Koseki Bijou

Koseki Bijou (古石ビジュ―) 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 Shiori Novella, Nerissa Ravencroft, Fuwawa Abyssgard and Mococo Abyssgard.

Profile
"I hope you'll feel my radiance!"

Formed from the crystallization of all forms of human emotion, Koseki Bijou is "The Jewel of Emotions." Over years and years, emotions of beauty and filth alike have woven into her under immense pressure, resulting in an unmatched brilliance. Her ancient, mystic brilliance caused strife between the masses of the greedy, who fought over ownership of her. This led to her being imprisoned in secrecy, far from the reach of humans.

It seems as though when she encounters people, and particularly their good emotions, her radiance shines even brighter.

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.

Bijou first discovered hololive from YouTube clips after the -Myth- debuts in 2020. She was inspired to audition for hololive, despite having no experience streaming at that time. Despite initially being rejected, she decided to focus all her efforts on her goal of joining. She applied three times before she was successful.

At the audition, Bijou demonstrated her technical, gameplay and creative talent by playing her own fan-made mod of Undertale, defeating the boss Sans, who she had replaced with Mori Calliope. Later, she recalls that when she learned she had been selected to join hololive, she was listening to the song  from the game Cyberpunk 2077.

Koseki Bijou'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, Bijou also posted a short teaser video on her YouTube channel and made her first tweet.

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

Debut
Bijou made her debut stream on 30 July 2023, from 12:45 PM to 1:30 PM JST (Saturday, 29 July 2023 at 8:45 PM to 9:30 PM PDT). The stream reached over 128,000 viewers at peak, featuring a magical girl opening and a PowerPoint presentation. It was followed by the release of her first cover, "Kyoumen no Nami." She reached over 200,000 YouTube subscribers during her debut stream.

In hololive tradition, this was followed by the generation all-member group collab stream. This was in turn followed by the release of their first group song, "Rebellion."

Bijou did not rehearse too much for her debut, believing that the un-scripted and natural approach was best. However, she did work hard to prepare things for the event, and had a general plan.

2023
On 1 August, Bijou reached 300,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel.

On 6 August, she celebrated her YouTube channel monetization and also enabled Super Chat feature.

Discography

 * Main article: Koseki Bijou/Discography

Mascots and Fans

 * Her fans are called Pebbles.
 * She encourages her fans to draw their Pebble Persona, and post them in the hashtag #pebblesona.

Name

 * Koseki is a Japanese surname. She writes it with the kanji 「古石」, which are normally used to write this surname.
 * "Kouseki" also means "crystal" or "mineral." It is similar to the word houseki「宝石」(gemstone).
 * Bijou is a word of French origin, referring to a type of jewelry. She writes it in katakana, normally used to write loanwords from other languages. It is pronounced "bi-joo."
 * In Japanese, "bijou" 「美女」 means "beautiful woman," and is also a female given name, written with the same kanji. However, it is pronounced differently, 「びじょ」(bijo).
 * She writes her name in Japanese name order. She is the only member of her generation to do so, and the only one to use kanji in part of her name.

Lore

 * The members of Advent were sealed away in The Cell, a prison deep underground built to hold dangerous people and things. Its location is a closely-guarded secret.
 * During their escape, Shiori Novella was able to pick up Bijou and somehow wield her to blast enemies. Bijou also helped by throwing rocks.
 * According to a tweet made before her debut, she isn't worried about being "yeeted" because she can fly.
 * She speaks Rock language. She is also trying to learn Thai and Japanese.
 * Her age is unknown. It was cut off in her debut stream, so it is only known that it begins with a 1.
 * She is a gem girl, formed from human emotions. She is easily affected by human emotions, and became a VTuber partly to interact with humans from a safe distance.
 * She has the ability to inspire greed in others. When fans are in pebble form, it helps to protect them from this. It is reminiscent of Andvaranaut, the priceless ring of Norse mythology which inspired greed in all who saw it, and which was the inspiration of the One Ring of Tolkien's stories.

Likes and dislikes

 * She likes games, small spaces, interactive food, pretty drinks, and coffee. Her favorite possession is her coffee machine.
 * She is particularly fond of raspberry mochas.
 * Her favorite music is Utada Hikaru, Vocaloid, lo-fi, and video game OSTs.
 * Her favorite anime and manga are Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Houseki no Kuni, Clannad, Nagi no Asukara, Studio Ghibli, and Mob Psycho 100.
 * Her favorite games are FromSoft/Souls games, Animal Crossing, Splatoon, Hollow Knight, Undertale, Tales of Symphonia, Kingdom Hearts, Nier Automata, Pokémon, practically all Nintendo games, Apex Legends, and MMOs.
 * She dislikes pickaxes. However she deleted her original dislike list: mushrooms (except Enoki), bees, loud sudden noises and scary noises.
 * She plans to stream challenge content, long streams, Bijou themed creative streams, learning streams, trying new things, and community bonding and interaction.
 * Her goals are to appear in a video game, to build a community of millions of Pebbles, to have a voice acting role, to have her senpais notice her and collab with every hololive member at least once, to see someone cosplay as her, and to perform an original song on stage.
 * Her favorite hololive song is Houshou Marine's I'm Your Treasure Box  and Ceres Fauna's Let Me Stay Here.

Miscellaneous

 * At 140 cm (4'7"), she is the shortest member of hololive English at time of debut, defeating previous record-holder Gawr Gura by 1 cm. However, she is still taller than Japanese member La+ Darknesss, at 139 cm.
 * Her emoji is a . It refers to a type of stone statue once built by the inhabitants of the island of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island.
 * This was punned on in the title of her debut stream, "Moai Moai Kyun~!"
 * Her illustrator, Kitada Mo, previously drew Hakui Koyori's 2023 birthday merch.
 * She speaks some Thai, a language spoken by her mother.
 * Referencing her lore, in her default Live2D outfit the large crystal array on her chest changes color in conjunction with her facial expressions, ranging from blue when sad, to a vibrant rainbow color when happy.
 * She originally mispelled her art tag, #bijouwled, but decided to keep it anyway.
 * She is a night owl, and usually wakes up after noon. She often wakes up only ten minutes before the stream. She also doesn't eat before or during streams.
 * According to Nerissa, Bijou is older than her.
 * For her audition into hololive, Bijou created a modded version of Undertale that replaced Sans' sprite, lines, sounds, and attacks with Calli and Deadbeat-themed ones, with the Calli artwork drawn by her. She then played and beat this modded Undertale boss fight in one try in front of the audition staff, and later replicated this feat in a collab with Calli herself.

Media

 * Koseki Bijou Ch. hololive-EN - YouTube channel
 * Koseki Bijou's corporate profile on hololive.hololivepro.com
 * @kosekibijou - Twitter account

Twitter hashtags

 * #bijouwled - Fan art
 * #pebblesona - Pebble Persona tag