Educational features of virtual anchors.
At 9 pm on June 19, overseas virtual anchor Shoto conducted the first domestic live broadcast at station B.
Due to power outages in parts of the eastern United States, the Vtuber from the other side of the ocean went online 50 minutes later than the scheduled time. But the accident did not affect the popularity of Shoto’s first broadcast. He reached 2,000 ships in less than an hour after the broadcast, with a peak popularity of more than 7 million, ranking first in the virtual anchor of station B that night.
According to later statistics, more than 20,000 people paid for the Shoto live broadcast that night, and the revenue in two hours was nearly one million.
Even worse, a month ago, Vox Akuma, an English-language virtual anchor who was also airborne at station B, had a revenue of over one million in 1.7 hours of live broadcast. Such an ability to attract money is obviously unusual, not only making these English-language Vtubers on Weibo’s hot search, but also attracting the attention of many outsiders.
For viewers who have been following English Vtuber for a long time, their reasons for chasing English V are different, and the original intention may even be as simple as “learning English”.
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Before Shoto came to Bilibili for the first broadcast, it had been live on Twitch for almost three years and had more than 500,000 fans. As a “personal power” without the support of the company, he only gained such overseas popularity through long-term accumulation. And his account at station B released the first video on May 9 this year, and now has 950,000 fans.
Shoto is a devil hunter with great hatred and hatred in the setting, but the image standing in front of the audience is quite different from this setting. With fluffy bangs, a black turtleneck sweater, purple pupils, a soft and harmless juvenile voice, and the delicate facial expressions of the audience’s “million face capture”, the image of a “wolf boy” appeared in front of people.
At this time last year, Shoto was only a little famous. Until the end of the year, a large number of his live broadcast clips were uploaded and translated into China. His agile image and live broadcast performance attracted more and more audiences, which brought the popularity of the premiere.
He has a similar experience with Vox Akuma, who is also very popular in China. In December last year, the well-known Japanese virtual anchor project “にじさんじ” (i.e. Rainbow Club), under the name of “the world’s first English Vtuber”, launched a group of five Vtuber including Vox “Luxiem”. , and also released a debut song for the group in the form of an idol debut.
Vox has caused more repercussions and more controversy in China. It is also a large number of translated live video clips uploaded by fans, so that Vox has accumulated a lot of popularity before its official launch in China.
Domestic fans buy screencasts to celebrate Vox’s birthday
This is of course no coincidence. Mysta, another anchor in the Luxiem group, went through almost the same process, and finally reached the top of the virtual anchor of station B with more than an hour of live broadcast, which once again verified the potential of English Vtuber in China.
English Vtuber is so popular, there are many explanations. Both Shoto and Luxiem seem to have appeared at the right time. Coupled with the exquisite image and accurate positioning, after the audience in the V circle continues to discover and move live clips, they can quickly become the emotional sustenance of many people. Not surprising.
The more obvious and more convincing reason is that the threshold for chasing English Vtuber is obviously much lower than chasing Japanese Vtuber – after all, English is a basic subject that most Chinese people learn from a very young age.
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Amazingly, English-language Vtubers have also changed their domestic fans’ attitudes toward English.
Almost every viewer who seriously pursues English Vtuber has made such a determination: it is time to learn English well.
For the audience, learning English by watching English Vtuber can be said to be “on-the-spot”. After all, there are a large number of ready-made videos of English V at station B, many of which even have bilingual subtitles for reference. Nothing is more suitable for practicing English listening. .
Picture from Xiaohongshu @Annnnnnngela
Xiaojiu is a college student who is preparing for the IELTS test and an old viewer of English Vtuber. She used to squat on Vox’s video slices – Vox is British, and the British accent is more obvious, according to her, listening to more will help improve the tone of the accent. She will try to listen to the audio without reading the subtitles, but the first listening effect is not ideal. The anchors often speak at a speed exceeding the standard. Most of the time, the most effective listening training can only be the change of accent.
But there will be obvious changes in the long run – a single anchor does not have many common vocabulary, and after being familiar with a certain person’s style, the situation is much better, “basically understand 80%”.
For some viewers, the most practical use of learning English is to communicate effectively with Vtuber—many people excitedly rushed into the Vtuber live broadcast rooms at station B for the first time, but found that words were only used when they were used. , when the words came to the mouth, he was speechless, and finally he could only search his intestines and scrape his stomach to say “How
are you”.
In the face of English Vtuber, you also need to come up with a more authentic way of communication: for example, when you see the anchor playing a wave of wonderful operations in the game, imitating the Twitch barrage and the anchor’s oral language, type “Pog” to show shock; The exciting scene of animal ears shaking their heads, “AWSL” is usually the most accurate inner state of domestic fans at the moment, but if you want the other party to quickly understand the essence, you may need to type more words: I
just got diabetes.
In fact, practicing English with Vtuber has long been a tradition, and English anchors also understand the truth. Hiiro, an English anchor who has been active at station B for a long time, is regarded as the “enlightenment teacher” of many V circles, and will start broadcasting at station B in 2020. She likes to mix broken Chinese when she speaks, and has always been popular with netizens for her willingness to learn Chinese and Chinese culture.
“You can practice English in the Hiiro live broadcast room” is what many people recommend Hiiro to talk about. Hiiro also seems to like the “teacher” status, and occasionally holds small classes in the live broadcast – she also claims to have helped a teacher by herself. viewers graded English homework.
But the goal of practicing English is often deviated in the live broadcast room. As we all know, the easiest way to learn a language is to start with some less elegant vocabulary.
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Overseas anchors are very familiar with the matter of “doing color”, which often excites the audience and causes headaches for the subtitle team.
Discussing the attribution of “Bottom” and “Top” (“above” and “below”) with the barrage has become a topic that every English male anchor cannot escape. This topic originally came from the Internet, but domestic audiences have already mastered similar words. As long as a “Bottom?” barrage is displayed in a suitable situation, the anchor will take the initiative to cooperate, leading to a series of fierce rejections and “I am 1” declarations.
Similarly, words starting with F are not uncommon for European and American anchors. Words starting with D have been grabbing the limelight in recent years. Coupled with the combination of certain indecent words, they often catch people off guard.
Considering the different environments, high-traffic anchors like Vox and Shoto try to avoid these words when they premiere at station B, but they often let themselves go in the video slices broadcast live on overseas platforms, which is a test of the subtitle group’s ability to associate and metaphor. The ability to understand the audience is also not a small challenge.
And more typical virtual anchors, such as Veibae, a cyber succubus with a mouth full of trains, rely on the hard work of the subtitle team to spread on the domestic Internet. The same restricted-level vocabulary can always have different meanings, and the rich Chinese metaphors can’t help but evoke the emotion of “how to say that”.
The picture comes from station B @小の殇
Some people criticize overseas Vtuber for their tendency to play side balls, and some live broadcast content with a larger language scale is easy to offend; some people think that this is originally a way of doing business for them, with different cultural backgrounds and different degrees of openness, fans get what they need That’s it.
But “astringency is the primary productive force of human beings” is not without reason – Vox’s low and imaginative voice has the potential of ASMR, and fans are often asked to read love poems in a specific tone to lull him to sleep. Some domestic fans also learned about some foreign poems through this, and copied and read them with a serious attitude that was not seen in the final review.
This is somewhat reassuring: someone can always return to the simple desire to learn.
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In fact, about practicing English, Vtuber can provide very limited. The V circle is quite self-aware of this: even if DD (that is, a fan of “fraternity” who pushes many anchors at the same time) has watched all the video clips of English Vtuber, it is difficult for the anchors to help them pass the real exam.
“It’s getting better and better, maybe it’s just because I’m familiar with him,” Xiaojiu, who insists on practicing listening in Vtuber videos, guesses. After telling how cute the various English-language virtual anchors she has come into contact with, she also frankly said, “Watching their videos can give me a little more psychological comfort when I am preparing for the exam.”
Viewers want to take the initiative to get first-hand information. Some video handlers use AI subtitles to translate video clips. More people expect that Station B can directly have its own subtitle formation and translation functions like Youtube.
The anchors are also working hard to get closer to domestic fans – learning Chinese is a necessary part of their live broadcast.
The picture comes from the grid of B station @ barbecue
Hiiro, the anchor of station B, has already started her long career of learning Chinese. In order to better understand the domestic culture, she has already watched TV series such as “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” and “Journey to the West”. As a cat with a high IQ in the setting, she There are still some crappy Chinese proficiency, and I can mingle with the netizens of station B.
For English-language Vtubers who have just entered the country, the popularity of the Chinese market is beyond their expectations, and it is difficult to communicate directly with domestic fans without barriers. It wasn’t until they began to gradually learn the language of the Chinese audience that the process evolved into a mutual exchange between the two sides.
On the audience’s side, although it is difficult to say how scientific it is to “improve your English level by watching English Vtuber”, at least one more reason for people to take the initiative to learn English than to cope with exams.
“Come on in English for the college entrance examination”
This article is reprinted from: https://www.yystv.cn/p/9367
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