This is one of those narratives that started back in the day on reddit/4chan/twitter and with a couple of clips that don't tell the full story. It paints the JP fanbase in a more negative light than was actually the case and gives more credit to the overseas fanbase than is due. Not saying that some JP fans didn't over react and that overseas fans didn't help, both of these are true, but it's been exaggerated to fit the narrative. It's been repeated so often now though that most people just treat it as a fact. There was never a mass exodus of Towa's JP fans. As is often the case with this type of drama it was just a small number of crazies. Also the issue wasn't that she had a bf, it was that she panicked and lied that it was management...very similar to the Rushia situation where the issue was never "GFE" or that she was messaging mafumafu, it was that she panicked and broke her NDA. Overseas bros absolutely had her back though and it was around the time Hololive was blowing up in the west because of Korone, Miko, Fubuki and the others so there was a large influx of EN viewers to everyone. So overall still a great video, I just think that overtime the facts tend to get sensationalized and made more melodramatic by fans retelling it because it makes for a better story, making finding what actually happened a lot more difficult. Keep up the good work!

Probably a fun fact: Towa had the most English speaking/non Japanese fans among all Hololive in terms of viewer percentage before EN debuted

It unironically ended up being one of the best moments for her career. By purging her audience of fans like that during her early career it has allowed her to be unhindered when it comes to collabs. Nowadays she has the most amount of connections in the Vtuber community of any Hololive talent by far having played with people from Nijisanji, Vspo, 774, a bunch of large Japanese indie Vtubers/Regular KZfaqrs, and even Western Apex Pros like RPR .

This also shows how much the company has changed, they went from: "we're sorry for inconvenience caused by the talent", to: "Our company has no control over the talent's private life".

I love what overseas members can do to help foreign people

She really has been one of the most committed to learn English, which is great. I think her fanbase includes many Korean fans as well, maybe because she played much with Korean Apex players.

It literally could have been anyone, a brother, dad, or yes a boyfriend. It's legit sad that people fetish/fantasies got messed up from the mistake, sad really.

As a kenzoku i am very happy for towa sama her music saved me when i was in a despair a 2 years ago thats when i discovered hololive and she became my oshi

I also remember reading a comment about Pekora (I think it was Pekora, could have been a different member) getting backlash after she accidently showed that she tracked her menstrual cycles on a calendar, and some of the obsessed fans thought that meant she had a "partner". It's unreal how parasocial fans get with idols. Really happy to learn that overseas fans helped Towa through it.

At one point, her chat had mostly English comments. Nowadays, it mostly has Japanese comments, like any other JP member, which is probably for the best. Also, between this "controversy" and how nicely the incident with Mel's stalker got resolved, relatively speaking, has left us wildly inadequately prepared for when Mano Aloe left.

Towa's singing voice really hooks viewers such as myself and her unique nasally voice.

Man, I remember this. I fell down the vtuber rabbit hole around that time, and would watch and support Towa after all the drama, glad to see our angel managed to bounce back and become one of the most beloved members of Hololive.

I didn't initially like her design, but her voice was captivating, especially when I listened to her covers. Then I grew to like her more as the years went on and hearing this story just makes me appreciate her even more! Do your best, Towa-sama, and everyone else in the Hololive company!

i love towa. she was one of the first hololive members i saw clips of, and i took a liking to her personality immediately. she is so funny and sweet. i’m happy both she and her audience are in a better place now. it’s nice to see her grow

First off, if it was a boyfriend or husband, that shouldn't be any of our business. Secondly, the voice could be a lot of other males with no romantic or sexual relationship. Father, brother, roommate, friend. All of those and more are possible relationships this man could have to her.

This reminds me of Rushia's controversy, and it makes me sad. It shows that she could have bounced back from what happened, but she panicked and leaked information that broke her contract with hololive.

Ooh, a male voice. Could have been a brother, father, cousin, or delivery man. The "purity" part of being an idol is really arcane and stupid.

Hey man.... Congrats to whoever is with Towa-Sama. I hope he's just as proud of her as we are and supports her as much if not more than we do. I'm just happy she continued to stay and give us entertainment that we enjoy and I'm glad we got to listen to the amazing bangers that she's released.

Towa-sama and suisei has the strongest vocal cordes i have ever listen in hololive

Do note that nowadays Towas fanbase has gone back to majority Japanese. After the whole male voice debacle Towa has suffered quite a slow growth, I believe one of the turning point to this is her 3D debut stream. Her singing Error in that stream jumpstarted her rise. Other than that, her participation in various APEX tournaments also help boost up her popularity. A lot of JP Apex viewer saw her performance and fell in love with her resulting in her current viewerbase.

I got in Hololive a few months after this, via Korone's Doom streams. So I was never aware of this incident. So it turns out there's much more to TOWA's effort to speak English than just from playing APEX. That's great to know. Thanks for creating this video.

I haven't watched a lot of hololive recently, but I really like watching Towa and her Apex streams. I'm really glad that she stayed in and continue to stream today. I really love her singing streams and also songs and covers too!

And this is part of the reason why Palette hits harder as her original song. Even error despite being a cover, is a song that Towa made her own.

I still remember seeing all this happen in real time and seeing the overseas fans rally up for Towa in that week alone. It was kind of a blessing in disguise in that Towa never really had a notable identity since her debut until after she returned. By that time, only her real fans stood by.

Tokoyami "the beloved" Towa sama. . The unspoken title or nickname given by the viewers as early as 250,000 subs. . Despite the hardships she had encountered, towa sama always has been worried towards her viewers. . Miss Towa cares. a lot. That's why everyone simply called her "Angel." . Everyone knew they met someone "special." . We love you Towa Sama! 🥰

One of the first hololive members I subscribed to. There have been smiles we have failed to protect before but seeing Towa's on her 3d debut and the original songs she's made for us, I'm glad that we've managed to protect this one at least

not only did the overseas fans help she paid it forward when it comes to the ID and EN girls shes the one who communicates with them first shes the one who helps them when they are over in japan and u can truly see that she loves overseas people as a whole

Towabros where we at?

Ah thank you for bringing it up for those who are unaware of this drama at that time, it's basically "The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few" quite from Sentinel Prime that Towa's overwhelming English speaking viewers came to her rescue and saved her career.

wholesome girl with a banger voice, what else the damn pervs want? happy for her and the fully deserved success

I remember back then that there was this artist who draws alot of amazing Towa art. He only draws Towa, and I've never seen him drawn anything else, but Towa. His art is incredibly fantastic, and back then when Towa was not as popular, he was the only one who's art I see related to Towa. One of his art that I really like was this illustration of Towa crying because she has an halo and an angel wing on his back. However, this artist has unforunately took a break from illustrating because he is going to join the army, and Towa has fortunately send him off. I'm not sure if this artist is still active from drawing cause I barely see his illustration on my following post, but I give that artist a salute because he was one of the original artist who stick to Towa from the very beginning and brought shine to Towa when she was still small. Today, Towa has like 4k+ illustration which is absolutely wild for me, cause I've stick with Towa ever since her 3D debut. Honestly, an incredibly journey from an incredible person, both Mr. Lime and Tokoyami Towa.

I started watching hololive in late 2019, and I feel like this was a really important event in the vtubing story as a whole. Had this happened maybe even 6 months earlier there could very well have simply not been enough western watchers to rally together. It showed that not only could we be a part of the culture, but that we could even make things better than when we arrived. I also get the feeling this was significant to Cover. This would have been around the time EN would have been starting planning. Yes there was Coco, but to arrive at the 11th hour and save not only a talent but also their image showed that overseas viewers were a viable market, and that was even with a language barrier.

That Error on the 3Dnlive just hit different

I remember that it was sad (her followers dropped a lot, but after that many overseas made her followers increase more and more). In retrospect, thanks to that now she can even do collabs with men. Personally, I see that incident more as doing a weirdos cleanup.

I don't care what happened. Instead I want to say that when I heard Towa's cover "Brilliant" for the first time, it was like I was struck by lightning. I never heard anything so beautiful before. Since that day I became kenzoku and there is no way back.

Imagine almost being cancelled by your own so called "FANS" for something so petty. It's really sad that they would do such a thing. I don't understand their mentality, but damn.

Your videos are very informative and to the point. I don't know much about HoloLive, so I've got to know different Vtubers and their inspirational stories ❤

I joined started watching Hololive around the time this had sorted itself out so wasn't really involved but looking back on the way Towa interacts with the EN lot & tries her hand at English so much it's nice to see the link

Seeing Cover's response on Towa back in the day apologizing, vs Cover ready to defend Rushia about personal relationship rumour before they found out the NDA breach, yeah, Cover did really learnt about protecting talent, rather than pleasing minority of fans (even tho i feel like they were way smaller back then, i can see they need to please the small number of fans) I hope this is a good projectory first for talent, and it trickle down to cultivating better fanbase

Her songs are so amazing

America "We don't care if you're pure, just make us smile,"

Yah this is the time i fell in the rabbit hole... Im still trying to know as much holo talent as much as possible and 4th gen hasnt had their 3d debut, i jusr discover towa was on break regarding this issue that time

This was so beautiful that it almost brought a tear to my eye, I'm glad that we as overseas bros have done good for once and helped her out. I didnt know much about her or even heard about this but I'm glad things worked out in the end. Godspeed my friend, Godspeed o7

i really appreciate overseas fans for supporting her the male voice could her bf,family or friend or others,idk. idol or not,She has her own life outside her job.

Nice content really informative

Towas beginning was rough but I'm glad to be there to support her the best since debut

i just learn of this today from your video and i think its funny that this is happening around the time where i first start watching Hololive and ofc Towa so hearing that i whit out ever knowing what was going on was supporting when she might have needed it made me happy TMT all the way

You mean to tell me.. that my already unattainable Tokoyami Towa is... even less attainable?! The horror! Seriously though.. she is just so damn charming and sweet. Not to mention talented. She obviously has a life outside of streaming. She's not Korone, after all! That woman lives in her stream and I swear she doesn't even sleep. Only stops to snack sometimes. Or maybe blow our eardrums out with her idol-sneezes. I hope Towa has exactly the life she hoped for and enjoys every bit of luxury that her hard work gives her. And yes, that includes having a boyfriend.

Real kenzoku is the chill one

sounds like what if aloe incident get resolved in the opposite way

I knew about the incident and that she was able to move on. What I didn't know it was even earlier than 3 months. Thanks for the info and vid.

Towa will always hold a soft spot in my heart for sure! Plus she’s hilarious!

I’m relatively new to Hololive and Vtubers in general, when I hear things that happened before I even knew this existed it makes me happy to know that we as in Internet overseas fans, have a history of good behavior and support ❤

Perfect explanation. I'd heard of the drama but never understood now I do

In hindsight this was great for her career, especially as an apex/fps focused streamer since most apex streamers are male. It let her clear the male collab hurdle early on in her career and any shit she'll put up with won't be as bad as the first incident. Now she can comfortable collab with any apex players, female or male alike without any resistance or problems because of what she's gone through and i think she's happier for it too.

Never knew about this one. Was before my time, so I am very thankful the fans had her back. Towa is amazing.

Kinda sad really, they fail to understand that outside the character, our oshi still have life to live lets be honest here most if not all of em has a boyfriend already and probably has to keep em secret just because of hardcore fan, but still i love watching them because i see a friend, a sister, a mother (eh somewhat you get what you get tho), a dad (im looking at you dad), a kusogaki, because i like their personality and enjoy their stream

I'm happy for her

the music at the beginning is fire!

I remembered watching her 3D Debut when I'm still new to the Hololive, and that Live Stream made me a Kenzoku. Up until now, even tho I take breaks from hololive time to time, I still go back to her, she is just so Precious.

Towa and Hakos Baelz are top for me, so I will always help Towa (even if I can't do much xD)

TY!

It suck how it only take some minor percentage of the fan, making a big deal out of nothing, to cause problem for not just idol but entertainment personalities in general. But glad this story got a happy ending, also nice going of the fan who know better and treat it as no big deal, which really it isn't 😂

I’m very happy to hear this story

Never even heard of this incident. I started watching her after her 3D model debut video and fell in love with her singing.

i feel like at this point if you're a vtuber and god forbid,a females vtuber you should have a gigantic red light indicating that the microphone is not muted

For a time she and Aki Rosenthal had the highest level of overseas superchats outside holoEN (this continued on well into holoENs career)

Wow I never heard of this before until now and I've been watching ever since the Matsuri bandaid clips

Rly liked the vid !

Kangai Niki save a lot Hololive members and I'm happy that everyone happy

This was how I discovered Hololive and vtubers alike, weirdly enough. Almost 3 years later and Towa is still my oshi. Don't think a persona over the internet has brought me more joy, and honestly can't ask for much more than that.

Unless I remembering wrong, I think I saw a LiveTL(?) or something where she said she wasn't forced to take a week break and it was instead her own choice. I could be wrong though.

I missed this controversy by a couple weeks, only really dabbing my feet into the rabbit hole around the time she debuted. But its crazy how similar this was to Mano Aloes controversy. I know she did a couple other things towa didnt do but the thought of Towa requesting graduation makes me sick. Shes done so much and has one of the best singing voices in the company, and even becoming one of my favorites with her music and cuteness alone. Glad she got through it and was able to shine bright going forward

I actually remember that drama but I wasn't particularly aware of Towa so I was pretty disconnected from the whole ordeal. But looking back with this quick retrospective, Hololive's innital statement "apologizing" was a BIG yikes.

Towa is going to be my favorite all the time she is entertaining and really good singer.

Didn’t it come out that it was identified as a friend anyways

I want to add that in a stream idk if it was members only stream, she mentioned that she wasnt forced to take a break after the controversy she just felt like she should discipline herself by taking a break.

still Towa's one of those JP vtuber I always see collabing with other non-hololive be it male or female from other companies, this actually boosted hololive/cover more as some viewers only looked at their own following and seeing hololive outside of their safezone probably made them look at that direction. really good thing they never back down with that mindset like holomem should be able to collab with ANYONE regardless of fan's expectation it should always be the talent's decision and not the decision of the fans. it boosted more and more after opening EN branch it was a huge success and opening ID branch made it even better now hololive looks like they're aiming for nurturing their talents instead of adding more.

ugh I always think of the screenshot of her smiling, absolutely the one smile we saved

Fun fact: while Towa-sama is still one of the hololive girls with one of the biggest overseas fandom, in Japan she is one of the most popular hololive girls among children and families due to her content being very kid friendly, yes, she plays APEX, but esports are growing as an industry and beyond FPS games she is very tame compared to many other vtubers, with basically no profanity or adult jokes, very easy to understand vocabulary, being a complete dork who enjoys making random voices and predilection for indie or puzzle games when she is not playing FPS games. There was an event in japan where you could meet and talk with hololive girls for a minute, of course, with Towa being a giant monitor, but you could interact with her in what is known as hand-shake event, just with no hand-shake in this case; she said that there were many cases of guys being accompanied by their younger sisters because they were fans of her and also a couple of entire families arriving to the event to see her. Also fun fact number two: She is also pretty popular among girls in JP due to her own fashion sense and slang, specifically among fashion girls and gyarus. Her speech pattern and accent is very reminiscent of gyarus, with her now famous nasal voice, usage of cute nicknames for characters and even using words from gyaru culture, not to mention her love for nail art, gyaru and street fashion and very modern mannerisms like making a heart with only the index and middle fingers and the inverted V sign, all used by teenagers and young adults. Due to this, there are many girls in Twitter that make nail art and even herbariums based upon Towa... also, her morning voice makes her very popular among the girls, you should read of the threads in 2CH (basically a JP based forum page) whenever Towa-kun makes and appearance.

Imo apology is the worst thing that Hololive have done in that case - because it was like admitting they have done sth wrong, while it was completely the toxic fans fault, and they were the only ones to be blamed and ridiculed.

Who could be mad at this angel? She did nothing wrong. 😊

Venandr is the new Depressed Nousagi, we already needed a new one who knows how to explain his vtubers videos well, since the other one retired

i miss those times when everything started with clips of first 2 gens of hololive

What is the name of the music that plays from 2:00 until the end? Or, at least, what meme am I remembering it from?

idol companies need to start taking a better stance and just tell the "fans" that have an issue to fuck off any continued persistence will result in bans from everything related to the agency including concerts and live events... would probably only take someone who is crazy like that being banned by 1 or 2 agencies for them to stop all together

What makes this more better is that Towa being influenced and might be the only in JP branch to frequently use shorten term of English words in her chat. Like “OK” “Ty” and ect...

This is also one of the reason why Yagoo now stating that they are an Entertainment Company. Some people argued with me, even Cover is an Entertainment Company, Hololive is their Idol division thus it should stay as is because Idol division is also part of an entertainment. But let's face it. We all know why Yagoo said that. Yagoo is no longer want the company get stuck in Idol world. because Idol business got no room and tolerance to expand. Also, Hololive/Cover once said that they don't want to breach into talent's private life.

We will never get rid of unicorns, but we certainly can outnumber them ❤

also look how cover back then and now they also grown. back then they were apologizing to the viewers, now a days they will be like nope not our problem you can not handle that these girls are more then just idols when it come to their private life. when you look how towa and cover had to but with rushia they back her up on the whole boy voice thing.

Kenzoku for life

She's my HoloJP oshi. Will support her no matter what.

We love are towa

Did Yagoo expected this much Oversea people back in gen 1?

Towa my beloved

MENTAL PHYSICAL PASSION!!!! That Kaigai love babaaaayyyyy

That explained a lot. I was wondering why Towa receiving the most number of Kagai Nikki fans at that time.

They heard a voice. It could have been her dad coming over to check on her.

Towa the devil who pushed me into the rabbit hole As I fell, I looked up at her gloating over me, and smiled Thank you, Towa!

2:06 Just a timestamp to remind us of how Cereal ATA _murdered_ Cover's face. Even if he had only 3 hearts, that made them look spineless.