Prophecies of the end

I'm already far too late to pen all my other Prophecies with my authorship. The fact that I was absolutely correct about the emergence of the vtuber scourge and how it operates will be forever lost to the abyss of forgotten anonymous posts.

Nevertheless, vtubers are but one step towards the ideal otaku landscape as projected by Waseda University business MBAs.

Next up is the solidification of the schism between eastern and western fans which will eventually culminate in a complete unitedstatesian take-over of the niche and its neutering for mass appeal. You thought things were bad already? They'll get much worse and we can't do anything to stop it.

One quick note before I spill my prophetic babble: I define seiyuu as japanese voice actors and VA as western voice actors.
It is 邪道 to the extreme to call a seiyuu a VA and vice-versa.

Nobody talks about Japan's Galapagos Effect anymore.

The western vtuber scene is an incubator of future anime dub VAs. Soon enough, they'll be singing their own original songs, selling albums, then gradually making their way from anime cameo to secondary character voicing, until finally their name as VAs will become a sales point. Ideally (for Waseda University business MBAs, of course) their cameo work will start in the original, japanese audio versions so they earn the cred to appear as legit seiyuu when they make their move westwards as the voices of main characters.

This is how a unitedstatesian seiyuu culture will be astroturfed in the west. As most of the english-second-language, anime-watching audience is already conditioned to consuming their audio-visual entertainment with localized unitedstatesian subtitles, the transition from japanese to english audio, spearheaded by the trojan horse of fake seiyuu, will be seamless. With the iron grip the unitedstatesian sphere of influence has over the cultural fabric of the internet, non-english-speaking fans will be compelled to make the switch, as the memetic fabric of the subculture, already feeling the tendrils of total unitedstatesianization enveloping its heels, will be bombarded with localized references courtesy of the hippest influencers money can create. In this regard, things like fromsoft's latest game's "let me solo her" meme are a brilliant viral marketing collaboration that's giving us a taste of things to come.

We're past this phase and already well into the
"dancing, drinking and raping amidst the trojan fires" stage

Good things are not meant to last. The smug, hopeless elitists among you will point at Bill 156 and proclaim that's what killed the whole thing, but such things, while restrictive, came from within Japan itself. The coming changes to the niche will come from outside pressure, to conform to outside standards. Others will point at china as the big influencer, but they are clueless in the soft power chess game and will much sooner attempt to replicate japan's success than successfully co-opt it. So they and a couple of koreans managed to get Gunha's shirt censored. I wonder who propelled their voices and made their cry widespread in the first place (RHETORICAL QUESTION).

Seeking refuge from the mainstream? Doujin culture is being slowly suffocated as well, in a two-pronged attack by japanese conglomerates redirecting otaku energy to gacha and the continuous unitedstatesian attempts to implant indie (インディー) with all its true meaning and baggage into the japanese ecosystem.

It's not like there aren't ways out, but nowadays it's essentially a solo journey. At least until we re-discover and redefine the lines of the mainstream.
Naturally, I have a couple of ideas.


Now that I have said all this, there is a 90% chance
it won't go at all as I have prophesised, whereupon
I look like a paranoid doomsaying loser and
my reputation is tarnished.
You're welcome.



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