional", because it is a virtual image, so it is Virtual YouTuber, and this seemingly casual combination later became a new word for virtual anchors - VTuber.
While creating a new concept, Trip Love also became associated with the hot CONCEPT of AI at the time, she defined the "love" in her name as artificial intelligence - AI, and cast a video titled "Dialogue with artificial intelligence giant Siri", which stimulated the curiosity of many unfamiliar audiences on VTuber.
In 2016, when the "AlphaGo Go man-machine battle" incident led to the hot topic of artificial intelligence, many young people interested in AI believed that the love of AI was AI, and even some domestic audiences asked "how to look at AI" which now seems quite interesting. Stumbling love has established the "artificial intelligence" human design, and gradually gone farther and farther away from the black name of "artificial mental retardation".
The early development of Trip Love was not all smooth sailing. For example, in a video, Trippy Ai claims that clothes are projections, and the platform ban that clearly states that he usually does not wear clothes and is strictly censored, becoming the first virtual idol in history to be banned, and also allowing Trippy Love to briefly move to niconico. But because Niconico did not open a member and could only submit 50 manuscripts, and the team behind the scenes was always actively unblocking the operation, TripAi quickly returned to YouTube after unblocking.
After the return of the trip love continues to maintain a high frequency of updates, in the work the audience can see the progress of motion capture technology, and can be more impressed by the boring work of the trip love and the character of flexion and stretching. For many two-dimensional audiences, fiction and idealization are the original intention of entering the pit, but the emergence of VTubers such as tripping love makes them find that they originally just wanted to like a two-dimensional villain with a beautiful appearance, but they were trapped by the people behind the scenes with excellent play. The progress of technology has set off the flash of the love personality.
Soon, the number of subscriptions to the Trip Love Channel exceeded 100,000 people. For the virtual idol industry, because of the existence of people who can be captured and dubbed, supplemented by rapidly developing technical support, compared with other two-dimensional virtual characters, VTuber is more efficient in terms of production capacity, interactive realization, and commercial linkage. Gradually adapting to the rhythm of the trip love received a lot of business orders, obtained a lot of income, more adequate budget, she tried new content forms, opened games, VR and other sub-channels.
In 2017, YouTube launched a live broadcast, and like many KOLs, Trip Love also began to try to broadcast live in May of that year. However, the main content of tripping love is still all kinds of elaborate videos, which are not strong in the field of live broadcasting, which also leaves opportunities for other virtual anchors to overtake in the corner in the future.
With the accumulation of various types of video content, many fans of Trip Love began to make various memes for Trip Love to express their love, so the Trip Love team began to release official memes on social tools such as LINE. It didn't take long for memes and memes to become popular on the global Internet. Coupled with the fact that the 3D model materials of Trip Love have long been made public, many erchuang enthusiasts have a full creative enthusiasm for this popular character, helping Trip Love to be discovered by more new audiences.
Although it has experienced many bumps and bumps, it took 13 months for Trip Love to achieve its achievements - on December 17, 2017, Trip Love had more than 1 million YouTube subscriptions, becoming a veritable "virtual idol".
After becoming the top of the "virtual", the trip love continues to advance on the road of consolidating the "idol". In 2018, Trippick Ai appeared on Japanese TV stations, and even had an exclusive column; was named "Japan Tourism Promotion Spokesperson" by the Japan Tourism Bureau; held offline events and came face-to-face with fans; became a voice actor, participated in the dubbing of the animation "Magical Girl Site" in the name of Trippy Love, and released the first single "Hello, Morning". Seven months after the subscription exceeded one million, on July 15, 2018, the number of subscriptions on YouTube exceeded 2 million, opening up a gap of more than one million fans with other virtual anchors.
Trippick Love's debut album was at the top of the Oricon Trust Chart in Japan at number 19
At this time, the Japanese capital, which has long been playing with cultural exports, has also discovered the value of VTuber and is ready to go.
Four stumbled in love and fell off the altar
Driven by the booming trend of love, countless virtual anchors have begun their journey, and virtual idol groups such as HL and Rainbow Society, which are booming in the virtual anchor circle in the future, have successively debuted in 2018 and 2019. Countless voice actors, trainees and even ordinary people passed the selection, began to put on virtual skins, and grew rapidly along the road that trip love had traveled.
Unlike Trip Love, HL and Rainbow Society have cut into the virtual anchor industry from the mobile terminal instant face capture APP, and in the first half of 2018, the two companies have set up virtual anchor groups after receiving support from big capital. Unlike the "video potential" (video-led virtual idols) dominated by trip love, the virtual idol groups of HL and Rainbow Society are all "live broadcast potentials", breaking through in a way that is mainly live broadcast and supplemented by video.
The rise of the "live broadcast potential", on the one hand, is that the frequency of live broadcast of love is very low, the most frequent time is only once a week live broadcast, and the new virtual anchors can not and the video content reserves are rich in love, but can be "stealing" through high-frequency live broadcasting; on the other hand, because the YouTube platform is facing a global audience, and the live audience base is gradually expanding, through live broadcast tipping can also expand its influence while obtaining revenue. In addition, these groups also rapidly increase the amount of powder through mutual push and linkage through the tactics of the sea of people.
(Rainbow Society part VTuber)
With the increasing number of virtual anchors who mainly play live broadcasts, people's perception of virtual idols has also changed several times, from the virtual idols before tripping love to the characters who are derived from anime IP for full virtual performances, to the transition to the middle of the person playing a half-paper person to learn real people to send videos, and then as a live anchor with virtual paper pieces to open live broadcasts every day.
From the live broadcast content of tripping love, it can be seen that whether it is the person behind the trip love, or the company Activ8 (referred to as A8) behind the scenes, there is a lack of long-term planning and creativity in the planning of live broadcast related content. In the face of many latecomers who compete for fans every day to open live broadcasts, at this time, tripping love seems to be a bit behind.
(The high income of the head virtual anchor has nothing to do with tripping love)
The technically-educated tripping team made a seemingly problem-solving, but it didn't make sense to do so — to add the number of tripping players. In the virtual idol industry circle at that time, practitioners almost all believed that one of the major advantages of virtual idols was that they would not collapse. Fans like the image of the virtual idol itself, the official design, even if you quietly change or increase the actor, it will not affect the fans' love for this IP.
But is that really the case?
On May 25, 2019, trip love channel released "If there are four trip love, do you believe it?" Although the video is still played by the original actor of tripping love, it also releases the signal that the tripping team tests the fans: If you increase the role of tripping love, can the fans accept it?
Less than half a month after the release of the video, trip love channel began to test a number of video content such as the game of trip love with the same frame starring different people, while looking for ways to make trip love re-lead in the field of live broadcasting, while also trying to replace the old middle-aged people who have been somewhat unable to keep up with the times.
Fans originally thought that this was just a funny tripping team, after all, there had been a "black love" image derived from "poisoning". According to the order of appearance, fans distinguish them into old love, No. 2 love, and No. 3 love. At that time, some fans accepted this novel setting of different people with the same skin, and some fans had a little panic, worried that too many people in the middle would make their favorite characters taste bad.
(Comments under the solo video of Machine 3 in the comment area of Station B)
The panic of fans continued quietly, until at the China branch of Trip's birthday party, only the newly announced Chinese Trip Love (No. 4 Love) appeared in duplicates, triggering the dissatisfaction of Trip Love's largest overseas fan group. Soon after, tripping love channel released the no. 3 love independent video, accepting and trying to play the map "KizunaAI Park" created by Mario who was given to tripping love by fans. This completely ignited the anger of fans for the A8 company, and fans felt that the purpose of making this map was to give "the original tripping love", not the "No. 3 machine" that is now parachuted in the name of tripping love. The video was stomped on wave after wave of bad reviews on YouTube, and fans hoped that in this way, A8 would rethink the meaning of the existence of the tripping love doppelganger.
But A8 company did not take the opinions of fans seriously, but successively released videos without old love but two doppelgangers, No. 2 and No. 3, as well as letting No. 3 doppelgangers replace Old Love to receive an advertisement, and even let No. 3 Love begin to broadcast independently on the Trip Love Channel, playing the previously controversial game "Mario Creation 2".
Water can carry boats and overturn boats, and fans are completely enraged. And the original actor of tripping love (that is, the voice actor of the old love) Haruhi Wang suddenly posted on social media, saying that he "did not want to lose to the annoying adult", which directly triggered fans to criticize the A8. Under the controversy, A8 closed the comment area of some content and set up some keyword blocks for live broadcasts, trying to prevent the situation from deteriorating in this way.
At the same time, groups such as HL and Rainbow Society have made a lot of money in the field of live broadcasting, and have begun to enter the unexplored market, signing contracts with platforms such as B station to attract more secondary audiences. The trip love team can only acquiesce to the fans to fight themselves, while watching the fans take the pass and flow to other VTubers.
Finally, A8 CEO Takeshi Osaka released Chinese official statement on the B station, defining different people as "voice models", saying that they would submit articles centered on the new voice model, and the initial voice model would be music-centric submissions, and made it clear that the initial voice model would not stop the activity, trying to eliminate the uneasiness of fans.
Although the four doppelgangers are all tripping love, the capital behind the A8 scenes said in an interview that this is the inevitability of "IP", so that the tripping love can be eternal, but the fans insist that there is only one tripping love.
But in any case, the matter has come to this point, and Trip Love has proved the fact that "virtual idols will also collapse" with practical actions, and it has also proved that the bound people are irreplaceable for the well-known VTuber.
Regression, settling, and disappearing
After the release of the Chinese statement, the trip love channel carried out a surprise live broadcast that night, on the live broadcast, the old love came back, explaining to the fans that the reason for his disappearance was to prepare for a large offline music festival, and would return to the main channel and the game channel for video submissions afterwards, and the trip love choked up many times in the middle, although the channel denied that this was choking, but the fans still felt that the old love was bullied.
(The channel interprets choking as "biting the tongue")
In this context of widespread skepticism, the new content of the Trip Love Channel on YouTube has been continuously commented on, and on the B station, it has experienced a large-scale drop of fans, with a maximum of 10,000 people per day. At this time, A8's series of operations have been unable to calm the anger of fans, and the new doppelgangers of Tripping Love are still intentionally or unintentionally touching the "minefield" expressed by the previous old love: the first video of China's Trip Love refers to itself with the "artificial mental retardation" that Old Love does not like very much; The second love and the third love attract new fans with the collapsed face expression in the video... An absurd and real "I deny myself" continues to happen, dissuading old fans and confusing new fans.
But A8's management seems to have been dismissive of the opinions of its fans, insisting on not acknowledging the middle-of-the-road approach in order to maintain the setting that "it will live forever" in love. In September 2019, when A8 CEO Takeshi Osaka and HL CEO Motoaki Tanigo talked about VTuber together in an interview, Motoaki Tanigo, who had been regarded as the "evil man of capital", said that the industry provided an opportunity for UP owners who did not want to show their faces, generously acknowledging the status of the middle man and affirming the status of the middle man; while Takeshi Osaka still insisted that tripping love is AI and did not recognize the existence of people in (tripping love).
Everyone who sees this sentence knows he's self-hypnotizing. What pays for this behavior is ultimately only the declining influence of love, and the growing gap and contradiction between A8 and the people in the middle.
(Takeshi Osaka (third from left) amused Tanigo Motoaki (second from left) with a sentence)
Finally, the unable to bear the A8 issued an announcement at the end of 2019, announcing the solution to the problem of tripping love with the same skin and different hearts, formally separating the old love, the second love, the third love and the Chinese tripping love, giving different images, and began to collect nicknames for the second love, the third love, and the Chinese tripping love, the second love was called "love sauce", the third love was called "Aipii", and the Chinese tripping love was called "love brother". The four trip-up farces that lasted for more than half a year finally ushered in the dawn of the end.
After following the advice of fans. The development of tripping love is becoming more and more similar to other popular VTubers, but it is gradually drifting away from the A8 that pursues "tripping love eternally". Seeing that a group of VTuber descendants are operating more and more smoothly in the form of fixed people + two-dimensional avatars, the trip love at this time has also begun to make some changes internally.
In April 2020, Trippara Project officially separated from Activ8 and joined Kizuna AI Co., Ltd., which will open in May, with Matsumoto Eiryoko as the chairman, acknowledging that the source of the voice of the old love was voice actor Kasuga Akira, and hired Kasuga Akira, who left the voice agency, as a consultant. After the establishment of the new company, former boss Takeshi Osaka issued a statement, in addition to blessing the love, but also said that in the past, it was his responsibility to disappoint and upset fans. Although in the eyes of the outside world, this apology is not used to carry the pot, everything seems to be too late.
(Just last month, Eriko Matsumoto stepped down as president of Yukiai and was replaced by Takuro Arai)
After the establishment of the new trip love company, The No. 2 love love sauce and the 3rd love Aipii set up a new channel, no longer carry out activities in the name of trip love, began the road of independent development, and in the subsequent activities for the birthday celebration of trip love, called the old love "love sauce". The dispute between the four stumbling loves ended like this. Trip love has also shifted from the road of IP operation to the road of anchor operation.
(love sauce and Epii)
But the times have changed after all, virtual anchors have long become the red sea of competition, the former virtual idol overlord, VTuber traffic pioneers, in the best era of virtual anchors, has been bleak. Gawr Gura, a virtual anchor who debuted in the second half of 2020, has surpassed 2.9 million subscriptions on YouTube in less than a year, becoming the VTuber with the most subscribers in the world.
And the number of people who trip to love live online, from the second half of 2021, has been hovering around 1,000... People have long since stopped appreciating her more because she was the first to do it, as the virtual anchor circle (V circle) audience always said: the V circle is ruthless and the content is supreme.
On December 4, 2021, Trip Love announced that it will hold its final concert on February 26 this year, and will stop the event indefinitely after the concert and go into hibernation. As soon as the news came out, it still shocked many fans and passers-by who had paid attention to the tripping love in the past, and they returned to the stream, first to see the authenticity of the news, and then to review the channel content they missed.
For fans who have stumbled upon, only by losing it will they remember to look back at the "first VTuber" they liked in the past. Therefore, in station B, the video that is played the most by the trip love account is not the self-introduction of trip love, but this farewell video.
In the video, Tripperson said: "I'm not that special to everyone. But this particular farewell still made Trip Love no less influential than the most popular period: after announcing the farewell, Trip Love's followers on YouTube exceeded 3 million, maintaining the second largest number of VTuber subscriptions in the world (Gawr Gura has now exceeded 3.8 million subscriptions).
Many fans have their own expectations for the future that tripping love will not disappear: "She will not disappear", "Must have gone to the meta-universe to do things", and more fans picked up the habit of watching the short video of good morning love every day, looking for clues that tripping love will not disappear in the words of love sauce greeting, and reporting to other fans in the comment area.
But on February 26, everything came to an abrupt end after the finale of the concert. The virtual anchor circle is noisy, and the trip love for a while and a half will no longer have a relationship, trip love and kasuga hope can officially rest for a while.
"I wish I could just take a break, or a little longer, as long as it's a moment to wake up." How many fans will this barrage in the live broadcast room become the luxury of many fans?