There's a lot of stiffness in many male models simply because rigging is such a difficult skill to learn that a lot of riggers don't take the time to practice different body shapes. Losing access to the typical hourglass figure leaves a lot of them unsure what to do with the waist in general and it ends up extremely stiff. There are also a lot fewer riggers that take on male models in general for the same reason. The ones that do it well tend to be expensive (deservedly so).

While I'm not sure my new design is exactly otome-game standard, I'm really happy I worked with a designer who I knew draws hot men because I am in love with it.

Some interesting points! I appreciate you attempting to approach the subject with some useful advice instead of just shutting down the whole concept of being a Male Vtuber. A lot of what you say about their mis-strategizing is completely right, stiff mecha armor models don't particularly appeal to males or females; part of why people liked Master Chief in the first place was because they could even see themselves as the character, where as when its obviously someone else in the armor, theres no "transferal of heroism" to the audience. Branding is so so so important, and the joyous thing about vtubing (the reason why I do it as a guy) is because your branding is built into the character visibly. No extra need for logos, or banners or anything, or at the very least, those will be informed by your design in the first place. It makes branding more cohesive.

Where I think your discussion may still be missing the point though is that it still handwaves the disadvantage male vtubers have as untrue. It is very real and for very good reason. It takes a different skill set for a guy to appeal to an 80% male demographic than a girl to appeal to that same 80% male demographic. You'd be surprised, even beyond attraction, how many people watch female vtubers for a sort of experience along the lines of "its like when I used to watch my little sister play my favorite games". Not specifically about any level of naughty fantasy, but its a specific memory or vibe they had that one way or another is now a form of content. There isn't as much demand for "watching my bro playing my favorite games", and if there is any damand, it is overwhelmingly filled by the vast multitude of "bros playing your favorite game" on any website.  What guys want out of other guys is funny, skill based, reckless, and leadership through popularity. None of that has anything to do with a model or appearance at all. In the case of Male Vtubers, the best I can really agree with is its not a disadvantage, but its not a clear and overwhelming advantage in the way it is for girls. The gap is still there, and it is noticible and big, it just might not stretch so far into the negative as people think.

I particularly strongly disagree with the suggestion that male Vtubers should just appeal to otome players. For the right kind of guy, that would be just fine, and if you just want to take a stab at targeting an audience, that certainly is an audience to target. But I think you will find that following that path is one of the most fickle and dispiriting paths through content one can choose. I've been a streamer/content creator for over 15 years now, a Twitch Partner before Twitch was even Twitch, and I have had many girls adore and fantasize over me, send me love letters, and fly out to conventions to meet me, and to be honest, its always heartbreaking to have to tell them i'm not into them, and when you DO get to that point, they will either take it way too far, or whatever illuision they had about you is shattered on the spot. Being an attractive male, let alone a male vtuber has its parasocial drawbacks with the otome audience just as much as being a female does. I also find it perhaps confusing why you would hammer home the unique branding potential for male vtubers, but then bring up something like Love and Deepspace or even Genshin, which are the most insanely overdone design templates for both male and female vtubers. I get where you're coming from, I just don't feel like these were the best fit examples for what you were trying to get across.

At the end of the day, male vtubers could do a lot better about clearly and specificly knowing their target audiences and crafting a best approach to creating for them. Solid video, lots of great points, i'm not complaining at all or being rude, just wanted to say my 2 cents.

Based on your design and only on your design, the vast majority of people see you as female/female-presenting (without taking into account your voice which would skew that number even further).   And honestly I think this is the biggest issue with this video.   It fails to take into account demographics and statistics.   When the sample universe leans about 80% male viewers watching 80% of female vtubers, being a male content creator in this space already puts you at a huge disadvantage.   Then there is also the fact that most of the large male vtubers (the corpo ones) seem to mostly do BFE type content which is content that the vast majority of male Vtubers don't want to do.

I was told my vtuber design looks like a dark souls boss

0:25 "I have 5 years of streaming under my belt as a non-female Vtuber"

I'm not sure if or when you ever changed your identification, as this is the first content of yours that I've ever encountered, but if you spent the whole 5 years using the voice that you're using now and using the avatar that you're using now, any given male who first saw you would have thought that you were female, which is tantamount to being one for purposes of public presentation. Remember: it's not how you identify, it's how the audience sees you, and your presentation is female. That also means that you DID, in fact, have the "female buff". (Again, assuming that you didn't radically change your presentation at some point in the past 5 years. I went back and looked the oldest videos on this channel, which are from 2 and 3 years ago, and your voice and presentation appear the same as now.)

As someone who recently commissioned a PNGTuber avatar to dip my toes into content creation which is decidedly androgynous, the thing that I'm hung up on the most is figuring out how close to a proper "target audience" I can even get. I was hoping to try a bunch of different things; gaming, karaoke, collaborative storytelling, cooking, or even IRL tabletop streaming.

Now I concede I'm worried I'm planning content exclusively for me and no one else...

Hio knows what they're talking about with designs, just look at my OG model VS my model now. Hio was the one who advised me to add more stuff to the design about my subject matter

Good watch! Though i am a dude using a slime girl model it is mainly because i love cute things. I recently started learning my analytics and such and it has helped!

When you go window shopping for vtuber models its mainly all women so its hard to find someone who's good at making male models lol

This was super helpful. I will remember to thank you when the time comes.

Another thing I’ve noticed is a lot of the successful males don’t really have human vtubers and like you said, have a niche and their own energy. Also I think the rigging problem is both lack of experience rigging male avatars and males just being stiff themselves, best advice for trying out is find a free female or an androgynous and then make them male, helps a bit with rigging in Vstudio when you wanna swing them hips!

Most vtuber consumers are male for obvious reasons.  That's why the disadvantage exists.

Thank you so much for this! I’m trying to learn how to Vtube as a male with a VERY particular niche. Looking forward to all your other lessons! ^.^

I had my model made a while ago and I agree, we get stiff rigging like we can't be allowed to do anything more than look and shift side to side. Unfortunately for me specifically, I'm broke and jobless so this is a hobby. My issue is I don't know what my niche would be. I like Gacha games, I like retro games like Sonic the Hedgehog and even Minecraft. I don't think I'd appeal to anyone based on this video and my design was made by my ex and while I love his design, I'm starting to look at him differently after seeing this video, like he's not enough or gonna make it. Damn shame but oh well, luckily I didn't start anything.

Helpful information, i definitely got to work on my niche and posting strategy..

This video made some very good points. Even if I kinda already knew these, you articulated them very well.

I tried streaming a few years ago and a friend of mine tried this past year. One thing I realized is we both lacked passion. I gave up after not really having confidence in myself and my friend gave up after going about it wrong by being parasocial to new (1-2 years) streamers. Bro didn’t realize passion and hard work are required and not just being nice and streaming often and bare minimum advertising (streaming schedules and live alerts).

Also I know I shouldn’t admit this, but I didn’t know you weren’t a woman so that part of the video surprised me 😂

Was a good watch and gave me some ideas. New subscriber from this vid. I already have a character design made up but where to start. I imagine being able to rig anthropomorphic characters is hard too.

People go crazy for girls, not guys, no matter if they're men or women.

Although I'm more of a pngtuber this genuinely helps a lot cuz my design , and over all way of finding to find an audience when I had no target in mind! This is some really helpful information! and the recommendation for the consistency at the app wasn't expected but much appreciated. 😌✨

I really need to learn how to post on social media. I've been avoiding it for most of my life and now that I'm trying to be a male vtuber I kind of need to start posting at least on tiktok and youtube. I don't mind being a "pretty boy", I just don't have the money to pay for someone to make me a model or anything, so I had to use free options to do all that so my model isn't as good as it could be and doesn't really stand out much at all. But I dunno. I'm still trying to do things regardless I'm just still learning as I go, so I don't all the way know what I'm doing yet😅 That's why I like these videos that keep popping up on my feed though. It's very helpful to know what I should try to do. Everything has been saying I need a niche, and I enjoy cozy and chill things, and my voice kind of matches that I think, I just don't look the part and I'm not the best at making content because I'm still relatively new at it. I suppose I don't need to be "the best" to be good enough but I dunno. I'm gonna keep watching videos to learn more about things, but I'm just trying my best not to get down on myself for not knowing how to do what I want to or just not being able to yet.