I originally knew Tanigo CEO from our time together at Imagineer, where we had a senior-junior relationship. We had stayed in touch over the years, exchanging advice at key points and I even visited the office during the early days of COVER to hear updates about the business. Then, in 2023, I officially joined the company as an outside director. At that time, there had already been discussions about me taking on a full-time director role. However, what ultimately convinced me to make that commitment was my firm belief that the VTuber market holds the potential to grow on a truly global scale.

I was torn between staying in a governance role as an outside director or stepping up as a full-time executive to take charge of business development and oversee our global expansion myself. Considering my age, I realized this would probably be my last chance to devote myself completely to a company, and to have the opportunity to fully leverage my experience and connections and help build a company that can truly compete on the global stage filled me with genuine excitement. That’s what ultimately led me to take on the role full-time. 

Japan’s content exports have shown steady growth in recent years, reaching nearly 5 trillion yen in 2023 – exceeding the export value of the semiconductor and railway industries, and coming close to the size of the automobile industry. According to projections, this figure is expected to rise to around 20 trillion by 2033^*1. 

The rise of OTT services^*2 like Netflix has had an enormous influence in recent years. By 2025, Japanese content is projected to capture nearly 29% of the North American market^*3, reflecting how anime and anime-style VTuber have become increasingly recognized and embraced worldwide. 

As people become more familiar with and their love for anime-style VTubers continues to grow, it’s easy to envision a future where they become the central hub that brings together gaming, anime, and music across the globe. By reaching these fanbases around the world, VTubers have the potential to evolve into a truly global form of entertainment.

The area we’re putting the most time into right now is global expansion, especially in East Asia and North America. The enthusiasm of our East Asian fans is incredible. Recently, we collaborated with the Taiwanese baseball team Wei Chuan Dragons, hosting a special collaboration game at the Taipei Dome, the largest stadium in Taiwan, and over the course of three days, the event drew record-breaking attendances and merchandise sales, achieving the highest figures ever in the venue’s history. Of course, many people came primarily to watch the baseball game itself, but we also believe that the collaboration with hololive also helped bring a new fanbase into the stadium. 

One of the attendees was actually the CEO of a major local company, who came simply because his child is a fan of hololive: hearing that there’s such passion outside of Japan as well makes me want to push our global expansion even further and keep growing our fan community worldwide.

When I joined the gaming industry in around 1996, the voice acting scene hadn’t really become that big yet: it was in the late 1990s when voice actors began to take on idol-like popularity, and events like Comiket started gaining mainstream attention. Around that time, more anime-based games were being released, and voice actors started playing an increasingly important role within those games. The question of how to bring out a character’s personality became a key focus in game development. 

I see VTubers as an evolution of that very trend. While the direction we’ve taken is certainly new, and I did sense that this was where things were heading, I’ve still been genuinely surprised by how rapidly the VTuber market has grown. 

In terms of global expansion, I believe hololive production is in a very fortunate position that we already have global fans all over the world. The key challenge now is figuring out how to further expand those markets and reach new audiences who have yet to discover us. That’s exactly what we’re focusing on right now. 

One of the most important aspects, in my view, is how we use social media to communicate and how we encourage user-generated content (UGC)^*4. At hololive production, fan-created derivative works play a significant role in increasing the popularity of hololive content with many talented external creators producing a wide range of secondary creations, such as clipped videos of stream highlights. These works often serve as the very first point of contact for new fans discovering hololive production.

I also think it’s important to look at examples where companies have considered multilingual support from the outset, creating talent lineups with global audiences in mind. While learning from successful cases around the world, we aim to develop a global expansion strategy that stays true to COVER’s uniqueness.

I believe that our greatest strength lies in the incredible passion of our fans. At hololive production, streaming is at the core of what we do. Those streams ignite enthusiasm among our viewers, which then carries over to music concerts, creating a powerful cycle of energy and connection. At those live events, fans come together again and celebrate a common passion, and that passion continues to spread, building a strong sense of unity throughout the community. The thought of how we can carry that passion forward and make it resonate with fans around the world is incredibly exciting.

The atmosphere at trading card game tournaments is a little more subdued than that of live concerts, yet it’s common to see players meeting for the first time start their conversations with a question like, “Who’s your oshi?”, leading to spontaneous interactions among fans. The more touchpoints fans have with each other in different settings, the more the community grows, and that’s where we see exciting chemistry starts to build. 

It’s precisely because of such incredible passion from our fans that we’re able to explore many different business opportunities to attempt to meet their expectations. We took on a new challenge in the trading card game space last year, and starting next fiscal year, we’ll be launching a full-scale game business as well. By responding to our fans’ desire for new kinds of experiences, and by offering opportunities that differ from what we’ve done before, we’re able to create entirely new ways for them to enjoy and engage with our content. 

I’ve been in the entertainment industry for a long time, but I’ve never seen this level of passion anywhere else. Meeting fans in person and feeling their energy firsthand is incredibly inspiring for me. That’s why I make a point to attend every live concert I can, and I also try to visit trading card game tournaments and shop events whenever possible.

This summer, we held a gaming event called “hololive GAMERS fes. Cho-Cho-Cho-Cho GAMERS 2” at Saitama Super Arena and right after that, I had a business trip to Osaka and stopped by our official shop, “hololive production official shop in Osaka Umeda, ” in Umeda as well. 

I asked the store manager how sales had been recently, and he told me that on the very day of the event in Saitama, merchandise featuring the talents who performed at the event suddenly sold out at the Osaka official shop. Since Osaka and Saitama are rather far apart, I didn’t expect there to be much of a direct correlation: it really surprised me to see that even fans who couldn’t attend the event in person were showing their support by purchasing merchandise. 

From these sorts of experiences, I have realized that there’s still a lot more we can do to create deeper backstories and connections between our events and merchandise. 

When it comes to creating entertainment, the most important thing is to move people emotionally. No matter how deep you dive into data analysis, it alone won’t lead to something truly new or emotionally moving. At my previous company, I often told my team, “Focus on how to appeal to the five senses – how to create something that remains in people’s hearts,” and after putting those ideas into practice, what matters most is whether the end result feels genuinely exciting. 

It’s also important to make sure that each individual project doesn’t culminate in a single point, but instead connects with others to form a living story. It’s also crucial that our ideas don’t become predictable – they need to exceed fans’ expectations through creative plans and measures that genuinely surprise and delight them. To achieve that, we have to study what truly makes fans happy, which means having a wide range of ideas to draw from and a deep understanding of our fanbase.

It’s difficult to quantitatively evaluate whether we’re achieving all of these things as a company, but by fostering a culture where people naturally associate the company as being one that truly values these principles, I believe we can nurture more creators who align with our values. Even from a management perspective, I place great importance on creating an environment where such people can thrive. 

I believe the first wave of the VTuber market has now settled down a bit. When VTuber culture first emerged, the industry was in a state of complete chaos – we were all just figuring things out as we went along. From learning how to interact with fan communities to figuring out how to obtain permissions for game streaming, everyone did what they could at the time and kept moving forward.

However, as the market has gradually matured, we’ve reached a stage now where we need to start thinking about smarter and more strategic ways to move forward. I feel that we’re now right in the middle of that transition period. That said, based on my past experiences, when it comes to moving people through entertainment, becoming too “grown-up” isn’t always a good thing either. 

Another major challenge, I think, is creating new career paths for our talents who are pursuing a career in this new profession as VTubers – paths that look ahead 10 or even 20 years into the future. It’s our role to support them so they can continue being a VTuber for many years to come, and as a company, we place great importance on working out how we can create new stages and career opportunities for them along the way. For example, – just to make it easier to visualize – there could be entirely new kinds of units, bases of activity, or even opportunities for talents to take part as producers themselves. I believe it’s important for us, as an industry, to work together to establish these kinds of role models for the future.

What I’ve been feeling more strongly in recent years is how people’s use of their time in their everyday lives has changed. For example, even in areas like music or Netflix dramas, longer content tends to get skipped, while short, instantly consumable content keeps gaining traction. Because of that, we’re no longer just competing with other VTubers – we’re competing with idols, musicians, artists, anime, and films across every medium of entertainment for people’s time. 

For hololive production, live streaming plays a huge role – it’s often through a live stream that viewers truly get to know a talent’s personality and become real fans, which is why I always hope more people will take the time to watch those streams. At the same time, however, I can’t help but feel that in the future, younger generations may find it increasingly difficult to spend long periods of time watching livestreams. 

As younger generations grow up with a culture of watching Netflix at 1.5x speed, listening only to the chorus of songs, and rapidly consuming short videos on TikTok, it’s becoming increasingly important to think about how we can make them more interested in hololive production content and encourage them to watch our live streams. 

In fact, hololive’s short-form videos have been performing extremely well, which has certainly made it easier to reach a wider audience, but the real challenge now is how to turn those viewers into devoted fans. 

Our goal is to provide a stage where the talents of hololive production can shine as influential figures in the global content industry who inspire audiences around the world.

For example, we hope that to promote a new game or for the opening or ending theme song for an anime, companies will immediately think of working with talents from hololive. Specifically, we hope to expand the fields we operate in so that hololive production can become an integral business partner.

Our aim is also to make content appealing to audiences around the world through the influence that our talents possess: in the next five to ten years, we hope to see fans across the globe sharing the same excitement. Even now, we’re already holding world tours, but I hope to see that same enthusiasm not only at live concerts, but also during streams, gaming events, and trading card tournaments.

I’d say it’d have to be “dormant magma.”

As a company, we’re in the process of maturing. As we continue to improve in areas such as governance, budget control, and labor management, there’s naturally a sense within the organization that some of our energy is being held back. But if that pressure stays bottled up, our growth will be stunted and we’d just end up becoming a run-of-the-mill company. The question is how we can break through that shell and elevate ourselves to the next level because, at some point, we’ll need to release that energy in an explosive kind of way to truly evolve.