Tokino Sora

Tokino Sora (ときのそら, 時乃そら, 時乃空, Lit. Sky of Time) is a female Japanese Virtual YouTuber from Hololive who debuted on September 7, 2017.

Introduction Video
Tokino Sora's self-introduction.

Personality

 * Tokino Sora was born on May 15, 2000, in Tokyo. She is an easy-going, happy and comforting person whose personality has led many fans to call her “Tokino Sora Mama” (ときのそらママ) because of her "motherly" attitude.


 * Sora loves horror games and she does not get scared by them. She also loves Rhythm games and live streaming for her fans. She is not very good at Rote learning and Oogiri (a game consisted of giving funny answers to several themes)


 * Because of her musical and dancing talent, she has published several covers, including collaborations with fellow VTubers and even the release of a debut album with a major record label.


 * ときのそら(Tokino Sora) is a 17-year-old jk (2017) Youtuber who starts her career as a virtual idol. She registered her Youtube channel on 7 September 2017 but only start to work as a VirtualYoutuber on 12 December.
 * Tokino Sora was originally a product to showcase Hololive's latest VR software to the public, and only started to work as a Virtual Idol when she was finally given a "soul". Sora started live-streaming on niconico only at first but later switched to streaming on Youtube.
 * Sora streams every Thursday at 8:00 p.m. (GMT+9), in which her streams tend to show off her interactions with fans by reading messages and inquiries left by her fans as well as all sorts of random activities afterward. She sometimes livestreams herself composing songs impromptu with her electronic piano. Other than her streams, she also uploads herself playing horror games, singing popular songs as well as other short video clips.
 * She mentioned getting highly-influenced by her mother which led to her learning to play piano since young. She has a strong musical foundation as well as piano skills. Her sound is natural but beautiful. She has also been invited to collaborate with many singer-oriented VTubers.


 * Unlike Tsukino Mito (who has the same setting as a jk), she is a real idol who gets confused easily by memes from ACG written in the comments. This has also become an attractive point for her. She has the personality of a jk being energetic and pure, but at the same time the kind-heartedness and understanding, slow to temper nature one would expect from an elder sister (no, mother) coming from the neighborhood.

Setting

 * Tokino Sora is a virtual JK.
 * She Loves to sing、 dance, and draw (but is bad at it). Is weak at sports.
 * Her favorite subjects are music and Japanese. She doesn't like English and science subjects.
 * Loves dessert and cats, as well as all kinds of felines.
 * Her favorite game genres are music games (MuG) and horror games, and she seldom get scared by them.
 * Her dream is to perform Live in Yokohama Arena.

Appearance

 * Her original appearance has brownish hair and wears a sea-blue crop top uniform. According to her original character designer Ikaki (いかき), the design was intentionally made plain since it was only created to showcase Hololive's software.
 * As Sora begins to gain more popularity, Hololive displayed the latest home-wear design on 5 May 2018 by おるだん. The biggest changes include changing the irises from brown to blue, replacing the yellow hair clip to a star-shaped clip with red ribbons. The original C-shaped yellow hair clip came from the word C in COVER's logo. (COVER corporation is the parent company of Hololive).
 * Sora was nicknamed the VTuber with the most clothes (currently no longer the case). She has already showcased her Halloween、Christmas、New Year、Valentine's Day special clothing design as well as two home-wear designs. However, she seldom wears them after they are introduced, sticking to her original clothing during most of her streams.

Ankimo and A-Chan
Sora is aided on her videos by her two friends Ankimo and A-chan.


 * Ankimo (あん肝) is walking Teddy bear who accompanies her and mimic her movements during her livestreams. He is frequently depicted as being buried to the fact that, due to technical difficulties made him clips into the ground and he looks like he was buried on the floor. This has led to fans typing the hashtag #あん肝は埋まってる (Ankimo buried)”.
 * Yuujin A (友人A, Friend A) better known as A-chan (えーちゃん) is the person in charge of the technical aspects of Sora's live streams. She was originally spoken about or featured in a few videos but only illustrated as a roughly-drawn woman's face with glasses and a hair tie. In July 2018 she received a full design, and in November 2018 A-chan started her own Twitter account.
 * She is one of the staff who works on editing Tokino Sora's videos. She is often invited forced by Tokino Sora to play horror games together. She is knowledgable in ACG culture and can catch most of memes thrown out by viewers (opposite to Tokino Sora, who would more likely than not would mix up the meme with something else) since she has to edit out the bloopers in each video.She gains popularity after appearing in Tokino Sora's videos.
 * She is also invited to collaborations with other Hololive VTubers, normally as MC, another gamer or as voice actor/BGM. She also voices most of the non-Hololive creatures in Hololive's stage videos.

History
She opened her Twitter account on June 29, 2017 while her YouTube channel was created on September 7, 2017, and she started live-streaming on the same day.

During the May 3, 2018, live stream, she unveiled a new design, with blue eyes.

On 17 December 2018, she participated with other VTubers including Ginga Alice in the AR event Tubeout! at Tower Records Shibuya store.

On 10 January 2019, she announced that she would be releasing her first album Dreaming on 27 March 2019.

On 21 February 2019, she announced that she will be part of the main cast of the upcoming TV Tokyo dorama Watanuki-san Chi No along with Hibiki Ao, and newcomer Sarugakucho Futaba.

On March 27 2019, she debuted her first studio album titled Dreaming!

On 27 November 2019, she will be making an appearance in hololive's collaboration with Azur Lane as one of the characters alongside Natsuiro Matsuri, Shirakami Fubuki, Minato Aqua, Murasaki Shion, Nakiri Ayame, and Ookami Mio.

Tough beginning

 * Her debut livestream was not successful, with only 13 viewers watching the stream, excluding the technicians. (These thirteen viewers were later revered by Sora's fans as the "13 Knights of the Round Table" due to their insight and initial support for Tokino Sora) When Sora later recounted her debut livestream, she mentioned "At the time all I could think of was to make the audience happy, so I spent all my effort trying to reply to their comments, and since I did not prepare a BGM for the stream there were long periods of silence while I was coming up with a response to the viewer's inquiries and comments. When I realized "Ah I must say something since this is a stream..." my mind goes blank because I cannot process everything at once and can only sit there, embarrassed. Even though she faced similar situations in her livestream for the next few months, this trial and error period has according to her provided a much-needed valuable experience for Sora to transform from a newbie to what she is now.


 * As above mentioned, even though her Youtube channel was created on 7 September 2017, she only uploaded her introduction video on 12 December 2017, somewhat later than Kaguya Luna. (who became a VTuber only after Kizuna Ai has become popular) after her introduction video on 12 December has been uploaded she joked on Twitter calling herself "a part of the latecomer VTubers". However, as one of the forerunners for the VTuber Industry, her talents were not hidden due to her"losing in the starting line".


 * As Kaguya Luna、Nekomasu and other VTuber elders started gaining popularity quickly, the term VTuber became one of the hot topics on the internet starting from December 2017. At the time Sora's channel subscribers also rose from 3000 on 16 December to 15000 on 31 December and even reached 60k by 15 January 2018. Even though Sora mentioned herself getting confused and anxious by the sudden rise in numbers, as her popularity increased, she received her first business collaboration with Mirrativ.


 * On 5 January 2018, Sora was invited to a general knowledge competition with the floor open to the public held by Mirrativ as MC. However due to connection issues 90% of the competitors who answered the first question correctly to lose their connection. When the stream was on the verge of collapsing, one participant came up successfully answered all the questions correctly and saved the livestream from ending in disaster. (He was later revered by fans for his bravery and given the title "Leonidas", from the Spartan king Leonidas I.)

Livestream-related

 * Her fans are "soratomo" (そらとも, 空友 - likely from "Sora no tomodachi", or Sora's friends)
 * Even though Sora's fans call themselves "Sora's friends", most fans seem to consider her as Sora mama. However, it all originated from the stream on Christmas 2017 when Sora expressed her annoyance of not having any "elements" attached to herself. Later some viewers started calling her "mother" or "sister" due to the soothing suffixes she likes to add to her speeches (“～～ですよ—”，“そっかー”) which sounds like what a mother would say when cooing her toddler to sleep. Sora recognized this saying and received a role-playing element of "singer-typed sisterly mother character". “歌のお姉さんママキャラ”.


 * As her motherly figure gains recognition, some fans proposed "instead of getting protected by our mother, we should stand up and protect our mother" who then calls themselves "knights" and creating a "knightly order". The "13 Knights of the Round Table" mentioned before also became "13 Babies of the Round Table". (Sora seem to be aware of the changing of their titles on 3 May 2018's livestream)
 * Sora shows her sisterly or motherly nature even when she is not streaming. According to Tsukino Mito (from Nijisanji)'s by-talk livestream, when she was invited alongside Sora to perform in the same stage, she was caressed on the head by Sora naturally in the backstage. (Lemon)


 * A rare real pure jk (the opposite of Tsukino Mito) who doesn't know most of the memes commonly employed by internet users, including and purifying many memes during her streams. When she read the word “萌え豚 (literally cute pigs, a word denoting people who are extremely obsessed with their waifus)”，“キマシタワー (feeling overjoyed when seeing yuri elements in ACG works)” she showed signs of confusion. Later when she read “アヘ颜ダブルピース (Ahegao, or making a V gesture with your hands as you orgasm)”, she took it as “エヘ颜ダブルピース (making a V gesture while doing a "eh-hey! laugh)” and performed it...
 * After reading a meme coming from Orga Itsuka from Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans “止まるんじゃねぇぞ！(Don't stop!)”, she confused the meme as a mere encouragement from her fans, and replied by saying in the same tone “止まらねぇぞ！(I won't stop!)” This meme has since then become a phrase of encouragement for Tokino Sora.


 * She is sometimes sadistic without meaning to. She loves playing horror games and often shocks her audience by showing high enthusiasm regardless of the horror scenes the games have to offer. She has almost tried out all real-time survival horror games: Horror Forest、Yomawari: Midnight Shadow 、Five Night at Freddy's、The Witch's House、The Witch's House MV (basically a remake of the original version with better graphics and more dialogue options)、Ao Oni Online, etc. Sometimes when she would invite (force) others (mostly A-chan) to play with her for when it is too boring for her to play alone. Even though A-chan is normally calm and collected, whenever she plays horror games with Tokino Sora she would scream loudly, breaking the "quiet" image she is often associated with and leading to an even better viewing experience for the audience. Due to the added effect to the livestreams, whenever a problem occurs during the stream, Sora's friends would ask A-chan to play horror games as an apology (since A-chan is also a technician for Sora's streams).


 * When she was visiting Hololive's Minecraft server with other Hololive members (leader inspecting her members' daily activities), Minato Aqua jumped out proclaiming herself be the leader of the Hololive Resistance army. Sora only used one sentence "So you are the enemy now?" to break her opponent's morale, and causing Natsuiro Matsuri, a (the only) member of the Hololive Resistance Army to surrender and pledge loyalty to Sora. This marked the end of the Hololive Resistance Army.
 * She is poor at recognizing Chinese characters and English words, but claims to be talented at it. During her English test, the goal she set for herself is to score higher than Kizuna Ai.

"Unlucky"

 * She exposed herself having broken three of her fingers when playing with plyo boxes. (Mentioned it with little emotional fluctuation and claiming that it was considered minor compared to the other bodily injuries she suffered during the fall). She was thus unable to play the piano for a year, but still attempted to do so by playing the piano with her fingers wrapped with plaster cast and got scolded "this will lead to the wound healing slowly."


 * She also suffered an avulsion fracture and ligament rupture in the leg. (again mentioning it with little emotion change)

Interpersonal relationship(s) with other VTubers
Aoi Fuji is another VTuber who are especially talented at singing, and is considered by Sora as a "real partner". The two of them grouped together as “そらあお” (SorAo) and had many singing collaborations.
 * Tokino Sora X Aoi Fuji

The first one, under the moniker SoraAo (そらあお), were duet renditions of the songs "Lion" (by May'n and Megumi Nakajima) and "Snow Halation" (by μ's). On November 2018, Aoi along with Sora and Suntory Nomu sang a rendition of Sakura Taisen's opening theme "Geki! Teikoku-Kagekidan" (by Oji Hiroi). them the song "Lion" (ライオン) reached 163 million view counts in Youtube, and “Snow halation” reaching 41 million view counts. As another forerunner in the VTuber industry, Mirai Akari made a lot of attempts to seduce Tokino Sora on Twitter, (In reality Mirai Akari keeps sending confusing tweets to Sora, while Sora, despite not understanding most of what Akari is saying, replies kindly to all her messages.) such as: "I want to be born by Soso (そらそら)" and "Hello Soratomo, isn't it time for you to hand Tokino Sora to Akari already?", etc. However, Mirai Akari has long since found other VTubers to play with, while Tokino Sora still mentions Akari sometimes during her streams. Will we ever see the two of them collaborating again during our limited lifespan? Sora once collaborated with Azulim playing Resident Evil. Whenever Azulim was to scared to go on, Sora soothes her back (like a mother) into continuing the game. The two also sang several songs together.
 * Tokino Sora X Mirai Akari
 * Tokino Sora X A-chan
 * Tokino Sora X Azuma Lim (Azulim)
 * Are you fine with all VTubers as long as their names start with "A"?

Video clips
Youtube: 【アズールレーン/碧藍航線】壮絶激昂 / 歌ってみた【ときのそら歌コラボ】 Whole clip: 【お部屋公開！】ピアノ触りながらお話するのそら【#ときのそら生放送】
 * Tokino Sora singing Azur Lane's theme song
 * Tokino Sora singing My Heart Will Go On (main theme song of Titanic)