NIJISANJI

The official logo of NIJISANJI. There is no color.

NIJISANJI (Japanese: くろさんじ) is a Japanese virtual YouTuber company that is the paper version of Hololive. It tries to create virtual anime boys, girls, dogs and demons into a 2D version of themselves, in which they do almost every 3 months.

Formed in 2018 by a yacht-owning billionaire with an intent to keep its stocks alive by milking merchandise of whatever talents they think make them the most money, most talents by the time they leave the company will be left with no rights to their IPs, less money, not enough money to repair anything tech-related, having management taking control of their socials, not getting 3D models (which is ironic, considering the fact that their name could also mean 3D), and much worse.

It's so bad that in 2024, they have been called the evil Hololive.

Technology

Most of the time, talents (called livers in NIJISANJI lingo) use iPhones to stream their 2D versions of themselves, which is much less expensive than the 3D VTubers at the time. When they first began, it's just facial features, head rotation, and limited mobility movement, making their 1.0 models creepier than you think. After debuting, livers will get 2.0 brushups which are better than their creepier movements from their 1.0 models, but that's not saying much as now all livers that debuted post-2021 get 2.0 models. 3.0 models are the more elitist versions that every liver wants to get, but not all of them will as some of them will graduate before they get them.

In addition to full-body 3D motion capture and Live2D models, NIJISANJI has its own 3D system which is basically what happens when you combine 3D models and their 1.0 models. Not everyone gets their own 3D model, and as mentioned, livers can graduate before they do. This almost never ever happens to Hololive.

History

2018

On February 8, 2018, future billionaire and yacht lover Riku Tazumi and his company, NOCOLOR announced their first ever livers. Those livers included a schoolgirl, a blue Madoka Kaname ripoff, a green-haired man, a schoolgirl who looks like Monika from Doki Doki Literature Club with grey hair, another schoolgirl with short hair, a blue-haired angel, a man disguised as a woman, and an elf fairy who is loyal to the country of Japan and its culture. Their models were pretty stilted and acts like that they're balancing on a ball, but overtime they later got 2.0 upgrades (brush-ups in NIJISANJI lingo) and later, 3.0 brush-ups which made their movements more smoother than their first years. Their second generation of livers, introduced the next month include a terminally-online gamer girl, Alice from Alice in Wonderland, a guitarist, a girl that can change ages, a schoolboy, a vampire that rarely streams, a MILF, a catgirl, a girl that likes strawberries and yet another schoolgirl but with pink hair.

In May 2018, NIJISANJI announced their branch based on gamers called NIJISANJI Gamers, which focuses on Let's Play streams. They would later branch out into other ventures such as music. Later, Hololive would make their response by creating a branch based on the same concept, but with anime animal girls instead. Hololive obviously ended up edging NIJISANJI a year later, so NIJISANJI had to disband their gamers branch. Livers in that branch included an aloof guy, a vampire guy that has an opposite personality of the aloof guy that was mentioned, a schoolgirl who is obsessed with the occult, a panda girl who retired at first and later returned (in which she's the only liver to do so), a girl who has a sunflower on her head, a devil girl who carries a plush toy, a ghost girl, a demon girl who lives on noodles and a snow girl who lives in the mountains. They would then release another branch called NIJISANJI SEEDs, in which Hololive stole that concept 5 years later for their DEV_IS branch. This branch focuses on talents that aren't just gamers. Livers in that branch include a sexy demon girl, a drag queen, a green-haired singer who doesn't identify as any biological sex, a nun, a goth boy, a gyaru, another schoolboy, a doctor, a bunny girl (or something), another crossdresser, a literal god, a girl who could've been one of the most subscribed livers if she hadn't graduated and a girl with amnesia. They would then introduce VOIZ, which was supposed to be a male branch of 4 livers but no one knew the other 2 that left, so the other two just continued activities. The two that didn't leave were a knight and a guy who is a comedian. Other livers include a guy who can't open his eyes well, a girl who claims to be Big Brother, a tsundere, another schoolgirl that is a combination of Sayuri and Monika (also from DDLC), a farmer that wears bathrobes, a literal demon, another demon girl, a clown, a girl whose name is a palindrome when you pronounce it, a Sakura Miko ripoff, Simon Belmont from Castlevania, NIJISANJI's least subscribed liver of all time, a singer-songwriter, a dog, a janitor, a bunny girl and yet another schoolgirl.

In their first attempt at going overseas (at the time, VTuber corporations rarely do), they went to China and Taiwan to expand their liver operations, which didn't last long and they were replaced with VirtuaReal in 2019, which is basically the Chinese version of NIJISANJI as a partnership with Bilibili.

2019

NOCOLOR announced their partnership program which did not last long. They then expanded to Indonesia, which somehow managed to be successful and lasted longer, unlike their other Chinese operations. However, they then would make their first mistake when they expanded to India, which is a place where VTubers aren't rife there. A few people watched the Indian livers' streams, but Noor's the most popular since she could actually speak Japanese, unlike Aadya and Vihaan in which they could speak some Japanese, but then again, they were not popular. Then, they would expand to South Korea, and their livers there were popular, kinda.

2020

Another mistake is that the Indian branch got renamed to NIJISANJI EN, which could mean that the CEO doesn't know that there are other English-speaking countries other than India. But however, they decided to rename it at the last moment when NIJISANJI announced their English branch for real, which killed the Indian branch. They would have their livers be on Reddit and become moderators.

2021

NIJISANJI EN began its activities in May 2021, featuring a fairy, a light dragon and a mermaid as part of its first wave called Lazulite. NIJISANJI would then open accounts on TikTok, and then announce the opening of their own training academy. However, this would only be for Japanese livers, not English-speaking livers. VirtuaReal would also never have that too. Other than that, NIJISANJI EN started adding more waves. The second wave, Charcoa, features a sentient rose, a penguin and a dark dragon (the latter would be suspended, which we'll get to in the Controversies section later). The third wave, Etherium, features the themes of Heaven and Hell. On the Heaven side, you have a nine-tailed fox that brings luck and a songbird. On the Hell side, you have a witch that goes on 4chan every day and a ghost that sings songs. But their fourth wave was the one that broke the camel's back, as that made English-speaking male agency VTubers more popular. Called Fosium, it features a fox detective, a sorcerer, an author who also speaks Swedish, a mafia boss who says POG a lot, and their biggest selling point, a demon in a British accent who mostly does ASMR videos. It got to the point where that wave had more merch and more marketing than the other waves on the English branch.

2022

2022 was the biggest year for NIJISANJI. Tazumi became a billionaire as stocks for NOCOLOR rose and Hyakumentanbara Salome, their only solo debutant, got 2 million subscribers on YouTube, which could easily be gotten by any Hololive VTuber anyways. A lot of people watched their streams, and the people who got trained became livers and got popular, but not as popular as Salome. But it wasn't all glittering though, but depending how you see it, they merged the Indonesian and Korean branches into the main branch, which probably doesn't make sense as not all of those livers can speak Japanese. Because of this, some of the Korean livers ended up graduating, probably because they don't want to merge.

2023

NIJISANJI decides to do what it does best; debut more waves every 3 months on the Japanese, English and Chinese sides, put out the same birthday merch every year, put out more voice packs (but only the ones that make the most money have longer voice packs), and more. Until...well, they have graduations every month. It got to the point where a majority of the Indonesian livers graduated, and it was every single month. Gundo Mirei (a bisexual teacher) got suspended over a baseball joke, but she graduated anyways.

2024

The gold has come off and NIJISANJI's EN branch isn't doing well. Prior to this, in 2022, one of their livers from that branch, a metrosexual DJ who is the darker equivalent of Ike Eveland graduated. In May 2023, another liver got suspended over a "deez nuts" joke, and it was the tsundere student from XXXSOLARIS. In 2023, they had 2 graduations, and both of them were foxes. Now it's 2024, and in January they had their fairy graduate. But it got worse. They terminated their dark dragon and it became a mainstream issue for VTubers and the Internet. It got to the point where NIJISANJI's stock fell down and they have been exposed as a black company. To be honest, their business model was never profitable to begin with. They do too much of quantity over quality, and they debut way too much livers. Drama happens every single day within the company. So they'll probably never ever recover from this.

In April 2024, they held their previously cancelled AR (Awfully Rotten) live for the English livers featuring remnants of Pomu Rainpuff, Nina Kosaka and Mysta Rias' voices, yet they somehow managed to remove Selen's voice out of nowhere. Their live was a disaster, as it was already muted due to copyright on Bilibili, the models were rushed (even MMD models are better than this), the lightning was amateurish and doesn't live up to the names, the girls got less songs than the boys, and favoritism rules on their behalf. On another note, in a desperate attempt to expand the EN branch, they opened permanent auditions forever.

Another disaster that they did was the Virtual Rhapsody concert in Singapore, even though a majority of their stans live around that area. They used AI art for the promo, and they basically got mocked. Hololive did a concert in Australia on the same day (April 27) and that was better than what NIJISANJI did.

Merchandise

Now that's totally original!

NIJISANJI sells merchandise in the same vein as Wish.com, Temu and Aliexpress does. You can easily buy these at a cheaper price, but they decided to make it overpriced. Unlike Hololive, they are very unoriginal with their merch, the best offender being their birthday merch in which they pump out the same sets every year for their livers, because they ran out of ideas. In fact, they pump out the same sets which can get overtly repetitive. The only things you could only buy are an acrylic panel, a cloth poster, a badge, a snapshot card, a letter and photo card and a metallic charm. You could also get a wallpaper and voice pack as well. The thing is that Hololive does include some of these things in their birthday merch sets, but not as often, and they even have more varied merch than them.

Let's not forget the favoritism that comes with the merch as well. Most of the time the most popular livers get more merch. These include (but are not limited to); Amamiya Kokoro, Kanae, Kazuha, Sukoya Kana and others. In the English side, they usually pick the most problematic livers including Elira Pendora and Vox Akuma. Get it? Because there's no favoritism in NIJISANJI.

Controversies

As mentioned, in February 2024, the dark dragon of Charcoa, Selen Tatsuki got terminated over posting a music video that had former livers within it, which is ironic considering her sister, Elira Pendora, has done the same but in her banner, yet Elira has never been banned. Their termination notice was community noted on Twitter, their black screen video sucked ass, their apology also sucked ass, and their stocks tumbled. Their financial report had only 2 sentences and they haven't fired their financial advisor yet. The word that stuck out was "negligible", which never made sense as their finances are not negligible. Selen's other account, Dokibird ended up outshining the EN streams. There was a failed attempt against haters on Twitter, which backfired immediately. It got to the point where NIJISANJI stans ended up being the equivalent of K-pop stans and Swifties. Despite this, there were a few that ended up being innocent. Scarle Yonaguni, aka the dark-skinned sorcerer from iFengari actually dislikes NIJISANJI and even posted a picture of her Starbucks order, which got backlash from NIJIstans and thought that she was a Zionist. It got to the point where NIJIstans were banned from Scarle's streams ever again.

Another failed attempt by NIJIstans is a list that they made on Rentry, but instead of calling out all YouTubers that think NIJISANJI is an evil company, they called out some mainstream ones like penguinz0 and Mutahar Anas. It backfired immediately as all people on that list ended up getting their follower counts on socials increased. Even some of their livers from that branch like Luca Kaneshiro got called out for being a sex offender. Also, their contract is abysmal, and if you don't sign within 2 weeks, you're in and you are given minimal training compared to their Japanese and possibly Chinese counterparts. It proves that NIJISANJI is the Maker Studios of VTuber agencies. If you get a play button, they will take it away from you to boost Tazumi's ego. Even YAGOO does not do this, but he has all of his talents' play buttons for his office, except that he also gives them a copy of their play button as well.

Also, Uki Violeta hates white people. It got to a point where there could be a secret clique within NIJISANJI EN featuring Millie Parfait and her friends, and as such, all livers in the EN branch have their subscriber counts dwindled, perhaps even more by the end of 2024.

See also

• Gay
• Noir
• Cunt
• Nothing

This article is part of the Wonderful Japan series