PARIS — A half-feline, half-human character swings across the screen, her cat ears protruding from a thick mane of red hair. Her jerky gestures, crystaline voice and large, bright eyes evoke the aesthetic of Japanese animation.
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The fantastical avatar, who goes by the name of Miel Crapouille in front of the approximately 4,000 people connected that day on the video platform Twitch, interacts with her viewers live. Behind this persona is a 27-year-old woman who chooses to remain anonymous. She is one of the most popular French-speaking VTubers, with nearly 16,000 subscribers on Twitch.
“VTubing is a way to create content online using a character. Instead of showing your face, you have a fictional appearance,” Miel Crapouille explains. Despite the misleading neologism — a contraction of the words “virtual” and “YouTubers” —, VTubers are flesh-and-blood creators disguised as characters. These are most often inspired by manga culture, and rendered through digital animation.
In practical terms, the video makers use motion sensors and image modeling techniques, known as “rigging,” to generate an on-screen avatar that faithfully reproduces their gestures and facial expressions in real time. These same special effects technologies are used in cinema, animation and video games.
Japanese origins
Originating in Japan in the mid-2010s, VTubing is now spreading internationally and is taking off in English-speaking countries. The number of hours of this type of video watched on Twitch in the UK tripled last year, compared to a 57% increase in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region. Globally, viewing of this content increased by 10% in one year, reaching 1.1 billion hours.
I thought we’d have 200 viewers, but we got nearly a thousand.
On YouTube, the trend is also spectacular. The number of views generated by these video makers on the platform with the red rectangle has tripled in five years, approaching 50 billion views in 2024, with 57% of viewers aged 14 to 44 saying they have watched a VTuber in the last 12 months.
As proof of this recent craze, events highlighting VTubing are multiplying. In 2023, the Content Creator of the Year prize at the Game Awards, the Oscars of video games, was awarded for the first time to a VTuber, Puerto Rican Ironmouse, who has 2.3 million subscribers on Twitch. That same year, streamer Filian inaugurated the first VTuber Awards in Los Angeles, with the aim of promoting skills specific to this field of content creation, such as technological innovation or creativity in avatar design.
Following this, KatChan launched the VTubers Awards Francophone, with a ceremony broadcast live on Twitch in December 2024. “I organize a lot of things to promote VTubing in France. With the Awards, it’s mission accomplished!,” the creator says happily. “I thought we’d have 200 viewers, but we got nearly a thousand. I still receive messages from people telling me they discovered VTubing thanks to the Awards.”
The Nyassobi association also aims to promote French-speaking VTubing by taking part in trade shows and organizing practical training workshops. Founded last September, the association has already received nearly 150 membership applications. “We spent nearly five months preparing the launch of the association, in particular because we wanted to consult the CNIL (National Commission on Informatics and Liberty). It was important for us to ensure the protection of our members’ identities,” says Tom Habbar, president of Nyassobi.
My avatar is a form of protection.
And for good reason: anonymity is a central issue in VTubing. As female content creators regularly denounce the cyberbullying they experience, the majority of VTubers are women who find it is a way to ward off online violence. “My avatar is a form of protection. It prevents me from being judged on my appearance,” says Chu, who has been a VTuber for four years. The anonymity also appeals to members of the LGBTQ+ community, helping “some people to embrace their identities, as they can’t do so in their everyday lives,” notes Tom Habbar.
Authenticity promise
Virtual disguise also constitutes a creativity enhancer, says to the president of Nyassobi: “It marks the difference between social media activity and personal life. We can allow ourselves to tell stories that have nothing to do with our real lives.” An “artistic community” has thus formed, with many VTubers devoting themselves to singing, drawing or acting in their videos.
Designing the avatar is also an artistic creation in itself. So much so that some VTubers hire illustrators and animators, whose commissions can cost several thousand euros, to create their character. “Choosing your appearance and adapting as you like is incredible!,” says Miel Crapouille, who spent nearly 6,200 euros ($7,186) for her current avatar.
The red-haired VTuber acknowledges that she is one of the “very few people” in this segment of content creation who makes a living from her videos in France. According to KatChan, who initiated the VTubers Awards Francophone, the number of professional French VTubers can indeed be counted on the fingers of one hand.
“We’ve had a fairly critical response to VTubing in France,” says Raoul Leibel, director of the livestream division of the media and influencer group Webedia, who believes that “hiding behind an avatar undermines the promise of authenticity” at the heart of most social networks. But while VTuber stars are struggling to emerge, the phenomenon is gaining momentum in France. “When I started three years ago, there were about a hundred of us. Today, we’ve passed the 1,000 VTuber mark,” estimates KatChan.
To build on this momentum, she is organizing a second edition of the VTubers Awards Francophone, in collaboration with the Nyassobi association, which is scheduled to be broadcast on Twitch in December. The goal? “An even higher-quality show than last year.”
