Takanashi Kiara

Takanashi Kiara is an English Virtual YouTuber associated with hololive, debuting as part of its English (EN) branch first generation of VTubers alongside Ninomae Ina'nis, Watson Amelia, Mori Calliope and Gawr Gura.

Profile
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Personality
Kiara is enthusiastic and friendly, and is open with her feelings. She cares strongly for her friends and family, and misses them a great deal while she is abroad. Although energetic and sometimes chaotic in nature, and eager to collab with other members, she is secretly quite shy. She is sometimes bird-brained, being forgetful or having a short attention span. She prefers video games with fixed goals, such as RPGs, rather than open-world games like Minecraft.

On a graph ranking members in purity and intelligence, Kiara was rated "bottom left"&mdash;maximum lewd and foolish, much to her bemusement. However, she often surprises viewers with moments of gentleness, compassion, and insightful wisdom.

Watson Amelia, in her debut stream, described Kiara as having a "positive attitude and lovely voice". Mori Calliope described her as a hard worker and an incredible singer with a great personality, and praised her fluency with Japanese.

Kiara has a particular fondness for Mori Calliope. Kiara, a phoenix who has been continuously reborn, always meets Calliope each time she dies. However, it is not within Calliope's power to keep a phoenix in the Underworld.

Background
On 23 April 2020, following the success of the Japanese-language hololive VTuber group, Cover Corporation announced auditions for English-speaking members. The initial round of auditions ran until 24 May.

Takanashi Kiara learned about the auditions after they had already begun, and entered about halfway through the audition period. She wrote a script for her audition in a Word document in the space of two hours in a burst of inspiration. She recorded a number of takes for a song cover. She received a reply a few days later. She made it through to a second and third round of auditions, both of which involved phonecalls. Kiara was able to prepare for the third round by successfully estimating what would be asked of her, and credits her talent for creativity for helping her to think on the spot. Although she did not expect to be selected at first, she describes her confidence in her skillset as a factor in her success.

Kiara's YouTube channel was created on 16 July, and her Twitter account was created in the same month.

On 8 September 2020, Takanashi Kiara was first revealed in a short promotional video alongside the other four members of hololive -Myth-. A simultaneous announcement was made at the hololive Twitter account, and the hololive English Twitter account. She made her first tweet later that day.

Debut
Kiara made her debut stream on 12 September 2020. She was the second member of hololive -Myth- to debut. Her debut stream opened with a storybook animation narrated by Mori Calliope. She was extremely nervous at the beginning of the stream, during which spoke English, Japanese and German. She ended the stream by singing hololive anthem Shiny Smily Story, promising to make Yagoo's dream come true, a reference to the founder's initial vision of hololive as an idol agency.

2020
On 11 October, one month after her debut, Kiara celebrated 300,000 YouTube subscribers.

On 16 October, Kiara held her first collaboration with Japanese hololive, playing Untitled Goose Game with Oozora Subaru. This was the first collaboration ever between hololive EN and main hololive.

On 24 October, Kiara held her second collaboration with a Japanese hololive member, Momosuzu Nene. They did a special concert live stream where they sang karaoke songs together.

On 18 November, Kiara announced her new talk show, "HOLOTALK with Takanashi Kiara", which includes work from her sound designer and an introduction video being made by Watson Amelia. She also announced the release of her first original single "HINOTORI", with cover art by her illustrator Huke and an upcoming music video by Mori Calliope. She also announced a voice pack. Both the voice pack and single were due for release on 26 November.

On 20 November, she held the first episode of her show "HOLOTALK with Takanashi Kiara" with Houshou Marine as her first guest.

On 22 November, following feedback to staff, Kiara received a model update giving minor improvements to her chest and mouth expressions, such as allowing a small "o"-shaped mouth. Kiara was surprised that she could now make a surprised expression.

On 23 November, she reached 500,000 YouTube subscribers during a "karaoke til 500k subs" stream, making her the 23rd hololive member to reach this milestone. She hit 500k before finishing her second song. Coincidentally, Murasaki Shion reached that same threshold earlier that day.

On 26 November, she released her first original song, HINOTORI.

On 9 December, Kiara's channel was suddenly terminated by YouTube, apparently in error. Kiara declared that she would revive soon, and requested memes commemorating the occasion with the hashtag #PhoenixDown. This was the first time a hololive account had been terminated by YouTube. Around six hours later, the channel was restored.

On 10 December at 05:00 UTC (9 December US time), Kiara held a "re-debut" stream attended by over 30,000 viewers in which Kiara faithfully recreated her original debut stream with a few differences, claiming to have lost her memory. She addressed holoEN members as "senpai" (senior) and even forgot who Calli was. By the end of the stream she recovered her memory and commented on her temporary account termination. Amelia Watson later said she really admired Kiara for her clever handling of the situation, which turned a setback into something positive.

On 12 December, she reached 600,000 subscribers on YouTube.

2021
On 10 January, Kiara reached 700,000 subscribers on YouTube, during an endurance singing stream.

On 7 February, Kiara announced her second single, "Heart Challenger", which was released on 14 February to coincide with Valentine's Day. She reached 800,000 YouTube subscribers on the same day.

Late in February, Kiara's channel was temporarily shadowbanned by YouTube, and did not appear in search results and subscribers did not receive stream notifications. She took a short break from streaming to return to her home country. The shadowban was resolved on 4 March, and on 5 March she performed a German-language "HoloDE Debüt" stream in which she performed a German version of HINOTORI.

On 1 April, all holoMyth members revealed new chibi models based on popular fan designs by Walfie.

On 10 April, Kiara reached 900,000 subscribers on YouTube during another karaoke marathon.

On 30 April, hololive's Twitter account announced that every member of holoMyth would get their second 2D costumes.

On 4 May, Kiara debuted her second 2D costume, in this costume Kiara has her hair styled as braided twintails, she claims that she dyed the green in her hair to blend with humans better but couldn't change the color completely. She wears a translucent white blouse and handcuffs complemented with a green swimsuit, on her neck she wears a shocker that is a miniature version of her badge that allows her to transform into her phoenix form, Kiara also wears blue shorts. The outfit also includes a straw hat, shades, a brown bag with emblems of the holoMyth members, a pink pacifier and cat ears and tail that she claims came from living with cats.

On 30 May, just before her 12 hour marathon Kiara reached 1 million YouTube subscribers, making her the 16th hololive member to reach that milestone and the 5th and last member of holoMyth to reach it, making holoMyth the first generation where every member has reached 1 million subs.

On 16 June, she collaborated with Nyatasha Nyanners in the first ever hololive x VShojo collab, which was streamed on both YouTube and Twitch. The event attracted a peak total of around 40,000 viewers across both sites.

On 6 July, Kiara celebrated her birthday with a birthday stream in which she released new merchandise. During that stream she also announced her third original song "SPARKS", which was released later on the same day on her YouTube channel.

Discography

 * ''Main page: Takanashi Kiara/Discography

Events

 * On 12 March 2021, as part of their six months celebration the holoMyth members announced that they would get an official BGM image soundtrack featuring Camellia, with a release date of 14 March. The song inspired by Kiara is titled "Krispy Fry-fry Party."
 * On 23 June 2021, hololive's Japanese Twitter account announced that every holoMth member would appear in "Anime Expo Lite 2021."
 * On 7 July 2021, DoKomi's Twitter account announced that Kiara would appear in "DoKomi 2021."

Mascot and Fans

 * Kiara's mascot is named Kotori. Although the holoMyth mascots were initially revealed at debut, Kotori did not receive its name until the six-month Don't Starve collab stream, when the upcoming holoMyth mascot plushies were announced. The name Kotori is based on the kanji in Takanashi; the first two kanji,「小鳥」, are normally read "kotori", meaning "little bird".
 * Kiara previously requested names for her mascot in a Minecraft stream, in which she began building her mascot on top of the chicken coop. Chat's original suggestion for the mascot's name was Colonel Kernel. Rejected names included Kicky Ricky.
 * Like the rest of the holoMyth mascots with the exception of Bloop, Kotori was designed by Ninomae Ina'nis.
 * Her fanbase is officially called the "Kiara Fan Club". She requested to write the name without abbreviation so she can actually find things related to her.
 * Members are referred to as "employees" and their promotion is represented by stages of a farm chicken's life. They refer to Kiara as "Tenchou" (manager). Many assign themselves positions within the company, which appear at the end of their usernames. Examples include KFP Janitor, KFP Delivery Driver, KFP Ceiling Fan, and KFP Workers' Comp Parasite.
 * When angry at her employees, Kiara is known to threaten to fire them. In December 2020, Kiara threatened to send misbehaving employees to "the usual room", which has been implied to contain a literal chopping block intended for those who never leave to be turned into food. An employee subsequently changed their name to KFP Usual Room Guard.

Relationships
Other than holoMyth, Kiara is part of the following groups:
 * "Takamori", along with Mori Calliope
 * "O'riends", along with Momosuzu Nene
 * "holobirds", along with Oozora Subaru (duck), Pavolia Reine (peacock), and Nanashi Mumei (owl).

Quotes

 * "Destiny has its ways of repaying me for all the pain."
 * "You can't get me down, I'm a phoenix! You can't get a phoenix down that easily!"
 * "Who's Calli?" - Kiara, during the re-debut stream when she lost her memory
 * "No-one is worthless. Everyone has their own worth."
 * "Do what you think is best for you. If you're not sure what it is, take a moment to listen to your heart."
 * "Ok. But this… is just divine… exquisite."

Trivia

 * In Japanese, her name is written 「小鳥遊キアラ」.
 * Her surname, "Takanashi", is written with the kanji for 小鳥, "kotori", meaning "little bird", and "遊", the root of "asobu", meaning "to play"; together meaning "little bird at play". It is read "takanashi", literally meaning "no hawks", a pun meaning that there must be no hawks for the little bird to play. It is an example of nanori, or idiosyncratic readings of kanji which only appear in names.
 * This kanji spelling of Takanashi is uncommon, ranked the 50,808th most popular Japanese surname in 2013. It is shared with anime characters including Takanashi Rikka, protagonist of the animated series "Chuunibyou Demo Koi ga Shitai", and Takanashi Yomi from Black Rock Shooter, a series created by Kiara's character designer Huke.
 * Her first name, "Kiara", is written in katakana, normally used for foreign words or names.
 * She gives her surname-first, Japanese style, even when speaking in English. Ninomae Ina'nis and Gawr Gura also do this, while Calliope Mori and Amelia Watson use the English name order when speaking in English.
 * She likes fast food, adventures and hats. Kiara insists that fast food is healthy, and chicken in particular is very healthy. She claims to eat 53 pieces of chicken per day.
 * Her hobbies include singing, drawing, eating and fighting.
 * She dislikes scary stuff and one-sided feelings.
 * In her introduction, her backstory stated that she would be reborn in a different dimension every time she dies, however on 10 December 2020 during her "re-debut" stream, Kiara claimed to have mastered revival, as she was reborn again in the same dimension, which is fine by her as long as Calli is there.
 * Her birthday, 6 July, is National Fried Chicken Day in the United States.
 * Her loading screen, introduction video and narration were made by Mori Calliope, while Kiara made the art. An alternate version of the intro video was later released with narration by Kiara.
 * She is left handed.
 * Kiara is multilingual, speaking English, Japanese, German (native speaker), and "Bird". She has stated that her English is not perfect, and has corrected Mori Calliope's Japanese. She has also promised to do some Japanese only streams. She shares languages with the Evangelion character Asuka Langley Soryu, a Japanese-American who also speaks English, Japanese and German.
 * Kiara revealed that "bird" language is actually a pun that only works in Japanese. The Japanese for "trilingual", 「トリリンガル」, begins with "tori", meaning "bird".
 * Her favorite senior member is Usada Pekora. Pekora noticed Kiara on her introduction stream, leaving her speechless. Kiara has watched every one of Pekora's archived streams. One of Kiara's objectives is to collab with the Japanese members, but especially Pekora. Her collab with Pekora finally happened on 27 November 2020, in which Pekora took Kiara for a tour on the Japanese branch Minecraft server.
 * Kiara's favorite games include the Tales of series, Atelier series, Arknights, Super Mario games and The Legend of Zelda.
 * As revealed during her "Karaoke till 500k subs!!!" stream her favorite anime is Bakemonogatari. Her second is A Certain Scientific Railgun, and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is in her top five.
 * Her other favorite anime include A Certain Magical Index, Nichijou, Working!!, Minami-ke, Steins;Gate, Kannagi and Re:Zero.
 * Kiara's goals are to open a fast food restaurant, release original music, for people to make fanart or cosplay of her, collaborations with games, anime or conventions among others.
 * Her belt can turn her back into her phoenix form; as such, she is prohibited from using it.
 * Kiara's hair can ignite when she's angry. In school, she would handle this by running to the bathroom and dunking her head in the toilet. She can control this better as an adult. Her belt helps prevent this from happening.
 * Kiara has €500,000 in debt from unpaid fines for accidentally setting off fire alarms. Despite this, she managed to secure investment to launch KFP by just not telling anyone.
 * She is the third hololive EN member and ninth hololive member overall to join official Hololive Subreddit as a moderator.
 * Kiara is arguably one of the oldest in hololive. According to her introduction video, she was born in a time before humans lived on Earth. This would make her even older than Kiryu Coco (3,501) and Gawr Gura (over 9,000), but not older than Mori Calliope, who is the personification of abstract concept and has no date of birth. However, as Kiara is technically reborn every few centuries, it could be argued that Kiara was only born relatively recently.
 * Following her re-debut on 10 December 2020 JST, Kiara officially died and was reborn, making her the youngest hololive.
 * However, she would still be the second youngest after Himemori Luna (0).
 * Her catchphrase is 「キッケリキー!!」 (kikkerikii!). It is the german onomatopoeia for the cry of a rooster, but according to Kiara it is the sound made by a phoenix. Mori Calliope drew Kiara as a chicken saying "kicky ricky or whatever".
 * Her ending catchphrase is "Auf wiedersehen", a German farewell phrase.
 * When thanking donators, she says "danke schön", German for "thank you very much". She also uses "vielen dank", German for "many thanks", which viewers misheard as "feelin' dank". In bird language, "thank you" is translated as "pipipi".
 * Kiara is the first hololive member ever to have her channel terminated and then restored.
 * On 17 September 2020, Kiara announced the menu for her fried chicken branch, Kiara Fried Phoenix. It included the Phoenix Burger (chicken meat, salad, pineapple, BBQ sauce, onions, tomato, bacon, and mozzarella cheese); and the Yagoo Burger (two beef patties, salad, pickles, egg, cheddar cheese, secret seiso sauce, and onion rings). Fans subsequently actually made both burgers.
 * Kiara's blue feather "earrings" are in fact not earrings, but feathers which come from behind her ears. However, she also has a small blue stud piercing in her left ear.
 * During Mori Calliope's second live stream, Kiara expressed that she has a crush on Calli, much to Calli's dismay. This has to do with the fact that Kiara is immortal (unless she's eaten), so no matter how many times Calli would kill her, she'd always revive. This resulted in a ship later coined by Kiara as "TakaMori".
 * She noted that she has asthma.
 * Kiara originally learned of hololive when she discovered Fubuki.
 * Kiara mentioned that she has a sister who is aware of her VTuber activities as after Kiara played The Sims 4 on stream, her sister sent her a meme about her.
 * She uploaded her first meme video on 3 January 2021, even though she said once that she isn't the type of making these kind of videos.
 * Kiara is currently the hololive English member with the most collabs due to her good Japanese speaking skills.
 * She was both the last guest of Reddit Shitpost Review with Kiryu Coco as the host and the first guest with Akai Haato as the host.
 * Kiara is particularly fond of Rickrolling, a prank in which one tricks someone else into watching or singing Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up.
 * She tricked Gura into singing the song in Japanese during a lesson stream, and did the same again in German during a German language stream. She tricked her entire audience when she "released" her cover of Kanaria's "KING", five of which included fellow members Kureiji Ollie, Anya Melfissa, Momosuzu Nene, Moona Hoshinova and Ayunda Risu falling victims of said tweet as well.
 * The chicken drumsticks which Kiara sometimes holds are plastic props, not real food.
 * Kiara has two cats, which she calls Chonkers and Smoothie. Fanartists have depicted one as orange and the other mint or teal green, like Kiara's feathers, which Kiara declared canon in a Superchat reading. Kiara added them to her family in Sims 4, with Chonkers the orange cat and Smoothie the green cat.
 * Although Kiara's art hashtag is #artsofashes (i.e. arts plural), fans often misspell it #artofashes.
 * She hates the font Comic Sans.

Media

 * Takanashi Kiara Ch. hololive-EN - YouTube channel
 * Takanashi Kiara's corporate profile on hololive.hololivepro.com (EN)
 * Takanashi Kiara's corporate profile on hololive.hololivepro.com (JP)
 * Takanashi Kiara's corporate profile on hololive.tv (EN)
 * Takanashi Kiara's corporate profile on hololive.tv (JP)
 * @takanashikiara - Twitter account
 * @takanashikiara - Marshmallow account
 * /u/takanashikiara - Reddit account
 * Heart Challenger - Heart Challenger Stream Links

Twitter hashtags

 * #kfp - Stream tag (English)
 * #キアライブ - Stream tag (Japanese)
 * #artsofashes - Fan art (English)
 * #絵ニックス - Fan art (Japanese)
 * #takamori - Kiara x Calliope Fan art