Aimu Sora

Aimu Sora (アイムソラ lit. I'm Sora) is a bilingual male Japanese Virtual YouTuber who debuted on 20 June 2019. He debuted as a solo artist on 25 November 2019.

His producer and voice provider is Hiroto Kuramasu (倉増ひろと), a popular cosplayer and CYBIRD employee.

Personality and Character concept
"Over the past few years, CYBIRD’s expansion into the overseas game industry has met with great success. However, the global market for female-oriented media/love simulation games is still very small in comparison to Japan. With the “I’m Sora Project”, CYBIRD plans to create a friendly space for international audiences to share their interest in Japanese female-oriented otaku media and to “unite everyone under one sky.”

Aimu Sora, a Japanese and English bilingual Virtual YouTuber, was designed by the famous illustrator and manga artist Utako Yukihiro. His aim is to share Japanese culture and otaku subculture with global viewers, as well as introduce overseas cultural trends to Japanese viewers with his bright and engaging personality. As a bilingual speaker, Sora hopes to engage with many people around the world through Japanese and English lessons, song releases, and more! The sky’s the limit!" - (Written by Rochelle, sojapan.jp)

"''If you think I'm childish, stop right there! It's okay to be childish!" ''

Sora is a very extroverted and energetic person, who does big gestures during speaking and has an expressive voice. Sometimes he can seem a little forgetful because of his high energy which he shows on his social media and in his videos. He's a huge idol fan, and so knows a lot about anime characters and their Japanese voice actors - a self-proclaimed otaku!

Appearance
Aimu Sora has short, bright pink hair. He has large blue eyes and a slender body. While the top of his head is often covered by a cap, he is shown to have smooth hair underneath. His outfit is primarily white (with highlights of his character colours: magenta, cyan, and yellow), consisting of an asymmetrical blazer, shirt, and slim-fit trousers. He is wearing a chained bracelet that has a large golden star attached to it on his left hand. The star has thin magenta and cyan ribbons tied on its third point. Sora wears magenta gloves - the one on the left hand is fingerless.

Music
Sora debuted as a solo artist in November 2019, releasing the original songs Step by step and Around SORA onto his YouTube channel. On the 20th September 2020, Sora announced during his birthday commemorative video that he would be releasing a new single soon after, and that his music would become available on streaming sites.

Sora's Senpai Club
Sora launched a project aiming to interview famous seiyuu (eventually also music artists) and allowing fan interactions with overseas viewers, premiering on May 15th 2020. The show is updated every Sunday, 10PM JST on Youtube.

Fans can ask questions on Twitter for the next announced guest to appear on the show, stating their pen name; country; and question (in English or Japanese). Questions will then be taken from the responses and presented to each guest, though not everyone will be able to have their questions answered due to time constraints.

Guests

 * Kato Kazuki
 * Ono Kensho
 * KENN
 * Kamio Shinichiro
 * Ogata Megumi
 * Ozawa Ren
 * GARNiDELiA
 * Kakihara Tetsuya

The playlist for these videos can be found here.

Trivia

 * Sora says in his first introduction video that he learned English by watching English dubbed anime.


 * Sora loves strawberries and melon buns. He says he hates 3 things; being ignored, bugs, and sushi! (無視、虫、寿司 / mushi, mushi, sushi) note: the words for insect and being ignored sound similar but they have differing kanji and intonations in Japanese, so for a foreign listener, it might be difficult at first to hear the difference!


 * Sora is interested in singing and voice acting, which he will demonstrate in his videos from time to time. He's capable of low and high toned pitches. His favourite voice actor is Kaji Yuki, but he also talks a lot about Aoi Shouta.


 * Sora gets into trouble with his manager from time to time. Once, Sora couldn't sleep very well so he started an impromptu Q&A on his Twitter. User @otomeobsessed asked him, "Sora.... Real Talk, do you like it when your manager yells at you?" and he replied with, "Kind of..." . In the morning his manager released a statement in both Japanese and English apologising for his behaviour the night before.


 * Sora loves Pop Team Epic, calling it "that kuso anime". Other anime he enjoys include, Uta no☆Prince-sama♪, Sailor Moon, IDOLiSH7, and probably most of all, Evangelion.


 * Sora debuted as a solo artist on November 25nd, 2019. He is a Hypnosis Mic (Hypmic) fan, and so his first solo debut single included a rap part. He had a part in writing the lyrics in both songs and expressed interest in music a while before the song's release.


 * He has a limited edition Pokemon Nintendo Switch.


 * For his first birthday (2019), Sora instigated a social media activity wherein fans would reach their hand out towards the sky, take a photo, and after announcing where they were, to tag it with #mysoradayo demonstrating that "We are all under the same sky."


 * After posting a video about Aoi Shouta, fans started sending it to his official Twitter account. This prompted Sora to explain on his social media why he feels connected to the voice actor on a personal level, detailing, "Basically, I was actually bullied at school because I sound like this (like my voice), and I like stuff target to girls and so... But Shoutan helped me to learn/prove that it's OK to be myself with what he's doing(*^_^*)". In reference to the fact that Aoi Shouta was bullied during his early life for his high voice.

Media

 * I'm Sora Project - YouTube channel
 * @imsora_desu - Aimu Sora's official Twitter account
 * @imsora_desu - Aimu Sora's Marshmallow account
 * @imsora_dayo - Aimu Sora's official Instagram account

Twitter hashtags

 * #aimusora - General
 * #art4sora - Fan art
 * #soranime - Sora's anime liveblogging tag