Yesterday I talked to a friend (prodzpod) about how VTubers do “season openings”. In particular, I was thinking about two ends of the spectrum:
- Corpo: Jean Faymas S3D OP
- Indie: prodzpod Season 1 Opening
I’m thinking about doing one because I thought it would be fun and a nice way to announce that my stream has changed, but I wasn’t sure if these were the right reasons. In fact, when I think about it more, I’m not sure why VTubers do them at all. Fleshtubers certainly don’t, generally.
So, I contacted prodzpod to see what they thought. I’ve included the questions and responses below (with permission and a few edits).
exo: i get the impression that vtubers do season openings for vibes and to celebrate/announce a return to streaming or a new model or whatever is new. i was curious if you could share what you think season openings/endings are for, for both industry and indie, and why you decided to make one.
prod: i’m not too too familiar with industry myself, but i am familiar with indie anime gameplay womans that wish to be industry womans. it comes down to what the stream is benchmarking — what they wish their stream feels like is i think what it boils down to.
aesthetically and structurally they are borrowing a lot from anime and anime culture. when they are doing “debut prep” they are imagining an anime that stars themselves, kind of.
when you get a new model or have a different style you want to show off, not only is the “first episode of an anime” a good match for the type of medium, because it has video content and singing, but it aids greatly in introducing yourself in a parasocial way.
i think if vtubers had unlimited budget and energy they would do this “anime style” for every episode of their regular streams.
exo: so, because vtuber culture is so anime-coded, vtubers have stolen the ideas of having an anime opening when they want to present ourselves in a different way. is that right? how about for us indie vtubers?
prod: essentially, yes. for us, its less a new season in an anime and moreso a showcase of the new major version of a software. like, consider pride versioning.
a season for us is essentially a proud version update for the stream content (for me this was the stream overlay) and the opening serves as a reminder of the old and anticipation of the new features to come.
note the lack of characters in this description - the engineer’s season changes tend to be more projects oriented. the openings are usually just “hey guys the streams will feature content that is more fun, here’s a cool eye candy to get you hyped up”. sort of like a game teaser.
exo: i had not considered the perspective of the season opening being a teaser for what’s to come. that explains more fully, i think, why you had clips of your stream in your season opening. because it’s like, not only a reflection of the past but also a suggestion of what the streams will be like in the future (more fun prod shenanigans).
prod: yeah! i think my openings are more animewoman compared to other engineer teasers tho, hence the featuring of drawings of my guy & the singing (kind of). plus, the vague lore.
exo: what do you think about how season openings relate to vtuber lore. do you think of yourself as having lore?
prod: depends on what you classify as “vtuber lore” - my guy has “lore” but in a sense that it has a setting and what i experience irl pretty much 1:1 correlates to what happens to my guy (i meet a lot of people, for example). it has a component of “alternate universe” but not a component of “kayfabe”.
exo: what’s kayfabe?
prod: a sense of disconnect between you and your character, in that you are “playing” that character and not “being” them. industry do this way more than indies.
most animewoman have both components which in my opinion makes them unequivocably “have vtuber lore”. [see the new digishell video for example]https://youtu.be/v93egkelifo). it has an alternate setting of a “digital tamagochi hotel woman” but also the kayfabe of “being sent down to earth and you are the hotel guests and servants”
We then talked for a while about what I might want to do for my own opening and my new overlay before I thanked prod for their time.