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The story
A 5ch user’s post about wanting to become a Vtuber drew a wide range of replies — everything from talk of gaming PCs and voice changers to the harsh realities of actually making money at it. One veteran’s account in particular — that “you’ll spend dozens of hours talking to yourself with zero viewers before anything changes” — really drove home how tough streaming can be.
What people said
Oh, and the most important thing — being a girl
I never said I was a guy or a girl! 😡
Because showing my face is a no-go
Vtuber's the only option left
Then just don't show your face
Only the top tier actually makes money
Better to start small first
If you're doing this, sounds like you should skip YouTube
YouTube's basically the Grand Line of the streaming world (a One Piece reference — the roughest, most cutthroat sea to sail)
If the 'person inside' has a squeaky voice, nobody's gonna watch (a crude pun on 中の人/"nakanohito," Vtuber slang for the performer behind the avatar)
Wait, Vtubers actually do voice training?
I said I already have a gaming PC
There are voice-only YouTubers too
but if you're not showing your face, isn't it better to have a Vtuber model?
I dunno, it's more approachable or something?
If you can't get popular on voice alone, it probably doesn't matter either way
it's a red ocean at this point
I never said I was a guy or a girl! 😡
Just for reference though, which brand of voice changer is good? Purely for reference
Never used one so I wouldn't know 😡
OP's a guy anyway, right? Gonna be rough without a voice changer
LOL ("草"/"grass," common Japanese internet slang for laughing)
What happened after that? Did you quit?
Wait, you're not supposed to clap while talking?
Does that cause some kind of error?
For game guides or highlight-reel plays you don't need a face (Vtuber model)
but for regular gameplay, isn't having a face more approachable?
Having one is better than not, sure
but the avatar model ('gawa') is expensive, so it's risky if you can't make your own
Early on nobody comments, but if you don't talk nobody watches — it's a real catch-22
That's the rough part 😭
I'll give it a while and quit if it doesn't work out
You need to stockpile small-talk topics ahead of time or it's brutal
Being able to ramble for 3 hours straight off the top of your head is the exception, not the rule
I'm confident in my talking
My gaming skills suck though
What do you mean?
Did clapping used to disable the voice changer back in the day?
The clap registered as noise, so it couldn't be recognized as a voice, and the processing would just drop out
With a normal voice changer the effect strips off and you get caught
With RVC (an AI-based voice conversion tool), non-voice sounds get AI-generated into 'voice' too, so you get caught that way instead
I don't have that kind of skill 😭
I can probably handle the talking
but games make me motion sick, so that's rough
Install some recording software, boot up any random game right now, and just talk non-stop for 30 minutes like you're actually streaming — just record it
Even the big names today started with zero viewers and no comments, so it was dozens of hours of talking to themselves
Then go back and listen to your own 30 minutes — waiting for you is some random stranger's incredibly boring rambling
You don't even need to talk
Just click your tongue once in a while
Go commentate Street Fighter II Turbo
Talking non-stop while actually playing a game is pretty hard, huh
Free-talk is easy though
Seriously? So target a female audience then? 🤔
Background and Key Points
Vtuber culture in Japan traces back to Kizuna AI’s 2016 debut and exploded once agencies like Hololive and Nijisanji began scouting and training talent under contract, complete with in-house voice coaching, scripted debuts, and merchandise pipelines. That institutional backing is exactly what’s missing for a solo hopeful posting on 5ch with just a gaming PC: everything from the “gawa” (avatar model, mentioned in the thread as expensive to commission) to microphone technique to audience-building has to be self-funded and self-taught. The platform landscape matters too — Japanese streaming skews heavily toward YouTube rather than Twitch, and by 2026 there are reportedly tens of thousands of registered Vtuber channels, which is the “red ocean” posters kept invoking.
The thread didn’t split on whether to try, but on whether an avatar is actually necessary once you’re hiding your face and voice. Several posters argued a Live2D model reads as more “approachable” than a bare voice-only channel; others countered that without an audience even for voice alone, the model is irrelevant window dressing on a product nobody’s watching.
What outsiders likely miss is how fragile the anonymity tools are — the joke about a voice changer glitching from a clap wasn’t just a gag, it points to a real technical weakness in pitch-shift-based changers versus newer AI conversion (RVC), which processes any sound as if it were speech and thus avoids that failure but raises other detection risks. The thread also never mentioned that most viral Vtuber successes came through agency debuts with built-in fanbases, not solo indie starts like the one being planned here.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “[Urgent Request] I’m thinking of becoming a Vtuber — what do I need to prepare?.”
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