Despite having graduated in July, fans are still celebrating the 2nd anniversary since the debut of Kiryu Coco – arguably one of the most prolific Vtubers in the industry.
Coco debuted exactly two years ago today. with her laughably outrageous backstory about her being an idol to pay for accidentally crashing into Hololive HQ.
To celebrate the occasion, some fans have begun to dig out her first tweet- which was posted days ahead of her debut and way before anyone knew what they were getting into with Hololive’s foul-mouthed dragon Yakuza.
“Hey guys and girls and all human beings !! nice to meet you! This is Kiryu Coco”, her first tweet reads. “This is an introduction to Holo Live friends! I’m studying human language and Japanese now, so please help me with this overflowing feeling. My main job is Dragon Katagi Thank you”
Hey guys and girls and all human beings!!🐉
はじめまして!桐生ココです。
ホロライブ仲間に入門です!
人間の言葉と、日本語、今は勉強をしていますから、あふれるこの気持ちを助けてくださいね。
本職はドラゴン🐉カタギ
よろしくお願いしました🤲#桐生ココ#ホロライブ#Vtuber#拡散希望 pic.twitter.com/6mNes317aF— 桐生ココ🐉ホロライブ卒業生 (@kiryucoco) December 25, 2019
Some fans are even writing heartfelt tributes to the Vtuber:
Haachama Talks About Kiryu Coco
Of course the most stunning tribute comes from within Hololive itself, as Vtuber Akai Haato aka Haachama had a surprise stream honoring Kiryu Coco.
During the stream, Haachama broke into tears listening to Coco’s original song Weather Hackers, blaming herself for the pro-China harassment that would go on to define the latter end of Coco’s career.
“If Haachama didn’t show the analytic accidentally, none of this would have happened”, she said in her stream last night. “Yet everyone in the Kiryu-kai (Coco’s fandom) didn’t blame Haachama and was able to accept her graduation and move forward”, she continued.
She’s referring to an incident on her own stream, wherein Haachama had opened her Google Analytics to view her viewers by country, and had Taiwan listed as a country. Coco shortly did the same during her own stream, which many pro-China zealots saw as intentionally provoking them leading to months of harassment and threats., often spilling over to any Vtuber that shared a screen with Kiryu Coco.
Kiryu Coco’s Legacy
It’s hard to understate just how important Kiryu Coco was for the Vtubing scene. Due to her bilingual nature (she speaks both English and Japanese), she was considered one of the first and biggest Vtubers to cross the gap and make it big in overseas communities.
She was also a prominent figure of the Hololive subreddit, fostering the community there by reviewing their memes on her weekly Meme review segment.
Just like Haachama, she was also challenged the idea of how far you could push content as a Vtuber- she famously had her morning show Asacoco, which parodied Japanese morning shows to the point of even airing at 6am local time.
While most idols tried to maintain some sort of pure image she did a hard swerve out of it, with one of her most iconic pieces of merchandise being a giant plushie meant to look like her tail with a butt plug on the end of it based on her Asacoco skit, which was supposed to dispense the Asacoco drug.
It’s not like her ideas weren’t rewarded, either. To this day, Kiryu Coco remains the number two most-superchatted YouTuber, second only to the still active Uruha Rushia from Hololive’s 3rd Generation.