Kiryu Coco

Kiryu Coco (桐生ココ) is a female Japanese Virtual YouTuber associated with hololive, debuting as part of its fourth generation of VTubers alongside Tsunomaki Watame, Tokoyami Towa, Amane Kanata and Himemori Luna.

She is best known for her fluency in Japanese and English, her irreverent AsaCoco Live News and Reddit Meme Review shows, and for being the #1 superchat donation earner in the world.

Personality
Coco is an outspoken, irreverent individual who often employs crude humor, foul speech (using "ass" instead of "butt" or "shit" instead of "crap") and swearing, but she isn't as outright lewd as some members like Matsuri in spite of her dominantly intense femininity when on stage. She also enjoys teasing other members and most segments of her morning news show consists of teasing other hololive members over technical difficulties of failings on stream.

She often pushes the boundaries of what Vtubers can do on YouTube by using thumbnails of her flipping the bird or her questionable content. Despite that, Coco is probably one of the biggest hearted members of hololive. During a live stream of The Raft with Aqua, Aqua shared her feelings about how difficult the life of a virtual Idol could be and Coco gave some truly kind words of encouragement that nearly brought Aqua to tears.

She's also playful and fun-loving. She started the hololive "ARK Addiction" because she wanted them all to play the game together (going as far as to buy Roboco her copy of ARK: Aberration when she discovered that she'd purchased ARK: Extinction instead) and usually comes to the aid of the other players when the experience technical problems. This is further showed by the fact that, unlike the Nijisanji ARK server, which is PvP, Coco's is PvE. She proposed the construction of a 'hololive house' for all the hololive streamers to live together and help take care of each other.

Coco loves the Yakuza video game series and streams it often. Her love for Yakuza goes as far that she is called "Kaichou/ 会長" (chairman), which is a title associated with the yakuza and shared by her favorite character, Kazuma Kiryu.

She sometimes opens her streams in two separate languages, sometimes interchangeably. Reflecting her Asacoco theme, she opens with "Goooood MORNING MOTHERF@$#ERS!" for English viewers, followed by "OKITE, OKITE! OKITE KU-DA-SA-I!" (Wake up, Wake up! WAKE UP PL-EA-SE!) in Japanese.

Profile
A child dragon (3,500 years old is young in dragon years) who is fond of human culture. She traveled from another universe to ours, just to study Japanese in a random language school. Also an honorable and heroic dragon who is filled with justice. She tries really hard to keep her human form.

Background
Her Twitter account was created on November 2019, while her first tweet was made on 25 December, her YouTube channel was created on 4 December and her debut stream was on 28 December.

2020
On 7 February after being rejected for monetization from the start, her channel became monetizable.

On 14 February, less than two months after her debut, she published on Twitter that she reached two hundred thousand subscribers.

On 18 April, she lost her ability to stream on YouTube, during this time AsaCoco was not live. Less than a week later, on the 23 April, she regained the ability to stream.

On 22 June, she announced on her Twitter account that she would get her 3D model.

On 27 June, she debuted her 3D model during a stream, being the first of her generation to do so.

On 27 September, she and Akai Haato were suspended for 3 weeks, preventing them from doing streaming and Twitter activities following the controversy when she and Haato displayed "Taiwan" in "Top Countries" when divulging through their confidential YouTube channel's analytics, which sparked anger from some people in the Chinese audience.

On 19 October, she returned to her YouTube activities with a new entry of Asacoco.

On 27 November, she announced in a tweet that she would go on a hiatus to protect herself.

On 14 December, Coco returned to her activities on YouTube.

On 29 December, hololive's Twitter accounts announced that eight of their members would get "New year" costumes, Coco being one of them.

2021
On 1 January, she debuted her second 2D costume, a new year kimono during a stream.

On 11 January, she reached 900,000 YouTube subscribers.

On 7 February, Coco debuted the 2.0 version of her 2D model during a stream, showing a great improvement in the mobility of her model which previously had very limited movement compared to her fellow gen partners.

On 15 February, hololive's Twitter account announced that the members of the 4th generation would get their 3D idol costumes. Later the same day Coco debuted her 3D idol costume.

On 17 February, Coco reached 1,000,000 subscribers, making her the 10th member of hololive to reach this milestone and the 7th member of hololive JP to do so. She is also the first member of hololive JP's 4th Gen to reach it.

On 8 April, Coco's main costume got a small update as she can now wear glasses with this outfit.

On 21 April, hololive's Twitter account announced that Coco would get her third 2D costume.

On 23 April, she debuted her third 2D costume. Her new clothes include a red jacket, accompanied with a white strapless blouse underneat, she wears a necklace with a jewel similar to the one she wears in her standard outfit and high black socks, her hair is styled with twintales with black ribbons. This costume resemblance the design of Coco Kaine, something that Coco acknowledge herself, especially when she wears the jacket below the shoulders and using additional shorter twintails really close to those of Coco Kaine.

On 9 June, Coco announced that she would be leaving hololive on 1 July, with her final livestream scheduled for the day of her graduation. Like previous graduate Kagami Kira, the archives of her past streams will not be deleted after graduating, although the closure of her channel's monetization will make members-only content unavailable. Shortly after Cover Corp's website released a statement where the company clarifies that it was Coco's decision to retire and they would honor her wishes, with Shirakami Fubuki trying her best to cheer up the saddened hololive community. While the reasons for her graduation were not explicitly stated, Coco announced "I'm gonna be a superstar in another world!", interpreted by many to mean she was moving on to a new stage in her personal career. The decision to leave hololive was made by Coco herself around three months prior to the announcement.

On 12 June, she reached 1,250,000 YouTube subscribers due to a large boost in followers after her announcement. Amelia Watson, who appeared with Coco's Meme Review the next day, coincidentally reached the same milestone around one hour later.

Fans

 * Her fanbase is officially called "Tatsunoko" 「たつのこ」, meaning both "seahorse" and "dragon's children."

Relationships

 * She currently lives with fellow hololive member Amane Kanata. The two have been described interchangeably as best friends and a "bickering married couple." Despite this, both have expressed great love and appreciation for one another, and often cameo in one another's streams as either intentional guests or as background distractions. Kanata has even stated on a stream that she and Coco had bought "couple-rings." She announced her intent to continue living with Kanata after her graduation from hololive.
 * Coco's ability to speak both English and Japanese has allowed her to connect with hololive English. However, she ultimately did not make collaborations with them until June 2021, shortly before her graduation.
 * Coco used to talk about doing a collaboration with VShojo's Projekt Melody some day. Coco and Mel describe each other as friends. However, in a Q&A stream, when someone brought up a potential Melody collab, she revealed the higher ups told her she should never bring up or talk about Melody in her streams again. VShojo's Nyatasha Nyanners also describes Coco as a big inspiration.

Lore

 * Coco's natural form is that of a dragon, in which she is purple and 7 meters (23 feet) long. She is only 3,501 years old, which is still considered a child by her species.
 * After hatching from an egg, Coco decided her world was boring, and came to the human world because it seemed much more interesting.
 * Coco joined hololive in 2019 when she crashed into the hololive headquarters while flying in dragon form. In order to pay them back for the damages, she was forced to work for the company and become VTuber.
 * According to Meme Review with Amelia Watson, Ame was responsible for Coco crashing into hololive HQ. At Yagoo's request, Ame used her time travel ability to go back to December 29, 2019, and shoot Coco with a massive tranquilizer dart full of Watson Concoction, which hit Coco in the neck and caused the crash. The events were detailed in Secret Ame Coco Lore by MMMaellon, which Ame declared true story. On learning that Ame shot her in the neck, Coco asked, "Is that why I sound like a drugged Mickey Mouse?"
 * At 180 cm (5'11") in height, Coco is the tallest hololive member to date. However, some of the male Holostars are taller: Yukoku Roberu at 181 cm, Arurandeisu at 186 cm, and Aragami Oga at 192 cm.
 * Coco's left horn (on the viewer's right) has a yellow scar. In an episode of AsaCoco Live News, Coco explained that this was a scratch which probably occurred when she accidentally bumped into a light pole or door frame, as she is somewhat clumsy due to lack of familiarity with her human form. Her bust-size has caused similar mishaps.

AsaCoco

 * Coco presented a 20-minute-long satirical Morning News Digest called AsaCoco Live News 「あさココLIVEニュース」. Parodying a news anchor, Coco presented news related to her, her fourth generation colleagues, and hololive in a humorous way. AsaCoco Live News was livestreamed on her channel on weekdays at 6:00 AM JST. AsaCoco Live News ran from her debut on December 29, 2019, until November 9, 2020.
 * During an episode of AsaCoco, Coco proposed the creation of hololive USA (something which would later come true as hololive English). As a joke, she showcased the first "idol", an overweight, middle-aged smoker named "Coco Kaine" (a play on the drug "cocaine"). Kiryu Coco's designer subsequently drew a young version of Coco Kaine, which received more likes than the original. Following the announcement of hololive EN, English viewers asked for the debut of Coco Kaine. While this did not happen, Kaine appeared in an episode of Reddit Meme Review, with Coco using Google Translate text-to-speech for her lines.
 * AsaCoco is also the name of a (fictional) mind-altering drug that Coco sometimes advertised during her show. According to Coco, it is the AsaCoco Live News show itself, in chemical form. It has come in many, many varieties over the run of AsaCoco Live News, including:
 * "Plug-type Asacoco", a makeshift version of her tail that is meant to be inserted anally.
 * Drinks, gas canisters, and injections, lotions, anti-smoking patches, germ-killing disinfectants, muscle drinks that instantly buff people up.
 * Pills meant to be slipped into drinks of people yet to watch AsaCoco.
 * Eyedrops that actually contain a blade in the dropper to kill people that don't like Asacoco.
 * Symptoms of an AsaCoco overdose have included: Ahegao (O-face), incoherent babbling, repeating of the word Ochinchin (only in the case of improper usage), addiction, dilated pupils, and in the case of 'Calorie Burning AsaCoco,' instantly growing muscles and increased bust and butt size. Some of the symptoms seem to reflect what is typically seen out of an dark eroge series, Taimanin for example, especially with the heavy use of mind breaking drugs.
 * In Meme Review with Amelia Watson, Coco declared Ame her successor and gave her the Asacoco recipe. Ame recommended against taking Asacoco and Watson Concoction at the same time.

Other

 * Her surname "Kiryu" 「桐生」 is written with the same kanji as her favorite character from the Yakuza video game series, Kiryu Kazuma 「桐生 一馬」.
 * In addition to AsaCoco Live News, Coco also hosts a regular series called Reddit Shitpost Review, in which she reviews memes. Numerous other hololives have appeared as guests on this show.
 * In light of Coco deciding to willingly retiring from hololive, she has entrusted Kanata to keep her legacy content going during her last month with the agency.
 * She is fluent in both English and Japanese, and only the second English-speaking hololive member after Akai Haato. She uses American English pronunciation for English words (e.g. VTuber rather than bi-chuubaa, 「ブイチューバー」), suggesting she is native English speaker.
 * She often uses the phrase nanto (なんと, meaning "somehow" or "how..." in exasperation). She also uses "kusa", 「草」, Japanese slang equivalent to "LOL". This originated from the Japanese "warau" for laughter, abbreviated to "wwwwww" in Japanese internet slang, which visually resembles grass, hence "kusa". Some English-speaking Coco fans subsequently wrote the English word "grass".
 * As she continued to stream, Coco's accent on her Japanese has gradually become less noticeable, to the point that sounding almost no different from the standard Japanese accent as of late 2020. A similar situation has also occurred with Momosuzu Nene by late 2020.
 * Coco refers to her senior members of hololive with the "paisen" (パイセン) honorific, a slang term for "senpai" (先輩).
 * She claims to currently hold the RTA world record in using the bathroom. She once made a bathroom break in only 20.466 seconds.
 * She didn't own a Nintendo Switch for so long, and got many donations during streams to buy her own, but she refused to do so, even describing it as a "normie" thing to do when making excuses. Eventually, Kanata had to step in and gift her a complete starter set on top of a Animal Crossing themed Nintendo Switch for her 1,000,000 subscriber celebration.
 * She is the first hololive main branch and second overall to be a moderator in official hololive Subreddit.
 * Coco's growth in popularity after joining hololive was notably rapid. Within two weeks of her debut she already had more than 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. Less than four months after that, she had more than 300,000 subscribers. Coco's channel has maintained an average of 1,500 to 2,000 new subscribers per day since her debut.
 * Despite only debuting at the end of 2019, she surpassed many veteran members with a numerous amount of subscribers. This growth is speculated by fans to be due a number of factors, including her consistency to produce new episodes of AsaCoco Live News as a short but entertaining program for VTuber fans, and her ability to appeal to both Japanese and English-speakers even before Asacoco started to get subtitles. Many fans have cited her clever use of the other members, featuring them and giving them special segments on the show to spread their appeal around.
 * Following her graduation announcement in June 2021, Coco's YouTube subscriber count grew dramatically, going from 1.17 million to 1.25 million in five days, allowing her to beat Amelia Watson to that milestone by a matter of hours.
 * Coco has referenced her father several times on AsaCoco Live News, including reading letters he sent to her in the human world to show his support for her Vtuber career. During these instances Coco displayed a picture of what her father supposedly looked like with pixelization over his eye-line in order to protect his identity. Despite this, Coco's supposed father can be seen by viewers to very clearly be Shenron from the Dragon Ball franchise.
 * As of August 2020, Kiryu Coco was the #1 earner of super chat donations out of any streamer on YouTube worldwide since records began on 10 January 2020. By 13 June 2021, her channel had received 384,837 superchats totalling US$2,295,770, closely followed by Uruha Rushia with $2,279,525.
 * She has a famous dislike of "Japanglish", words and sentences combining English and Japanese words of the same meaning, such as "arigathanks gozaimuch" and "yametekudastop". This only encouraged /r/hololive to include it in memes, leading her to complain of hetakuso Nihongo, or "shitty Japanese!" Much to her chagrin, fellow VTubers such as Natsuiro Matsuri, Aki Rosenthal, Tsunomaki Watame, Ninomae Ina'nis and Momosuzu Nene tend to like it.
 * When asked about whether she has eaten humans before and how they taste, she was ready to answer but then jumped to the next topic instead after quick pondering.
 * She often fake-ends her stream so her fans would stop watching her to do other things or go to sleep when she recognizes there are many viewers watching her stream very late at night. This considerate nature of hers can be seen towards her oversea fans, like using dual language by the time a stream starts and so on.
 * Her tail is allegedly fake, and is plugged onto her butt.
 * Coco's mouse cursor becomes a tail buttplug during her Reddit meme reviews.
 * A piece of merchandise was sold featuring a stuffed toy version of the Kiryu Coco tail plug. The original prototype had a rubber tip, but Coco insisted that it be made of soft material, for fear that some fans would actually insert it.
 * Coco's backstory as a thousands of year old mythic creature who journeyed to Earth from another world is similar to hololive EN's Takanashi Kiara, an ancient phoenix who in the past moved between worlds when she was reborn, and Gawr Gura, an over 9,000 year old shark who came to land from Atlantis because it was boring.

Media

 * Coco Ch. 桐生ココ - YouTube channel
 * Kiryu Coco's corporate profile on hololive.tv (EN)
 * Kiryu Coco's corporate profile on hololive.tv (JP)
 * @kiryucoco - Twitter account
 * @kiryucoco - Marshmallow account
 * /u/CocoKiryu - Reddit account

Twitter hashtags

 * #桐生ココ - General
 * #ココここ - Stream talk
 * #たつのこ - Fans
 * #みかじ絵 - Fan art
 * #あさココLIVE - AsaCoco talk
 * #あさココリーク - AsaCoco leaks
 * #redditshitreview - Reddit Shitpost Review talk

Further readings

 * 桐生ココ - Nicovideo Encyclopedia
 * 桐生ココ - Pixiv Encyclopedia
 * 桐生ココ - Japanese Wikipedia
 * 桐生ココ - Unofficial hololive Seesaawiki
 * 桐生可可 - Moegirl Encyclopedia
 * Kiryu Coco - Hololive Fan Wiki