Coincidentally, less than a week after I published my blog about VTubers, VShojo is on the brink of total collapse.

VShojo, based in California, is one of the largest VTuber talent agencies, following COVER (Hololive) and ANYCOLOR (Nijisanji) from Japan. VShojo bills itself as a “talent first” agency, and even advertises it in Japan. It provides merchandise and event arrangement services to VTubers, and talents hold IP themselves. Kson, as I mentioned in the last blog, is a member of VShojo and has praised its practice multiple times in the past. Mikeneko (みけねこ) was also a member of VShojo under the name Nazuna Amemiya (飴宮なずな).

However, it’s now exposed that VShojo owes a significant amount of merchandise income from its talents, and may even repurpose funds raised for charity to cover operational expenses, which is a huge legal problem if true. Nearly all talents quit after Ironmouse, the founding member and the most famous one, exposed the issues publicly.

To me, it seems that VShojo hasn’t found a steady source of income. After the rapid worldwide expansion drained the investment money, the implosion was irresistible. The IP is expensive at the quality VShojo provided to their talents. The talent also gets to hold money from streaming, leaving merchandise and events as the sole income for the company. VShojo’s fan base is more dispersed in the English-speaking world, making the merchandise production and inventory management more difficult than those of the other agencies. With headquarters in California and a Japanese branch, it will face both financial and management problems when the revenue-generating branch is far from the decision-making branch.

Luckily, VShojo seems to keep their word. Talents kept their IP and will continue to be active as independent VTubers. It might cost less than what they are owed, though.

VShojo was once like a dream company in the VTuber world, and the ending is sad. It’s hard for independent VTubers to arrange events and release merchandise, so agencies do hold some value to VTubers. Agencies for actors and singers have existed for more than 100 years, it’s a pity that VTubers haven’t got a working one. It may be due to the special Internet culture, but who knows for sure?