Hakos Baelz

Hakos Baelz (ハコス・ベールズ) is an English speaking Virtual YouTuber associated with hololive. She debuted in 2021 as part of hololive -Council-, the second generation of members of hololive English, alongside Tsukumo Sana, Ceres Fauna, Ouro Kronii and Nanashi Mumei.

Profile
A member of the Council and the very concept of Chaos, birthed by the world, itself.

The Gods appointed her Chairperson of the Council, but she mostly takes a hands-off approach as she has yet to accept the decision, much like her fellow members. That said, all of them have no intention of contending; instead to obey.

Her mouse-like appearance has deceived many a fool who fails to realize that mice are the harbingers of chaos.

Also of note is her wild smile, which she often flashes in her frequent romps.

Chaos is confusion and disarray, it is fortune and tragedy, and it is freedom from all the logic and inherent nature of life.

She believes that rules are not the be-all and end-all, which is why she has come to break them all.

Watching the aftermath is her greatest joy, and so she remains a bystander to the destruction caused by mayhem.

Personality
Hakos Baelz is loud, unpredictable, and chaotic. Despite this, she seems to have a talent for leading off in discussions and keeping things as orderly as possible, as seen in the first hololive -Council- meeting. Ceres Fauna even described her as a natural born leader, and Baelz eventually embraced the role of "Leader of -Council-." In contrast to her chaotic nature, she speaks rather fondly of the other -Council- members, and is regarded by them as adorable in turn. Baelz can also be easily flustered if things do not go her way.

Background
Following the success of hololive English in 2020 and 2021, COVER Corporation announced auditions for a second batch of English members from 12 February to 26 March 2021. Twitter accounts for the five new members were created in June 2021 and YouTube accounts created on 26 July 2021.

Teaser videos for the new generation began on the official hololive English YouTube Channel in August 2021. On 1 August, "Prelude" revealed a story of gods creating the four concepts of space, nature, time, and civilization. On 14 August, "Omen" described the creation of avatars of those four concepts plus that of the primordial force of Chaos, revealing five silhouettes. On 17 August, "Council" revealed the five new hololive English members and announced a grand debut scheduled for the coming weekend. Although the traditional term "generation" was not officially used to refer to the new members, who had been referred to as "hololive English Generation 2" by fans, the new members nonetheless formed a group known as "-Council-".

Upon conclusion of the Council debut PV, all five new members' Twitter and YouTube accounts were revealed, and each made their first tweet.

On 17 August 2021, around 24 hours after the initial announcement, Hakos Baelz reached 100,000 YouTube subscribers before her debut. However, YouTube soon removed around half of this number, possibly due to the sudden subscriber growth on a channel with no videos yet, which may have triggered a YouTube anti-bot algorithm.

Debut
Hakos Baelz's debut was originally scheduled for 22 August, by Japan time. A -Council- group collaboration on her channel was tentatively scheduled two hours later. However, the -Council- debuts were postponed for 24 hours due to unspecified technical issues, which members jokingly blamed on the "EN curse," a perceived tendency for hololive English members to suffer from unexpected technical problems. The debuts were rescheduled at the same time on Sunday 22 August (US/Europe time) or Monday 23 August (Japan time).

Baelz's debut stream took place on Monday, 23 August 2021 at 8 AM JST (22 August 2021 at 3 PM PDT or midnight BST). She is the fifth and final member of hololive -Council- to debut. Her debut stream reached a peak of over 90,000 viewers, and she had already reached 135,000 YouTube subscribers when the stream started. She finished out the stream by singing Fuwa Fuwa Time, a popular insert song from the anime K-On!, in which she impersonated both characters Mio and Yui from that series. A hololive -Council- collab stream was scheduled on her channel one hour later.

2021
On 29 August, Baelz reached 200,000 YouTube subscribers. She had previously reached this milestone on 23 August, but a number of subscribers had been removed by a YouTube algorithm.

On 4 September, her channel got approved for monetization.

On 23 September, Baelz opened her channel's membership feature.

On 24 September, Baelz's 1 month celebration in the morning (11:30 AM JST). In the same day at night (22PM JST), Baelz held her first official collaboration with another hololive member outside her generation, playing Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes with Takanashi Kiara.

On 12 October, Baelz reached 300,000 subscribers.

On 30 October, Baelz released her first ever official cover song "Happy Halloween" by Junky.

On 24 November, Baelz revealed that she would be taking a break from streaming from 29 November to 6 December.

On 30 November, Baelz debuted a voice actor show called "BaeWatch." The first episode "SCHOOL STARTS!" premiered on the same day.

On 13 December, Baelz received the Silver YouTube Play Button.

On 16 December, Baelz reached 400,000 subscribers during a chess match against Usada Pekora in Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics.

2022
On 6 January, hololive's Twitter account announced that both Myth and Council members would get new year costumes.

On 15 January, Baelz debuted her second 2D costume, a kimono to celebrate the new year. In this costume, Bae got a new hairstyle as she let her hair loose. However, she uses small buns with the tips extending out, resembling her original hairstyle. On the right bun, she has a golden hairpin. On the front of the same side, she uses two white flowers as ornaments. The upper part of her kimono is white, and the opening of the kimono is yellow. To the left side, there is a pattern of five red-stylized petals and white flowers which are connected by yellow lines. On the right side, there is a decoration consisting of hanging squares in an order of blue, black, blue and white. The kimono's sleeves are detached. On the upper part of Baelz's kimono, the sleeves are black and white. The inner of the sleeves are black. However, both the sleeves and the skirt of the kimono are mainly yellow with a plaid pattern in black and white on the edge. The outfit also have pleated portions where the colors go in order from white to red, to white again. These sections are decorated with the same flower pattern present in the upper part of the kimono. The obi has a plaid pattern in white, yellow, black and red, decorated with a blue teal bow. Another bigger bow is on the lower half to the left. The biggest bow of her kimono is on the back. Her tail has a smaller bow in white and yellow. Baelz wears high socks, with the right sock being red and white and the left sock being red and black. She uses red and black sandals. Baelz can also wear a black rat mask to the left of her head, reminiscent of a kitsune mask. She can also hold a temari ball in her right hand.

On 1 February, Baelz announced during a stream, "Febaerary" a birthday celebration month which consist of her streaming everyday, leading to her birthday celebration on 28 February (instead of 29 because it is not leap year) when she would release her first original song.

On 22 February, -Council- celebrated their 6 month anniversary on Mumei's channel. They also released a cover of the song "Hikaru Nara" after the stream.

On 28 February, Baelz celebrating her birthday and also released her first original song "PLAY DICE!." During a "BDAY KARAOKE" stream on the night, she said she would rest for about a week and a half.

On 12 March, Baelz reached 500,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel, making her the 3rd Council member and also the 50th hololive member overall to reach this milestone.

On 20 March, her first original song "PLAY DICE!" reached 1,000,000 views.

On 1 April, Baelz appeared as a guest of on Speak of the Devil, the talk show by Ironmouse of VShojo. This was Bae's first collab outside of hololive, and her first official appearance on Twitch.

On 25 June, during a stream, she announced that she would be taking a break for two weeks.

On 20 July, during a stream on Mumei's channel -Council- and IRyS debuted "Beeg Smol" 3D models designed by Sana.

Discography

 * Main page: Hakos Baelz/Discography

Events

 * On 26 October 2021, Anime NYC announced that every holoCouncil member would appear in "Anime NYC."
 * On 26 April 2022, Anime Central announced that Hakos Baelz of -Council- and Gawr Gura of -Myth- would appear in their event on 21 May at 4:00 PM which was also the first event to participate in hololive Meet of hololive.
 * On 12 May 2022, SMASH!'s Twitter announced that Hakos Baelz and Tsukumo Sana would appear in their event which would be held from 16 to 17 July.
 * On 14 July 2022, Crunchyroll Expo's Twitter account announced that Baelz and other members of hololive English would be appearing as guests in "Crunchyroll Expo 2022," which would be held from 5 to 7 August 2022.
 * On 26 July 2022, Seoul POPCON's Twitter announced that Hakos Baelz would be appearing as guest in "Seoul POPCON 2022," which would be held from 25 to 28 August 2022.

Mascots and Fans

 * Her mascot is a red and teal mouse named Mr. Squeaks. It rests on her head.
 * Her fans are known as "Baerats," pronounced "brats."
 * The fan group name was decided by poll during her first post-debut stream. Rejected names for her fan group were "entropeeps" (from "entropy,") "rat pack," and "gate crashers."
 * Her members are called "Rat Pack."

Relationships

 * "BaeRyS," along with IRyS. The two have an ambiguously married, divorced, re-married and re-divorced relationship.
 * "CHAD," (Chaos, Hope And Death) along with IRyS and Mori Calliope.
 * "holorodents," along with Usada Pekora (rabbit), and Ayunda Risu (squirrel).
 * "BRO," along with Yukoku Roberu and Kureiji Ollie.
 * "ORB," along with Kureiji Ollie and Minase Rio.
 * She considers Ookami Mio as her mom, Kureiji Ollie as another mom, and Mori Calliope as her elder sister for sharing the same Live2D modeler.
 * "HololiveAustralia," along with Akai Haato, Takanashi Kiara, and Tsukumo Sana.

Quotes

 * "Bruh."
 * "How you guys doinnnn'?"
 * "Oh, ma gaaad..."
 * "The world is not composed with order alone. Can't you apprehend? Not being bound by anything is the greatest limitation."
 * "Time is precious, and time has great booba."
 * "Oui oui pp."
 * "I'm a seiso idol, I'm a seiso idol, I'm a seiso idol..."

Name

 * The name "Hakos" is an anagram of "Khaos," matching her theme as a being of chaos.
 * The name "Baelz" may be a reference to the demon Bael, a being described in medieval grimoires including the Lesser Key of Solomon and Pseudomonarchia Daemonium, or Baalzebul, an ancient Biblical deity or prince of demons sometimes equated with Satan.
 * In Dungeons & Dragons lore, demons are aligned with chaos.
 * The name "Baelz" is also an anagram of "Blaze" as fire is often depicted as the de facto element of chaos.
 * Her name is pronounced "bells hake-oss."
 * Baelz reads her name in Western order, like Watson Amelia, Mori Calliope, Tsukumo Sana, and Ouro Kronii. However, she rarely uses her full name, considering it too formal. Because of her official name format, some Japanese members and fans call her by her surname, much like Watson Amelia in her early days.
 * Prior to her debut, Sana addressed Baelz by a shortened form of her name "Bae," a popular American slang meaning "darling." She revealed this at the beginning of her debut as her common nickname.

Lore

 * Her species is technically not mouse or rat, but "chaos." However, her physical form is that of a rat. She retains both rat and human ears to hear better.
 * She doesn't know her own age, and encourages viewers to "roll a dice" [sic] to determine her age in rat years.
 * If a six-sided die is used, this could make her anywhere between 30-180 years old in human years.
 * The first time Baelz rolled a die for her age, it was a 9,999,999-sided die and the result was 2,347,180.
 * Her birthday is 29 February. Leap years were created by Ouro Kronii to hold Baelz. In the Chinese zodiac, one of the possible animals which leap years fall in is the rat, with the other two being dragon and monkey.
 * Her height of 149 cm is equivalent to 7.45 cheese wheels. She sacrificed 8 cheese wheels to stack them up in the yard to check this.
 * Her choker was given to her by the gods. She doesn't know what it's for, but she also has the key to remove it.

Likes and dislikes

 * Her favorite beverage is coffee. She plans to do coffee review streams.
 * Her favorite food is fried cheese.
 * She fears the dark and jump scares.
 * She has repeatedly demonstrated an extreme weakness to horror games, both when playing them and when watching others play. Baelz mentions that it's paranormal elements in particular that she doesn't like.
 * The most notable instance was her Outlast stream, where she got so scared she cried and "couldn't feel her left arm."
 * However, she was able to clear Resident Evil 8, with Ceres Fauna watching along.
 * They agreed to do this as exchange for Baelz accompanying Fauna throughout the latter's playthrough of Resident Evil 7.
 * She has also expressed great interest in Five Nights at Freddy's lore, binging Game Theory's videos, but she wouldn't dare to play the games herself.
 * Her favorite weekend activity is to sing and dance.
 * Her top three anime duos are Izaya and Shizuo from Durarara; Edward Elric and Alphonse Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (her overall favorite anime); and Tanya and X from Youjo Senki.
 * Her favorite game genres are RPGs, simulation games, and Nintendo games. She prefers console games to PC, as there are fewer buttons to press on a controller.
 * Her favorite music is anime theme songs, JPop KPop, hardstyle, and EDM.
 * Apart from hololive English, the hololive members she watches the most are Oozora Subaru, Yukoku Roberu and Houshou Marine. However, she watches everyone.
 * Her goals are to dance in 3D, attend a live voice actor event, make many collabs, be a voice actor in an anime, and create her own coffee drink.

Miscellaneous

 * Bae's emoji is a six-sided die, used both in gaming and as a metaphor for the concept of randomness. The physicist Albert Einstein famously used the term in the latter sense regarding quantum mechanics, stating "God does not play dice." The notion that events may appear random while actually being deterministic is a foundation of a field of mathematics known as chaos theory.
 * She shares her character designer with Kaguya Luna and Pinky Pop Hepburn.
 * Baelz speaks English, Japanese and some Korean. She is still actively learning Japanese and Korean, and has notably spent over 10 years learning Japanese.
 * Baelz has been complimented by multiple hololive JP members for her proficiency in Japanese. She revealed that she recently passed the N1 JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test), the most difficult level.
 * Her Live2D rigging artist is Jujube. She shares this with Mori Calliope, allowing her to call the grim reaper "sister."
 * She uses the pronoun "boku" in Japanese when referring to herself. "Boku" is used mainly by boys, but is also used by tomboyish girls. Other notable VTubers with this trait include fellow hololive members Roboco-san, Nekomata Okayu and Amane Kanata; as well as Ars Almal and Levi Elipha of NIJISANJI.
 * Her loading screen pixel art is by Taho.
 * During early October 2021 when Japanese and English branches' members visited each other's Minecraft servers, there sparked some confusion among JP livers due to her unusual username ("whatabae"), often mistaken for Tsunomaki Watame; the "victims" of said confusion includes Oozora Subaru, Amane Kanata, Minato Aqua, Tokino Sora, Sakura Miko, as well as Watame herself.
 * Baelz is the twenty-second hololive member to join the official Hololive Subreddit as a moderator.
 * Baelz has a female Bicolor cat named "Beastie," with two color black and white.
 * Standing at 149 cm height, Baelz is the shortest in -Council-. Including the rest of hololive EN (-Myth-, Project: Hope), she's only taller than Gawr Gura (141 cm).
 * Baelz has an alternate male persona called Hayko, who in-universe is her intolerable cousin.
 * Hayko featured in Calvin Morrison (C-MAN)'s April Fools 2022 prank.
 * Baelz revealed herself to be Australian after she and Tsukumo Sana would be appeared in SMASH! Convention in Sydney as the convention is in her home country, thus it's "special" to her.
 * Baelz has admitted to texting other holoEN members such as IRyS and Nanashi Mumei on her mobile phone while in the shower.
 * Baelz has a font named "Bae Font" which was created by Mei using her handwriting during her learning stream. Currently, the font has been updated to version 1.0 using handwriting provided by her directly.
 * The impetus for creating the font was when chat pointed out that 'R' and 'K' look extremely similar to each other with Baelz' handwriting. This also made chat tease her by calling her "Haros" Baelz instead.

Media

 * Hakos Baelz Ch. hololive-EN - YouTube channel
 * Hakos Baelz's corporate profile on hololive.hololivepro.com
 * @hakosbaelz - Twitter account
 * @hakosbaelz - Marshmallow account
 * u/HakosBaelz - Reddit account
 * @hakosbaelz_holoen - TikTok account

Twitter hashtags

 * #enterbaelz - Stream tag (English)
 * #ベール登場 - Stream tag (Japanese)
 * #illustrayBAE - Fan art (English)
 * #ベーアート - Fan art (Japanese)
 * #baerats - Fan tag
 * #MADDOOFS - Music
 * #YABAEL - Memes (English)
 * #ヤベール - Memes (Japanese)

Statistics

 * Hakos Baelz Ch. hololive-EN - Social Blade YouTube stats

Further readings

 * ハコス・ベールズ - Nicovideo Encyclopedia
 * ハコス・ベールズ - Pixiv Encyclopedia
 * Hakos Baelz - Moegirl Encyclopedia
 * 하코스 벨즈 - Namu Wiki
 * Hakos Baelz - Hololive Fan Wiki