June saw a big jump in viewership among VTubers, with streamers teaming up to collaborate on mega-popular live-streaming games like GTA V and Chained Together. Although the top 10 mostly features familiar faces, the ranking shifted around drastically as a surprise contender took the top spot.
Kuzuha Channel
Kuzuha had an outstanding performance in June, finally achieving the status of not just top male VTuber, but top VTuber overall! He achieved this feat with an impressive average minute viewership (AMA) of 45K for June and an incredible 7.4M hours watched across the month. Kuzuha is a vampire with a suave yet arrogant personality, drawing in fans as the most subscribed male VTuber on YouTube with 1.7M subscribers.
Kuzuha’s absurdly high viewership isn’t the result of a one-off event, but rather turning his content towards a GTA V RP series with his fellow Nijisanji members – each stream averaged around 1.5M views! Thanks to this combination, Kuzuha hit the top 10 streamers overall even including non-VTubers.
Miko Ch. さくらみこ (Sakura Miko)
Sakura Miko managed to take back her title of #1 female VTuber in June from Pekora, coming into second place with an AMA of 26K. As a long-time member of VTuber group Hololive, fans keep tuning in for her shrine maiden appearance and daring plays in games like GTA V. To catch up to Pekora, Miko upped her airtime to 108 hours, found success with Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4, and collaborated with Oozora Subaru to play Chained Together.
Pekora Ch. 兎田ぺこら (Usada Pekora)
Usada Pekora finally dropped down from first place this month, dropping to an AMA of 24K and losing her title of “The Bunny Queen”. As a Hololive member, Pekora causes mischief under the guise of a sweet bunny girl. She’s mostly known for playing sandbox builders like Minecraft and Terraria, and RPGs like Granblue Fantasy. This month, Pekora fully committed to Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, but instead found more success by collaborating with Minato Aqua on their playthrough of Cuphead.
Subaru Ch. 大空スバル (Oozora Subaru)
Oozora Subaru settled in at #4 with an AMA of 23K, improving by 5K from last month. Subaru takes a different tack from many of Hololive’s VTubers, adopting a tomboy-ish, extroverted personality. As mentioned earlier, her Chained Together collaboration with Sakura Miko certainly helped bring in new viewers, but the primary reason for her high position on this month’s leaderboard was her new playthrough of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc – a favorite amongst the VTuber community.
Gawr Gura Ch. hololive-EN
Gawr Gura is the only new entrant to the top 10 for June, coming in strong with an AMA of 23K. Additionally, Gawr Gura is unique for being the only English-speaking VTuber on this month’s leaderboard. Although she may look scary with her shark-girl persona, Gawr is actually a sweetheart and easily approachable. Gawr drew on her massive YouTuber subscriber base of 4.5M people to attend her birthday concert this month, putting on a full 3D performance.
ローレン・イロアス / Lauren Iroas【にじさんじ】
Lauren Iroas popped back into the top 10 this month with an AMA of 21K. As a member of Nijisanji, his content is quite different from the other entrants on this list with competitive shooters like VALORANT and Apex Legends. Although it was Kuzuha who got the big numbers with GTA V RP, he may owe some of that success to Lauren who not only collaborated on those streams but started the VTuber RP’ing trend with ストグラ (Stogura, short for Street Graffiti Role Play).
Aqua Ch. 湊あくあ
Minato Aqua dropped down the standings in June despite maintaining a nearly identical AMA of 20K. As another Hololive member, Aqua is known for her elegant maid outfits which is undercut by her bumbling airhead persona. Like Subaru who turned her eye towards classic games beloved by the internet, Aqua did the same with her popular playthrough of Undertale this past month.
叶ちゃんねる (Kanae Channel)
Kanae is the only VTuber in the top 10 who primarily streams on Twitch, generating an AMA of just under 20K. Kanae’s self-assured, charming persona brings in fans to his streams as he plays highly competitive games. Kanae joined the fun of the Nijisanji GTA V RP session, perhaps being even better suited for the game as he already streams on Twitch where GTA V is ever popular. In fact, he used this to generate a massive amount of hours watched – 4.4M for June.
Korone Ch. 戌神ころね (Inugami Korone)
Inugami Korone takes Subaru’s love for retro games one step further, focusing on old-school titles that her fans may never have seen before and playing through them with her upbeat personality (as befits her dog-girl persona). Korone hasn’t been streaming as much in June, but her focus has been on niche horror games like Splatterhouse and a more mainstream playthrough of The Game of Sisyphus with AZKi.
AZKi Channel
Speaking of which, AZKi rounds out the top 10 VTubers this month with an AMA of 14K. AZKi is a chosen diva, a VTuber who uses her incredible vocal range to dazzle her fans. Ironically, however, it was the aforementioned The Game of Sisyphus playthrough that brought in the bulk of AZKi’s viewership in June rather than her vocal or ASMR content. Aside from singing, AZKi also focused on more real-world/geography-based content in June, such as GeoGuessr.
Kuzuha’s launch into first place may signal a new trend of VTubers jumping on games that are popular with non-VTuber streamers. However, the relative lack of interest in Elden Ring playthroughs on VTuber channels runs contrary to this thought suggesting its best not to compete with a saturated market. Stream Hatchet will see if this trend continues in the coming months.
To keep up-to-date with the top creators on streaming platforms, follow Stream Hatchet:
