![]() ![]() The virtual stars had partnerships with multinational brands like KFC and L’Oréal as well as domestic giants like Chinese fitness platform Keep. Last year, Yuehua Entertainment, which created China’s most-popular virtual pop girl group A-Soul in collaboration with ByteDance, made $5.6 million from its “pan-entertainment business,” which the company said was primarily generated by A-Soul. There’s no shortage of money in the industry. It’s got many fans online asking – if the actors and actresses are the soul of these animated superstars, why don’t they get paid as much as human pop stars? Some fans become so attached to the unique qualities of the person behind their favorite idol that they can’t bear the thought of anyone else taking their place. While virtual celebrities might look like artificial creations, they’re just as dependent on the pull and personality of an actual human as any real life influencer or celebrity. “The key point of VTubers is the ‘people inside,’ the human labor,” said Yijun Luo, doctoral researcher at Hong Kong Baptist University who studies China’s virtual idol industry. And when they go off-script to complain about exhaustion, overwork, or low pay, that’s a real person complaining about their actual working conditions – underscoring that virtual celebrities are subject to the same concerns and issues as human influencers. When Akuma laughs, that’s the laugh of the actor who plays him when Luo waves, it’s because a real person is waving. ![]() But at their core, virtual idols typically rely on a single human: an actor or actress wearing a motion capture suit who lends their voice, movements, and facial expressions to bring them to life in real time. The thinking went that virtual stars would stay on-message at all times, avoiding the burnout or controversy human influencers might be susceptible to. Marketing agencies in China bet big that these digital influencers represented the future of celebrity, with their looks and words carefully crafted and controlled by branding agencies and corporations. YouTuber Akuma and Chinese pop star Luo Tianyi are both virtual idols. Last year, the value of business driven by virtual idols was $16 billion in China alone, according to research from iiMedia. Over the past decade, entertainment companies in China and Japan have increasingly invested in developing virtual talent: pop stars that appear on stage via hologram, animated personalities who livestream themselves playing games and chatting with fans, brand influencers powered by teams of computer scientists and voice actors. “It’s gotten to the point where if I take even more than one day off, drama emerges, arguments happen,” he said. ![]() In a livestream which has garnered more than 350,000 views, the animated star admonished his fans for taking their adoration too far, pushing him to work at a grueling, inhuman pace. Vox Akuma swept a lock of blood-red hair behind his ear and fixed his otherworldly, glittering eyes on the camera, as he’d done nearly every day for months. ![]()
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