Eilene

Eilene (エイレーン Eirēn, pronounced as "eylenn", not as Eileen) was one of the world's first Virtual YouTubers. Her first video was uploaded to YouTube on 3 March 2014, on what is now the Mirai Akari Project channel. The Mirai Akari project started on 24 October 2017, which shifted the channel's focus away from Eilene. However, she still appeared occasionally in Akari's videos.

To some degree, Eilene manages the channels and business aspects of Moemi, Yomemi and Beilene. She had a business separation from ENTUM in June 2018 which ceased her involvement with the Mirai Akari Project. On 31 July 2018 she created another VTuber, the English-speaking Natsumi Moe.

Eilene ceased activities in 2022 due to failed projects and health issues. There was no official announcement. Eilene since then has sporadically posting in her X (previously Twitter account).

Personality
Eiiene is a 20 years-old Anime girl aspiring to be a famous animator and having her own anime series in the Japanese TV. She is known for always greeting her audience with the catchphrase "Nyan Hello!" (ニャンハロー！), but also for her weird antics along with her sisters Beno and Beilene.

She is also known for her money problems (to the point of eating the grass of her backyard) and her unstoppable lust for kawaii and moe girls.

Appearance
She has long pink hair in low twintails and red eyes.

Background

 * Prior to her debut as a VTuber and producer of VTuber content, she was part of a doujin games circle called ICETEA and released a visual novel game called Chain Letters. The doujin circle disbanded but she retained the name, and used it for her latter projects, including her VTuber ventures. She explained how it was for her to be part of the early incarnation of ICETEA on her 100k subs milestone video in the now Mirai Akari project channel.

Eilene Family
Characters related to Eilene are collectively called the "Eilene Family".

Originally it was only referring to the characters in Eilene's videos, but since the appearance of Mirai Akari, it has spread to characters on derivative channels.

These divisions are relatively arbitrary as there are no clear "generations".

Hiatus
One of the aides of Eilene, the vtuber Comdost, confirmed by a comment in a video about the early stages of the vtuber fad, that Eilene has retired from the scene due to a series of failed projects and health issues. Eilene since then stopped to be active and also she is no longer replying to messages. Moemi and Natsumi Moe are now working as independent while Etra has resigned to Aogiri High School. The Eilene Family and ICETEA were apparently on indefinite hiatus. 

On 09 November 2023, Eilene wrote to Natsumi Moe on X asking her for permission to put English translations of her new videos in this channel. It is not clear if this is new content, new content related with vtubers or an archive of her previous videos. It is still uncertain if Eilene is going to resume activities at some extent.

Trivia

 * Eilene (and for instance, her sisters Beilene and Beno) is voiced through a vocal synthesizer software called CeVIO Creative Studio. She uses the default voice bank called Satou Sasara (さとうささら). Sasara is voiced by Japanese voice actress Minase Inori (水瀬いのり). Eilene even asked CeVIO if the software was able to pronounce words in English in order to make videos for overseas audiences with it.


 * Eilene's house (and by extent, all the neighborhood where she lives) are background generic images from Japanese visual novels.


 * Eilene's dream was to become an anime creator and liked to draw in that style since she was a little girl. Before working in something related to her goals in Japan, she worked in a restaurant and later sold goods to foreigners. Eilene's meme of being a grass eater came from the fact she only had enough money to pay the rent and the bills but not for decent food.


 * In some of her videos, and her Patreon page, she has claimed that she is poor and requires fan support. At the $680 tier, which was reached, she promised that all videos would be subtitled into English.


 * Due to her long history and involvement in many projects in the VTuber world, 4chan's anonymous users on the /jp/ board have an ever-expanding "List of Eilene's crimes" that includes everything from the likely true (making Mirai Akari wear a thong) to the ridiculous (causing Fumino Tamaki's Leukoplakia condition, a risk of cancer).


 * Despite having a 3D model since 2017, it was not until late 2018 that Eilene was able to make the model move (thanks to the hiring of French VTuber Deat, now in charge of the motion capture software logistics for her projects) and debuted her new form on 19 October 2018. She will be a supporting character on Yomemi 3D videos, as well as creating videos on her own channel.
 * Eilene is a pioneer of the VTuber fad, but she is not the first Virtual YouTuber.
 * Eilene started her own vtuber group called Eilene Academy on January 9th 2021. The group would eventually disbanded at March 20, 2022.

Media

 * エイレーン 改 （Eilene Channel) - YouTube channel
 * Eilene's Patreon
 * Official Eilene and Friends Discord
 * @BitYoutube - Twitter Account
 * Eilene's Facebook fan page
 * エイレーン艾琳 - bilibili account
 * エイレーン - Mildom account
 * Eilene's page on Enty
 * Eliene's official LINE stickers

Further readings

 * アニメ娘エイレーン - Nicovideo Encyclopedia
 * アニメ娘エイレーン - Pixiv Encyclopedia
 * 艾琳(虚拟UP主) - Moegirl Encyclopedia