NIJISANJI Project

Synopsis

NIJISANJI Project, colloquially known as just NIJISANJI, is an agency of primarily 2D Virtual YouTubers who are also known as "Virtual Livers" due to posting on sites outside of YouTube, such as NicoNico, Twitch and Bilibili. Managed by ANYCOLOR Inc. (known as Ichikara Inc. until 17 May 2021), a company founded by Riku Tazumi in 2017, NIJISANJI started in Japan in February 2018 as one of the first major VTuber agencies. Their focus on livestreams set its members apart from other early VTubers, such as Kizuna Ai or Kaguya Luna, who primarily made prerecorded videos. This, as well as the use of Live2D over expensive 3D, led to NIJISANJI's success in the Japanese market and codified the current VTuber format of Live2D streaming. As of March 2023, there is a total of 182 members across two different branches: 156 NIJISANJI members and 30 NIJISANJI EN members. Outside of those two branches, there are also 43 VirtuaReal Project members from VirtuaReal, a joint venture company between bilibili and ANYCOLOR in China. The agency has over 60 million subscribers on YouTube with 182 Livers on the platform, making it the agency with the second-most total subscribers, only behind hololive. VirtuaReal members stream primarily on bilibili instead of YouTube, so their numbers aren't counted for these figures. Kuzuha, a Japanese member of the branch, is the most-subscribed male VTuber worldwide with 1.4 million subscribers; and Hyakumantenbara Salome, also a Japanese member of the main branch, is the current world record-holder for being the fastest VTuber to reach 1 million subscribers in just under 14 days.