>>85224>Few of them even design their characterI'm fairly certain that most of the vtubers I mentioned watching designed some or all of their own model, maybe with the exception of marimari_en and Tobs. Lumi is a workaholic and pretty regularly makes model alterations, or adds little things to her model. nino designed her Live2D model, and occasionally does drawing streams. beri is much the same. JeanFaymas is way more talented. She designed literally everything herself, including the Live2D stuff. A lot of vtubers, even if they're skilled enough to design their own model, commission other people to do the Live2D rigging. And, I'm fairly certain chromu created her 3D model herself.
>I like daa gaymesss heeeheeee.>People don't like a clever youtuberI don't think this is a good faith criticism. I think it may be true for those corporate vtubers, especially Hololive or Nijisanji, who basically exclusively play Minecraft, but I think most indie vtubers do so because playing games and so forth is something they genuinely enjoy doing. Whatever your thoughts are on the merits of streaming daily games, you're not going to convince me that someone such as marimari_en who can correctly identify video game BGM from a 1 second snippet, or who can think up Pokemon based on type, region, etc. is actually only a vtuber because she just wants money and has no interest in video games, or anime, or whatever else. Besides, you can go and look at the Twitch leaks yourself. Most of these people are making less than $20K per year, and many still live at home with their parents.
>it's just "Here's $1000, make me an avatar that sells".I mean this genuinely: why do you care? How much of the anime landscape is dominated by trends? Someone makes an isekai series, because it's popular. Someone adds a loli character for fan service. There's a tsundere because that's what's popular. You're creating a 90s to early 2000s anime, so you add a blue haired kuudere, or a character inexplicably has a blue jewel pendant necklace. It's the 1980s, so of course you're making an OVA or a mecha series. It's the 2000s, so your anime has an abundance of gratuitous panty shots. Why does it matter if someone decides they want to commission an artist to create something they think will be popular?
>They take an aesthetic that represents something wonderful and wear it as a mask for their own profits and popularity.This is a pretty obvious double standard that no one really cares to apply elsewhere. How many VAs care about source material? They're just reading a script. VAs with a loli voice get cast to voice loli characters, VAs with a serious voice get cast to voice serious characters, and so on. People love to revere certain studios, but how many do you think actually scout out material to adapt versus being paid by a publisher to adapt it? How many people complain that artists switch drawing popular characters from one season to the next? How many people complain that an artist takes commissions versus drawing whatever they feel like?
Ultimately, it feels like many of these criticisms derive from questioning authenticity. With regards to the production of things, beyond vtubers, there is unquestionably little authenticity. The difference being, with a team of people working to create something, there is a diffuse level of direct input from any one person so that any individuality is subsumed into the collective work; when playing Dark Souls, do you consider the artist who designed the ground tile texture? When playing Pokemon, do you consider the artist who designed the Pokemon screeches? When reading a LN or Manga, do you consider the material you're not seeing, that was cut or altered by the publisher? When watching an anime, do you question the convictions to the character a VA is voicing? No, because as a collective work of fiction, those subtle and collective changes are negligible when considering the broader work. But because a vtuber is a one-person production, you can happily levy all of these criticisms you wouldn't dare consider otherwise despite the fact that an individual production is undoubtedly authentic to the intentions of the creator, the vtuber, themselves.
I agree, people should do what they enjoy, but at the same time I don't think that anyone should kid themselves that any particular thing they enjoy is somehow morally or artistically superior than anything else.