Minato Aqua

Minato Aqua (湊あくあ) is a female Japanese Virtual YouTuber endorsed by hololive.

Introduction Video
Aqua's introduction.

Appearance & Personality

 * She is a virtual maid who wears a marine-themed maid uniform. She is hardworking but also very clumsy.
 * She wears a maid uniform, her mob cap has an anchor as decoration; while her purple twin ponytails swirl anti-clockwise.
 * She has three blue ahoge, the inner side of her hair and her fingernails are also dyed blue.
 * The mob cap on her head has been identified by Inuyama Tamaki and her fans as a napkin box.
 * Her model would expand and contract as she breathes in and out respectively.
 * During her early livestreams, she can close one of her eyes and her hair can cover her eyes. (This BUG is already fixed)
 * Her chest would sway lightly during livestreams.

Background
Her Twitter account and YouTube channel were created on 1 August 2018 although she did not start her activities on YouTube until her self-introduction which was uploaded on 8 August.

2019
On 22 March, she announced that she will receive a 3D model in April. It was later announced, alongside a sneak peek of her model, that she will debut her 3D model on 8 April with it being slightly delayed from 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM. More sneak peeks were posted on 7 April before the debut was finally live on the next day.

On 25 March, she did a live-stream where she covers some songs but she accidentally played a song from an anime with vocals before abruptly ending the stream and deleting the video. She later tweeted about the incident on Twitter.

On 30 April, she starred in the music video and album cover for Virtual Diva AZKi's 7th original song "Fake.Fake.Fake".

Events

 * On 4 April 2019, she made an appearance in hololive's collaboration with Dawn of the Breakers as one of the characters alongside Roboco, Aki Rosenthal, Natsuiro Matsuri, Shirakami Fubuki, Yuzuki Choco, Oozora Subaru, and Ookami Mio.
 * On 8 April 2019, it was announced that she would collaborate with Square Enix's new mobile game titled LAST IDEA (ラストイデア) which was broadcasted live on the next day at 9:00 PM. The collaboration event began in the game on 23 July 2019.
 * In response to this collab, she expressed that she was nervous as this was her first time.
 * On 27 November 2019, she will be making an appearance in hololive's collaboration with Azur Lane as one of the characters alongside Tokino Sora, Natsuiro Matsuri, Shirakami Fubuki, Murasaki Shion, Nakiri Ayame, and Ookami Mio.

Trivia

 * Her setting is a marine maid, her emoji is an anchor "⚓️".
 * She calls her fans あくあクルーあくあ狂う（Aqua Crew）; while Chinese fans usually call themselves fur seal.
 * Her name "Aqua" is derived from the English word "aqua" (not a Japanese word). However, she is afraid of water.
 * She has nothing to do with water except her appearance and her setting.
 * Saved herself using/with the help of water many times during Minecraft livestreams, earning her the nickname Aquaman.
 * She got two tridents within a 7-minute interval during a livestream, and a total of 4 tridents after the 7-hour streaming marathon ended, earning her the nickname Poseidon.
 * Her favorite things include everything cute, sushi and games.
 * She usually streams herself playing video games, but there are also streams of her singing and by-talks, etc.
 * She plays a huge variety of games on different platforms, PC games, console games. card games, indie games, etc. She also streamed herself playing galgames several times.
 * She is surprisingly good at playing most video games, performing well in online competitive games such as PUBG and LOL.
 * Whenever she puts all focus on gameplay, she would unintentionally make intelligible (Aqua-styled) battle cries such as "Nya”、“Rua”, and “Wry”.
 * She would often celebrate by doing something confusing to the audience after winning a game, such as playing the victory song with disposable chopsticks or making gull-like victory cries.
 * Since Aqua often spends a lot of time playing games alone (without collaborating with other VTubers), she is also known as "Sololive".
 * Her ranking is currently Platinum 1 in the Japanese LOL server. (Last updated 12 August 2019)
 * She spent half a month grinding PvP in Super Smash Bro. after it was released on 7 December 2018, hoping to get to VIP ranking.
 * Since her most-used character in the game was Cloud Strife from FF7, she is sometimes nicknamed Aqua Strife by fans.
 * Her favorite animes are Yosuga no Sora and Love Live!, but interestingly she doesn't know the song 届かない恋 from White Album.
 * She adds ！！！！！ a lot of！！！！！exclamation marks ！！！！！whenever she tweets ！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！
 * She is the VTuber who invented exclamation marks, and her behavior has since spread to other VTubers close to her, such as Kagura Mea.
 * She likes all the posts tweeted to her.
 * She once told her viewers she has opened another twitter account with the sole purpose of liking pictures NSFW.
 * She is close to Kagura Mea, with rumors spreading the two knowing each other even before they become VTubers, while others speculated that they were high-school classmates.
 * The CP between the two is called 稱めあくあ（meaqua）, which has high popularity in China.
 * The two once stopped interacting with each other due to unknown reasons. (No longer the case). When Kagura Mea passed the Youtube monetization, Aqua congratulated Kagura Mea during her 24 December 2018 (Christmas Eve) singing livestream. She also mentioned during the stream, "for everyone, and Kagura Mea to accept me, I would work harder than ever."
 * She then sang 《灰色と青》、《愛をこめて花束を》, etc, most of them being famous songs about love.
 * She was invited to play along with Kagura Mea during a sudden Apex Legends livestream held by Mea on 8 March 2019. She then changed her schedule and tweeted, saying "Because my girlfriend invited me to play APEX so there will be a sudden livestream right now！！！！！All Aqua crews！！！！！Are you ready to set sail！！！！！(GMT+9) My apologies if 11 o'clock's Minecraft livestream is postponed！！！！！！！
 * Aqua and Mea interacted with each other at night on 10 March after Aqua went to her place. The two had a date the next day, with Aqua taking a break during that day. The scheduled livestream on 12 March was also postponed and later canceled due to Aqua returning home to late and being too exhausted.
 * Announced during 22 March livestream that she would go to Mea's house on 29 March and do a bilibili exclusive livestream that day.
 * Remains the elusion as a clear, lady-like maid under normal circumstances; however, whenever she gets taunted or beat up during games her disguise would break apart as she starts screaming and yelling but to no avail, except being eye-candy for the audience. Screams of despair from young females are wonderful.
 * Whenever her disguise breaks apart she may start making high-pitched voices, battle cries, pretending to cry, making absurd comments, smashing the keyboard, etc to express her anger. She is called あくあ狂う（Berserking Aqua） whenever she vents her anger by screaming and/or smashing and throwing anything within arm's reach.
 * Kagura Mea once laughed at her "M" in "Minato Aqua" is instead an abbreviation of "masochist".
 * She once hid the screen from the viewers as she was frustrated after failing to pass the game Syobon Action.


 * Retire-type VTuber:


 * During the stream on 28 November 2018 she started talking about retirement-related topics after singing the song 未練レコード (a sad song about the lingering feelings after breaking-up). After posting links to her livestream on Twitter, Hololive immediately retweeted it and commented saying "Thank you, we will never forget you Aqua-chan." Aqua was so angry she kept silence for almost a minute before making a "retirement speech" and turning the screen black and whispering to her audience telling them to say "We love Aqua the most, don't go", before returning unwillingly to sing 桜ノ雨. She then started imitating other Hololive members saying their farewell to her, but later continued singing as if nothing happened, leaving a deep impression within viewers' minds. (By reminding them of Sasaki Saku, who retired after singing 桜ノ雨, only to return at a later time.
 * Whenever she sings touching songs, or ends her livestream, people would start typing おめでとう (congratulatory phrases used during retirement.)


 * She is a fan of the comic artist Tsukudani Norio 佃煮のりお, as well as Inuyama Tamaki who was designed by her.
 * She joined Homolive after joining a Handicraft Karaoke （手○キカラオケ）held by Inuyama Tamaki, becoming the only second-generation member in Homolive. She remains Solo even in Homolive.
 * Embarrassing/ ragequit endings
 * Aqua often stops streaming immediately after making confusing actions, which include but are not limited to her phone running out of battery, falling into lava (in Minecraft), and after turning berserk.
 * Hardworking VTuber
 * Her livestream count is higher than most VTubers as she often streams multiple times within a day, and testing out all sorts of marathon livestreams. She holds the track record of streaming five times a day (same as Yuzuki Choco). Aqua once had a nosebleed during her stream which led to her fans raising concerns for her overall health situation.


 * Dumb (?) VTuber
 * Her Chinese vocabulary bank is comparable to a high-schooler, and she often misuses lesser-known words or could not even come up with the right word. She got 1 mark when participating in a knowledge test held by other VTubers (Yuzuki Choco's body check collaboration) and became a basic measurement of all Vtuber's knowledge (1 Aqua, i.e. A VTuber is 12 Aqua if he/she scores 12 marks in the test)
 * She likes reading light novels, but could barely read them due to most of the texts not annotated with furigana; instead spends most of her time reading manga (with annotated furigana).
 * She started counting down the alphabet as an attempt to prove her English skill level but realized she could not memorize the lower half of the alphabetical list. As she attempted to confuse her viewers by making strange noises, her audiences started laughing at her. She could no longer pronounce Japanese properly as she argued with her viewers as she was still thinking about the English alphabets.
 * She once live-streamed herself working on an English test, randomly choosing the answer (because she can't read the question) while telling everyone that she has always acted like this during her high school period. In the end she managed to get a bare pass. She claims that it was her first time to have gotten a pass by randomly choosing her answers.
 * She mentioned her inability to understand what most questions were asking when she was working on an IQ test but managed to finish it in the end. She scored a whopping 148 in the IQ test (made for 5-year-old)(That is when she got her nickname 5-year old Aqua).


 * Phrases she often repeats:
 * 私は全てを理解した. (I have understood fully) Has no idea what this is
 * 理解、理解. （Understood）In reality, does not understand at all
 * 余裕、余裕. (Easy as a pie) Only to lose again in her next attempt
 * なるほどね、分かった分かった（Oh I see, I understand now）Doesn't look that way
 * マ↑？！（Really？！）
 * いいっすね！（Not bad！）


 * Taunting
 * She likes to taunt her friends or the monsters in the game, only to get beat up afterwards. She would apologize immediately after getting beat up.
 * She won Kagura Mea for the first time during 1v1 Tetris and started typing “？” in the comment section to taunt her. She understood what domestic violence means soon afterwards. (Losing t=horribly in the game and getting taunted verbally)
 * She likes to say お前、弱い、あたし、強い（You，Weak，I，Strong）whenever she faces a boss when playing games like Dark Souls 3 and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. She often gets fixed up even before she could finish the whole sentence.


 * Apology-typed VTuber: Apologizes repeatedly whenever she is being treated coldly and/or getting attacked in games
 * She would apologize repeatedly and retreat whenever an enemy attacks her during Apex gameplay. She would then retaliate immediately after she picked up a gun. I'm sorry I'm sorry, you are dead after I get my peacemaker.jpg.
 * She is often treated coldly by Kagura Mea after taunting her. Aqua would then apologize repeatedly and attempt to make Mea laugh again by making all sorts of bloopers. (Are you sure she is not just acting like her normal self?)


 * Fans often call her as AMT/A.M.T which means "Aqua Maji Tenshi"（大天使あくあ） (TL: Aqua is seriously an angel)
 * 大天使あくあ is also the ID name of some of her games.
 * She made an archangel proclamation during her new year stream saying: Everybody please call me 大天使あくあ!

(I am sorry, I will do anything. You just said you will do anything right?)
 * Hololive explosion
 * She was livestreaming Minecraft in Hololive on 29 December 2019 when she built a model of the Hololive building and TNT'ed it to the ground while laughing nonstop. Hololive: Is this all that you did while you are inside Hololive?
 * She created a high-definition Hololive explosion livestream on 4 March 2019 after replacing her computer with a new one (this time with shaders). Hololive:？？？？？ New computer: ？？？？？. She then read a reflection letter, and claimed that she would do anything as compensation. (No she didn't say that)
 * Hololive resistance army Iron Aqua Group: Leader and creator
 * Owns a large underground base filled with military supplies (TNT) in Hololive's Minecraft server, always ready to rebel at a moment's notice.
 * Unfortunately, she was betrayed by Natsuiro Matsuri (her one and only member) during Tokino Sora's visit. Morale was high when she faced Sora, but it dropped immediately after Sora said "So you are the enemy now?", to a point she could no longer speak properly.
 * She watched Sora's point of view during a livestream in 2 February and laughed at herself for losing her courage so quickly. She then made (yet again) her retirement speech, bringing her audience to take a look at Hololive's server, before creating a model of herself and blowing it up with TNT. (Fireworks to celebrate her retirement).


 * Veteran otaku: During her Minecraft solo and singing streams on February 2019 she discussed a lot with her fans on everything ACG-related. She also sang a lot of anime songs during that time. From the topics she discussed one will find Aqua to be a veteran otaku who started watching anime since kindergarten.
 * When discussing The Idolmaster Cinderella Girls she talked about how much she "loved everyone", "Isn't DD (Daredemo Daisuki, literally "likes everyone") good", "I love everybody so it can't be helped", etc, famous quotes coming from a typical DD.
 * Kirigaya Aquato (Derived from the name Kirigaya"Kirito" Kazuto the male protagonist of Sword Art Online) Often calls herself Kirito when playing Monster Hunter: World and Apex Legends as she uses Starburst Stream (a skill made famous by Kirito) and missing her targets all the time.
 * Asuna Mea (Derived from the name Asuna Yuuki, the female protagonist in Sword Art Online and wife of Kirito) During an Apex Legends livestream collaboration of Aqua and Mea on 30 March 2019 Aqua called herself Kirito while naming Mea Asuna Mea. She then lowered her voice and said "Mea will be protected by me!" (A famous quote by Kirito: "Asuna will be protected by me!")


 * Savior/Kami“God (かみ)”/Yagami Aqua (Derived from the name Light Yagami, the protagonist of Death Note): During her livestream on 13 March she made a chunibyo comment: claiming herself to be the savior, that she will bring redemption for all citizens on Earth, that she is the kami (かみ, literally God or supernatural beings) of the new world, etc. (These quotes have their origins from Death Note, in which the protagonist Light Yagami once said, "I will be the kami (god) of the new world!"
 * Leader of DDs: During her Apex Legends livestream on 21 March she started introducing her favorite anime characters (which is a lot), and also encouraged her fans to interact more with other VTubers, leading to viewers donating Super Chat and claiming it to be an investment for DD Political Party. She accepted it without hesitation then claiming herself to be "the dictator of DDs who doesn't need to be voted out", as well as “DDだっていいじゃない、だって人間だもの（DD isn't all that bad, afterall, it's part of human nature.）” which later became the slogan for DD Party, leading to a lot DD party members throwing out Super Chat to support her. She was later replaced by Kyouka who DDed Aqua.
 * Her 3D debut was atrocious: Her 3D model was teased and later shown off on 8 April.
 * This is what happens next:
 * Started performing three sit-ups in one minute and telling jokes;
 * Started introducing herself to her audience
 * Breaking her arms, legs, and head (Her 3D model), and messing up the devices on her body for three times
 * Started talking about her shameful past (as a Resistance Army Leader)
 * Nice Boat. (Censorship)


 * As basic measurement (one Aqua) for all Hololive (and sometimes other) VTubers: This measurement can be used to describe a VTuber's strength and endurance, intelligence, and clarity
 * Intelligence (1 Aqua): She showed off her skills (?) during all sorts of knowledge tests, such as recreating Japan when she was asked to draw Japan's map.
 * Great news, on 31 August during the Fourth Vakatuber competition (basically a test to see who is the dumbest VTuber) held by Inaba Haneru, Aqua successfully received a score of 161 out of 500, earning her the title of Vakatuber. (even though her score was matched by Ginga Alice who also scored 161) This event has hence promoted the 1 Aqua measurement to apply to all VTubers, not just Hololive members. As a result 31 August is now 1 Aqua day in VTuber calendar.
 * Strength and endurance: Tested by how many sit-ups a VTuber can do and/or how well a VTuber can do yoga during their 3D live shows. (Big four: Minato Aqua, Uruha Rushia (1 Aqua≈4 Rushia), Ayana Nana (1 Aqua≈5 Nana), and Mayoi Sakyu (1 Aqua≈5 Sakyu))
 * Clarity (1 Aqua): ！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！ She is the incarnation of clarity
 * AV=Aqua Video


 * During her earlier livestreams Aqua showed off her computer spec to be （7700K+GTX1060）, it later became （9900K+RTX2080Ti）after she announced having bought herself a new computer. (Jealousy is a green-eyed monster)

Video clips

 * 【湊あくあ】Drop Pop Candy
 * 【１周年記念】ダダダダ天使／湊あくあ【歌ってみた】
 * 【歌ってみた】magnet【湊あくあ×犬山たまき】