Shiori Novella

Shiori Novella (シオリ・ノヴェラ) is an English speaking Virtual YouTuber associated with hololive. She debuted in 2023 as part of hololive -Advent-, the third generation of members of hololive English, alongside Koseki Bijou, Nerissa Ravencroft, Fuwawa Abyssgard and Mococo Abyssgard.

Profile
"Don't you think that's a wonderful story?"

Driven by her thirst for knowledge, Shiori Novella is "The Archiver." She turns her favorite stories and treasured memories into bookmarks and saves them. By misfortune, she was found to have obtained forbidden knowledge within one of her stories and was imprisoned. But to her, that experience itself is but a fascinating story. In order to continue her search for more stories, she planned and executed a prison break.

Background
Following the debut of hololive English second generation -Council-, hololive English announced a permanent English language audition page on 30 December 2021. An update to the audition page on 7 September 2022 sparked speculation of an upcoming English third generation.

Shiori Novella's YouTube and Twitter accounts were originally created on 11 May 2023, although they contained no content at this point.

The third generation of hololive English, -Advent-, was first teased on the hololive English Twitter account with a short video on 22 July 2023. This was followed by another teaser video on 23 July, showing five new characters.

On 25 July, the hololive English YouTube channel posted a video titled Wanted!, revealing the five members of -Advent- and announcing their upcoming debuts. At the same time, Shiori also posted a short teaser video and made her first tweet, consisting of a single image.

Shiori's Twitter and YouTube accounts were accidentally discovered by some fans several hours prior to the official announcement, although they had no profile pictures or content yet. Her YouTube account received over a thousand subscribers before its official launch.

All -Advent- members' YouTube channels reached 100,000 subscribers within twelve hours of the announcement.

Debut
Shiori's debut stream took place on 30 July 2023 from 12:00PM to 12:45PM (Saturday 29 July from 8:00 PM to 8:45 PM PDT). The stream reached over 126,000 concurrent viewers at peak. She also reached over 200,000 YouTube subscribers during the stream. Shiori also revealed that she can remove her coat.

Mascots and Fans

 * Her mascot's name is Yorick. It can be seen on her right shoulder in official art, and is a creature that looks like a black sphere with two long arms and four long spikes on its head. Its face with two eyes and a mouth looks quite sad.
 * Yorick shares its name with a character mentioned in Shakespeare's Hamlet. The titular Prince Hamlet famously says "Alas, poor Yorick" while speaking to an unearthed skull.
 * Shiori also introduced a pair of cat mascots called Nyakuza.
 * Her fans are known as Novelites.

Name

 * Shiori is a Japanese word meaning "bookmark." It is also a Japanese female given name.
 * Novella is an English word of Italian origin, in modern times referring to a short novel. It is also an uncommon surname.
 * According to the 2010 United States Census, Novella was the 39,419th most common surname in the United States, belonging to 558 individuals.
 * She appears to write her name in western name order, with the given name first.
 * In Japanese, her name is written in katakana, typically used for foreign names and words.

Lore

 * Her two-tone hair was originally all black, but part of it went grey due to stress from learning too much knowledge.

Likes and dislikes

 * Her hobbies include piano playing, cooking, photography, feeding strays, daydreaming, listening to audiobooks, reading text adventures, reading visual novels, and playing light sims.
 * She enjoys taking pictures of insects.
 * She is able to sight read music.
 * Her favorite books are The Devil Aspect by Craig Russell, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, the Heathcliff Lennox series by Karen Baugh Menuhin, Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon: A Minnesota Mystery by Larry Millett, Hellfire Conspiracy by Will Thomas, The Cthulhu Casebooks 2-3 by James Lovegrove, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie, The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith, and Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson. She has read the entire Sherlock Holmes canon, and her favorites of that are The Blue Carbuncle, Hound of the Baskervilles, Charles Augustus Milverton, and Devil's Foot. Her favorite literary genre is mystery.
 * Her favorite western cartoons are Courage the Cowardly Dog, Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, Blue's Clues, Metalocalypse, South Park, Superjail!, and Over the Garden Wall.
 * Her favorite games are Super Mario Sunshine, Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, Harvest Moon: Magical Melody, Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility, and Super Smash Bros Brawl. She also enjoys Dragon Quest XI, Omori, Dragon Quest Builders 2, multiplayer horror games with friends, and My Time at Portia.
 * Her "husbandos" are Sherlock Holmes, Dan Heng from Honkai: Star Rail, Scaramouche, Kazuha and Xiao from Genshin Impact, Snufkin from Moomin, Kurapika from Hunter x Hunter, Erik from Dragon Quest XI, Clear from Dramatical Murder, Kaneki Ken from Tokyo Ghoul, and Riku from Kingdom Hearts.
 * Her favorite anime are Ajin, Made in Abyss, Dorohedoro, Mononoke, Gintama, Kaiden Restaurant, Ghost Stories (both the comedy dub and the original Japanese), and Osomatsu-san.
 * She has dabbled in video game development. She made an RPG Maker game, but it no longer exists. She has also dabbled in Ren'Py, Unity, and Twine.
 * Her goals are to improve her vocal stamina and singing quality, learn more Unity and make a game, do a ghost hunting vlog, make friends to send insect pictures to, and to live happily ever after.
 * She intends to stream educational content, such as a parasite microscope stream, and anatomy and chemistry streams. She also intends to have tea parties, cooking streams, and arts and crafts. She also wants to produce vlogs and to make and edit travel videos.

Miscellaneous

 * Her emoji, is an eye in a speech bubble. The emoji was released in 2015, originally as part of an anti-bullying campaign.
 * The golden runes which appear in the Wanted! debut PV spell out Shiori's official English profile text. The runes use the, an alphabet used in England from the 5th to 11th centuries.
 * The text in the book at the start of the PV is written in the same runic script, and spells out a section of lore: "In the age of the gods, monsters were sealed in this land after a battle. The impact created by myths, councils and other supernatural beings rocked the seals of [...hen...un] and stirred their souls. Its fetal movement frees them from their bondage. Imprisoned in an empty and empty prison, the monsters pledged rebellion and glory in the new land."
 * Nanashi Mumei from hololive -Council- is also associated with runes, although she mainly uses the more ancient.
 * She sometimes eats with scissors.
 * She suffers from insomnia and headaches.
 * She used to own over 30 porcelain dolls.
 * She shares the same character designer Kayahara with Seto Miyako, Sukoya Kana of NIJISANJI and Fukumaki Yuka of Irodori.
 * Her Live2D rigger, FELUCCA, has rigged various other members including Inugami Korone, Mori Calliope and Noir Vesper.

Media

 * Shiori Novella Ch. hololive-EN - YouTube channel
 * Shiori Novella's corporate profile on hololive.hololivepro.com
 * @shiorinovella - Twitter account

Twitter hashtags

 * #ShiorinOnAir - Stream tag
 * #ShiorinSketch - Fan art
 * #ShioAssets - Stream assets