버추버 인터렉티브_리레볼루션

SPECIAL

버추버 인터렉티브_리레볼루션

2024.10.14

Try clicking each VTuber and their signs!

Beginnings

Jack

We’re Jack, Leeon, Onyu, Akairo Ryu , and Gemini, and together, the five of us are RE:Revolution. We’re virtual idols—we stream and do music and videos on YouTube.

Onyu

Let me introduce us individually: Jack is our leader and does lead vocals and lead rap, I’m the main vocalist and the oldest, Gemini is a sub-vocalist—though to be honest, we’re never quite sure what his position is exactly… (laughs)

Jack

Gemini’s way more confident about streaming and being funny than music, so he fills in where we’re lacking there. (laughs) Leeon joined us recently and he’s a sub-vocalist and sub-rapper. He does a lot of stuff on the YouTube side, too. The youngest member [Akairo Ryu] is another rapper. We all started out streaming individually, but everyone including me felt limited streaming alone. That’s when Gemini, who’s been my friend for eight years, said to me, “Hey, lots of people outside Korea are doing this VTuber thing lately. Should we give it a try?” I wasn’t sure it would work in Korea at first, but after not seeing much in it for a while I finally hit a creative wall and told myself, I can’t keep going on like this. Let’s give it a try. I took a look at the overseas market for it and saw everyone was making their own original songs. But making music isn’t easy, obviously. I thought it over for a while and said, Whatever—I’ll just write one myself. After some trial and error, I managed to make a song, but it really, really felt like a group song, so I asked Gemini, “Wanna start a group with me?” And I brought him on board. And in my deepest heart, I wanted to be in an idol group, so I thought we better have more people. That’s how we ended up thinking about our positions and became a group of four with Ryu and Onyu—at least until Leeon joined, too.

Onyu

I heard there were a lot of potential people before I was asked, but because they would’ve had to invest in something as unfamiliar as VTubing, they were hesitant about it and turned it down. Good news for me, though! (laughs) Since streaming is basically a small business, there’s some people who do group activities and personal work separately, as well as a lot of people who just like going solo. While there are many talented in music, not many of them could last very long in a group, so Jack had to hunt us down all by himself.

Jack

Gemini’s been with me from the very beginning. While I stuck looking for someone who would join, I stumbled across Onyu’s stream at random and was blown away by his voice, so I got in touch with him through Discord and asked him to join. Ryu was a fan of mine and I knew he could rap. We figured we could use a rapper and that harnessing our skills together would be good, so he got brought in, too. The idea to recruit Leeon as a new member came up when Gemini went to the army and we felt that the three of us left looking after the group needed to switch things up, so we reached out to him. I’ve known Leeon for two or three years. He’s super passionate, committed to streaming, and he sings and raps, too.

Onyu

We had just two concerns: One, diversifying our content; two, a lack of musical identity. First, since we’d already done pretty much everything there is to do as VTubers, the lack of new content we could make plus us being down a member made us feel like we were starting to lack variety. We needed someone who could think bigger, with a new perspective. We all plan out our group’s content and additional things by ourselves, so if one person’s missing, you can really feel it. Considering the situation, we needed someone who wasn’t just good at following along and working hard but who was capable and had a lot of passion for different areas. And on the music side of things, since Jack and I were doing almost all the vocals, we felt it’d be nice to have one more person there whenever we needed to record, and in looking for someone to fill all those in-between roles, Leeon was perfect for so many reasons, so we recruited him in.

Past experiences

Jack

I’ve been doing music since my first year of high school and I’ve been through my share of ups and downs. I took singing and dancing lessons specifically to become an idol and had some auditions. I even got casted before. I even gave it a try for real, but once I actually gave it a go, even though talent and self-discipline were obviously important, I found out a lot of things have to line up for you, including the timing, luck, and the image the agency is going for. And, honestly, it just sort of wore me down. I kept it up for a while, then sometime around my last year of high school I found out about streaming for the first time and ended up giving up on my old goals with music. I spent all that time learning music, though, and I really loved it, so I wanted to incorporate it into my streams, which led me to decide to become a virtual idol. All in all, it was all my experiences that have been so helpful when it comes to singing and dancing, but also to coming up with titles for YouTube videos and doing marketing for the group.

Onyu

I majored in psychology and nursing but started studying right when COVID-19 hit, so I never really had a chance to properly attend. With even part-time jobs going remote, I started wondering how I could even use my majors and began streaming. I’ve also always loved music. It’s not directly related to being an idol, but I did classical violin for about 10 years and played in bands for almost 20! I derive a lot of pleasure from the sense of harmony that comes from working together with other singers in groups to shine together instead of alone and performing with other musicians. I could never let go of that feeling, and I wanted to be able to experience that feeling again if I found a group with members I could do it with, so I decided to give it a go. I was actually doing it from Canada in the beginning, streaming and doing meetings according to Korean time, meaning I was working in the middle of the night. I basically went a whole year without seeing the Sun. At first I just figured, I’m young—I’ll just power through somehow! But then I felt that keeping it up long-term could have a negative effect on my health and on the group, so sometime around summer we talked about if I could be more helpful to the group if I moved back to Korea, and after feeling confident it’d be a good idea for a number of reasons, I chose to go back. And after thinking about how I wanted to live my own life on my own terms while streaming and making music with the rest of the guys, I was even more set in my plan to come back to Korea. I also wanted to do something like psychology or nursing in university in Canada, so studying there would’ve been a good choice, too, but I was studying really hard with gritted teeth because my parents had spent over 10 years dedicating their own time and supporting me financially. As someone who grew up in South Korea, I was thinking about how you’re supposed to go to university and get a stable job, but after meeting the guys I felt like, as long as my mom and dad were okay with it, I wanted to give music a try. I wanted to live my own life.

The very first

Jack

The point wasn’t to be the first virtual idols—we just ended up with the title because we were desperate and thought, It’s now or never—let’s give it everything we’ve got. (laughs) First of all, my sole focus has been on music ever since high school. I was so specifically and exclusively interested in music that I couldn’t even imagine myself doing anything else. Second, I loved the idea of having a fan base and getting to interact with them. And last, I didn’t want to let all that effort go to waste or to let my family down when they believed in me. My parents said, “We believe in you—always. Do what you love. Just do your best.” I didn’t want to disappoint them, and it felt like that was my last chance to do something with music, so I gave the whole virtual idol thing a shot.

Onyu

I believed enough in the possibility of us reaping the fruit of our labor if we were the first to do it to take the leap. And even before giving a virtual group a try, when I first found out about streaming, I thought, This is awesome—if I could do this and keep my studies up at the same time, that’d be great. But I couldn’t treat it as a hobby if all the others were going all in. I became determined to make a living off my music if I could work with the other group members and make it my job, whether through sheer luck or working hard to find the opportunities. I experienced a lot of failures while studying in Canada and trying new things, and I learned that, even though there’s times you actually do need to chance course, ultimately, those who don’t give up eventually find success. And I was sure that being with these guys was a guarantee of success.

Revolution

Jack

Our fictional universe is built around a revolutionary army. We came up with the concept first, before everyone joined, so we had to line each of us up with the characters, but luckily each of us has our own image—one of us is fiery, another’s soft and sunny—and none of them overlap, so it was easy to work with.

Onyu

And even though our universe wasn’t very detailed at first, we all have really distinct personalities, so they all fit perfectly in our fictional world, so it worked out really well. Gemini mostly does streams that are purposely goofy, for example, while I tend to do streams that are more laid-back like a radio show. Jack—he’s the leader, and just adores the fans, and will do anything for the people he loves, and that naturally makes its way into his streams. We really lucked out. (laughs)

Jack

The reason we chose to go with the revolutionary army angle for our worldbuilding is because there’s a lot of injustice in the streaming world just like in the rest of the world. So, when we were coming up with the concept with Gemini, we said, We gotta make our group stand out no matter what, and we should rectify the injustices in the streaming world, too—let’s stage an Internet revolution!(laughs)

Onyu

And every time Jack’s doing music, he always says, “I wanna make some music that feels metallic.” He seems to focus on that when making song titles or beats—“Masculine, Metallic.”(laughs)

Jack

RE:Revolution songs have to be great. First, there’s got to be a catchy hook in the chorus; second, our distinct style has to be in there; and third, everyone has to really shine during their parts. When I’m writing a song, I’m thinking about what kind of allure it’ll give off. Overall, we want people to see us and think, Wow, they might be virtual idols, but they really excel at a lot of different things. On an individual level, we all have our own image and vocal styles, but I feel like our strength lies in the fact that we can make people feel we really come together well when we sing together.

Hard work

Jack

They say to get paddling when you’ve got water, but we came equipped with a motor.(laughs) We’ve been continually uploading three or four videos a month—or even seven or more, depending on how you count them. Normal idols have a dedicated comeback schedule, times where they’re working on other things or taking a break, and fans can see and follow that. But in our case—for virtual idols—we do everything ourselves, so we have to keep pumping out new content to keep our fans. From that perspective, if you like the work, then you might grow to really love it, and it becomes the motor that lets you keep on going.

Onyu

And unlike back then, there’s a lot of virtual idols now. It was just us at first, but now there’s way bigger groups than us, and they’ve got certain talents and tech that we don’t, so while at first we felt like we could scrape by on a minimum of just being passionate and making enough content, more and more it’s looking like failing to upgrade your singing, dancing, and video editing skills will lead to certain failure. That’s why we’ve been working hard taking vocal lessons, looking to bring in someone who’s really good at editing videos, and more.

Jack

The most important part of content creation is gut feeling, and second is doing something nobody else is. For example, our anime dubs are something I just write down in my notes based on gut feeling. And then there’s things that require a little more planning, like anything involving music. It was already popular in other countries, but no one in Korea had ever done it before, so we thought, That’ll definitely work in Korea, right? Let’s just try it. What do we have to lose?

Onyu

We draw people in by making videos that are guaranteed to get a lot of views internationally, like cover songs or videos that use memes, and use those as promotional material, and we also make content specifically for our fandom—videos like anime dubs or songs that show off our style.

Jack

Obviously we do what we do because we love music and because it’s fun, but we also do it hoping somebody will see our videos and they’ll turn into another one of our fans. And I think it’s because we’re that determined that we’re able to keep making content like this and pick up more of them. (laughs)

Always a group

Jack

Sticking with the group means everything to me. We’re seriously lucky for the lineup we have.(laughs) So even if something changes, we’re not shaken and we don’t give up—we bite back by choosing to learn more, keep improving, and grow stronger. So even if we seem different on the outside, on the inside, we’re still the same. We’re always focused on doing a good job and getting better.

Onyu

Even with all the twists and turns, our top priority has been keeping the group together. And the biggest reason of all for that is our fans. Considering we’re seen as having gone through a lot to come as far as we have, they feel strongly that there’d be no point to the group if it had different members. So we all believe that everything we’ve done up to this point would go to waste if we broke up because of some issue, like if we added a member, or if we had trouble renegotiating contracts, or something like that.