Otogibara Era

Otogibara Era (御伽原江良) was a female Japanese Virtual YouTuber affiliated with NIJISANJI.

Personality
A senior college student who belongs to a handicraft circle. A 'homely young woman' who does everything from cooking and cleaning. Dreams that a nice prince will come to pick her up someday.

Otogibara Era has had, perhaps, one of the biggest turnarounds from her initial personality as a vtuber to her current one. In her early streams Era was a demure and shy character. She spoke in a very high-pitched voice and was very polite and well-mannered throughout her streams. Era was very shy and sweet, as well as modest.

As she continued to stream however, her personality gradually shifted into its current one. Gibara, nowadays, is crass, vulgar, loud, money loving, and short tempered. She admitted that her favorite kinds of jokes are sex jokes and has constantly displayed a dirty mind. Her voice has become much deeper, and she's prone to make deep, guttural noises (that resemble the sound of vomiting) or monkey noises when performing physical exercises or when in distress. During her GTA streams, she has displayed thuggish behavior like beating up pedestrians for talking bad to her. Gibara also loves men with cool voices, to the point of falling in love with the ring in ''Ring Fit Adventure. ''Finally, she doesn't look back fondly on her past-self, cringing and retching in her reaction to her first stream.

All that said however, she is genuinely thankful for her fans' support and hopes they will stick with her in the future.

Background
Era made her YouTube debut on 10 March.

2019
On 27 June she reached 100,000 YouTube subscribers.

2020
On 8 January, Era debuted her official 3D model via YouTube livestream.undefined

On 22 April, Era and Morinaka Kazaki made their major debut as the music duo "petit fleurs" under the record label NBC Universal Entertainment with the album 「première fleurs」.undefined

Retirement
On 10 March, Era celebrated the second anniversary of her first livestream. On the same stream, she publicly announced her retirement from NIJISANJI after 2 years of activity. She said that she was retiring because she "found what she wanted to do in life" and that "the reasons were positive". All the archives and Twitter content would be deleted by the end of March 2021.

Events

 * On 15 March 2019, in collaboration with MapleStory, she streamed playing MapleStory 2. She then played it together with Suzuhara Lulu and Yuzuki Roa on 17 March.undefined
 * On 8 December 2019, Era participated in the concert event Virtual to LIVE in 両国国技館 2019 (Ryogoku Kokugikan) where she unveiled her 3D model for the first time and performed songs with other NIJISANJI members.
 * On 9 February 2020 Era performed in the Zepp concert tour NIJISANJI JAPAN TOUR 2020 Shout in the Rainbow! at the Zepp Sapporo venue.

Quotes

 * Aren't I just genius?" (天才かぁ？)
 * "I belong to NIJISANJI!" (我にじさんじぞ？) - One of Gibara's infamous phrases, originating from a GTA V stream, and has since been used by other NIJISANJI livers on occasion.
 * "G! I! B! A! R! AA! Gibara! G! I! B! A! R! AA! Gibara! Gi~bara! Gibara! Gi~bara! Superchat! Gi~bara! Gibara! Large earnings! Gi~bara! Gibara! Gi~bara! Membership! Gi~bara! Gibara! Monetized!!!!" (G! I! B! A! R! AA! ギバラ! G! I! B! A! R! AA! ギバラ! ギ〜バラ! ギバラ! ギ〜バラ! スパチャ! ギ〜バラ! ギバラ! ギ〜バラ! 高収入! ギ〜バラ! ギバラ! ギ〜バラ! メンバー! 収益化!!!!) - Gibara celebrating her channel's monetization, in a reference to infamous ad by Japanese job recruit website バニラの求人 (Vanilla no Kyuujin)
 * "YOU PIECE OF GARBAGE!! DIEEEEE!!!!" (ゴミカスーーーーっ!! 死ねェぇぇええええ!!!!) - Gibara's infamous rage, while playing Cat Mario / Shobon no Action

Trivia

 * Color: #FFBE5C
 * Gibara shares her character designer with Mononobe Alice, Warabeda Meiji, and (formerly) Azuchi Momo.
 * Gibara shares the motif of fairy tale with Mononobe Alice and Warabeda Meiji; in her case, Cinderella.
 * The "Otogi" part of her surname comes from the phrase 「御伽話」 (Otogi-banashi), meaning "fairy tale", while her given name references the given name "Ella", which is said to be Cinderella's real name on several translations.
 * She has openly admitted to being a lolicon.
 * Unlike what were told in her personality, she has revealed that she cannot cook (it's not like she does not cook, but she really cannot cook at all).
 * Otogibara Era has been separated into two characters by her fans. Her original Cinderella personality that she debuted with is known by fans as "Era" while her current outspoken and eccentric self is known as "Gibara".
 * Occasionally her "Era" personality will return.
 * Originally, her Gibara personality was very controversial as in the stream where "Gibara" debuted she talked about how difficult it was to stay in-character for long periods of time while streaming. The original stream was made private but has since been made public as her audience grew more accepting.
 * The transformation from 'Era' to 'Gibara' has been jokingly attributed to an incident between her and fellow NIJISANJI liver Suzuhara Lulu. During one of her streams Gibara commented on Lulu's endurance when streaming, claiming Lulu 'wasn't human' and asking her viewers to never tell Lulu. Lulu of course found out and told Gibara she knew, prompting her to leave a farewell message on twitter. According to fans, Lulu (as an eldritch deity) erased 'Era' from existence and replaced her with 'Gibara'.
 * During a collaboration with Inui Toko, it's revealed that her room is very messy, with empty bottles and chip bags all over the room. Toko said it looked liked a hoarder's house, and she didn't want to go over, thinking Gibara would make her clean it.
 * Gibara earned over $30,000 in her first 3D stream alone. During this time, all the superchats she got were represented as stacks of yen that fell down on her from above, which prompted her to lay on the ground and get buried by them while chanting her own name, claiming it was always her dream to drown in money (which, funnily enough, wasn't one of the goals she stated in her first stream).
 * On a related note, Gibara openly vomited on her first 3D stream when being fed a cricket. She needed a couple of minutes to clean up before the stream continued.
 * Gibara loves THE iDOLM@STER series and will frequently stream her playing it. She obsesses over certain idols and has shown herself to be a major idol otaku to the point of erratic moaning and cheering during performances.
 * Gibara, in an obsessive pursuit of a character she loved, once dropped over ¥90,000 (roughly $850) pulling the gacha 300 times. Needless to say, she didn't get the character until the game (through a system called 'scout') let her pick the character she wanted. Throughout the stream, Gibara was constantly making more and more distressed noises as she didn't get her beloved character.
 * Due to sudden disappearance of Kataribe Tsumugu as well as early termination of Shindou Raito's contract, Gibara was sometimes considered Onomachi Haruka and Seto Miyako's "debut-mate".

Media

 * Otogibara Era's corporate profile on NIJISANJI website (archive)
 * 御伽原 江良 / Otogibara Era【にじさんじ】 - YouTube Channel
 * @OtogibaraEra - Twitter account
 * @otogibaraera - Marshmallow account

Twitter hashtags

 * #御伽の国の舞踏会 - Stream talk
 * #えらすとや - Fan art
 * #貢ギバラ - Gifts

Further readings

 * 御伽原江良- Unofficial NIJISANJI Wiki
 * 御伽原江良 - Nicovideo Encyclopedia
 * 御伽原江良 - Pixiv Encyclopedia
 * 御伽原江良 - Japanese Wikipedia
 * 御伽原江良 - Moegirl Encyclopedia