Ex-Hololive member Uruha Rushia returns to YouTube after being firedJoel Loynds

The necromancer has resurrected themselves as a cat girl (pic: Hololive/Mikeneko)

One of Japan’s biggest streamers has returned under her previous name and character.

Uruha Rushia, a virtual YouTuber based in Japan, was recently fired from Hololive, an agency that handles a wide roster of virtual YouTubers across the world. After time away since February, she has returned under the name Mikeneko, her previous moniker.

In an apology letter, Cover Corp., the owners of Hololive, explained that they had terminated the contract of Rushia due to her spreading false information and leaking business details to the public.

At the time, Rushia was one of the biggest stars that Hololive had produced, with a total of 1.57 million subscribers before her firing from the company.

Uruha Rushia returns as Mikeneko

Before being hired by Hololive, Rushia was known as Mikeneko. While her real identity – much like other virtual YouTubers – has remained anonymous, she has shown her face in the past.

Mikeneko was known for posting music covers to Japanese video site NicoNico, but left the persona almost entirely to focus on her career at Hololive.

As of right now, the YouTube account being used sits at 812K subscribers, having only been set up on February 22, 2022 and, according to SocialBlade projections, will hit a million later this year.

Mikeneko’s content appears to be following the same format as when she was Rushia, with gaming and audience interaction being the focus.

She has pulled in an estimated total of £52,000 in donations and will now take home 70% of the donations after YouTube’s cut of 30%.

Why was Uruha Rushia fired?

The original incident involved an errant Discord message from Mafumafu, a musician from outside the company, which wound up being publicly displayed during one of Rushia’s streams. The message indicated that they were in a relationship and living together.

This then spiralled through the internet with the help of gossip channels egging it on. As Hololive treats their stars to the same public-facing standards as Japanese pop idols, where public relationships are a huge no-no, this was already a disaster on their end.

As the news came out, Rushia apparently could not wait on Hololive management to deal with this and took things into her own hands. Talking with Korekore, a gossip YouTuber, she defended the situation as her former online persona, Mikeneko, which made things worse by mixing up Rushia and Mikeneko – something Cover is incredibly strict about.

Rushia’s last major design change (pic: Hololive)

Cover allows Hololive stars to still use their previous online presence as long as they never involve the brand. Doing so is a violation of the contract, as Cover likes to keep the members separate and, as best they can, anonymous (presumably to save on harassment).

Notably, Hololive English member Calliope Mori still performs under her previous brand, DemonDice and another Japanese member, Noel, still produces explicit videos on the Japanese service, NicoNico.

Sharing private conversations with her manager and images of her room to prove she wasn’t living with Mafumafu led to Cover Corp. concluding that she’d shared too much private information and had broken her contract.

Cover has recently begun erasing all videos and streams produced by Rushia and will close the account permanently later this year.

What is Hololive?

Hololive is owned by Cover Corp. (Source: Hololive)

If you have your Twitter trends set to worldwide, you will frequently see Hololive and related trends cropping up relating to it.

Hololive is the agency arm of Cover Corp. that handles the talent they’ve amassed since starting in 2018. The talent is split into different generations, as well split into four groups: Hololive, Hololive English, Hololive Indonesia, and Holostars – a male version.

The stars stream video games, produce music, and will usually interact with the audience they’ve built. The company exploded in popularity during the pandemic, as more people in the West began to explore the other side of YouTube they’d not seen before.

Talent like Korone, a dog-woman, caught the attention of a large audience thanks to her cute design and funny interactions with games or the audience.

In 2020, Hololive English debuted, bringing in Westerners based around the world into the mix. These included Gwar Gura, a shark-girl, who rose in popularity to become Hololive’s most subscribed-to star, and the aforementioned Calliope Mori – a grim reaper themed character who produces rap songs.

A Chinese branch was shuttered after two users acknowledged Taiwan when talking with their audience. Kiryu Coco left the company in 2021 on better terms, even after being suspended in the previous months over the Taiwan issue and now performs under her old persona, K-Son.

Hololive members stream almost exclusively on YouTube, making a large portion of their money through ‘super chats’, promoted messages in the live chat on YouTube.

At the time of her account being closed, Rushia was actually the top earner via the super chats, amassing over £2.6 million before cuts were taken by YouTube and Cover. After the total of 65% taken by both companies, Rushia would have taken home just under a million pounds from donations alone.

What is a virtual YouTuber?

A virtual YouTuber is a recent class of content creator, someone who uses a character to interact with their audience or be at the forefront rather than rely on publicly putting themselves out into the world.

Virtual YouTubers are huge in Japan and as such, they usually take an anime form, with unique features either designed for them or provided by the streamer themselves.

The character is then mapped to the face of the individual or even their whole body, with motion capture and used in place of a real person.

Hololive themselves currently use both a 2D character for their daily output, while collaborations in their Japan studios will often use motion capture.

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