Haachama: the most creative and terrifying Hololive idol

It’s Vtuber time again! You know that we love to talk about them here on Rice; when it’s Hololive, you know it’s going to be me talking about them. These are my girls! So let’s dive into something that, honestly, I don’t really know how to entirely explain: Haachama. 

Quite a few of the Hololive main branch girls recently surpassed the 1 million subscriber mark on their respective YouTube channels. As you can imagine, this is a good reason for celebration, so that’s exactly what each member did. Certain members did unique things in the run-up to the milestone as well: Pekora, for example, promised to invite her mother on stream and explain what she does. It was all very wholesome and lovely… until Akai Haato’s “celebrations” got underway.

Attempting to explain Haachama lore

Akai Haato is a member of the first generation of Hololive girls; before her came what is commonly referred to as Generation 0, where each of the members joined as individuals rather than as a group.

After some time had passed since her Hololive debut, Akai Haato began to refer to herself as “Haachama” and seemingly adopted a more chaotic personality. 

Her viewers began to say that Haachama had killed Akai Haato — something which Haachama began to go along with. Partway through a Minecraft stream in early February of 2021, Haachama’s avatar disappeared and the original avatar for Akai Haato returned on stream. 

On February 4th in an unarchived stream, a video featuring Akai Haato behind prison bars was uploaded and the hashtag #FreeHaato was born. Halfway through a stream of Haachama studying English, Akai Haato returns and a video plays telling viewers that Haato and Haachama had agreed to “coexist” and share their body. Or so viewers were lead to believe…

On February 7th a video was uploaded with the title “Free Haachama” that featured a monologue of Haachama asking why Haato had been streaming while Haachama was asleep, and that she need to be punished for this. The hashtag #FreeHaachama was then created.

Shortly after, Haato would begin streaming and halfway through the screen cut to black with the text “Cut off your head” appearing on screen. Haato was seemingly killed by Haachama, who would then take over the rest of the stream. During a lewd art review livestream, Haachama started a video in which she threatened Haato and declared that she no longer wanted to share their body.

The lore began to really thicken when a video showing that Haato was alive appeared on subscribers’ feeds, stating that Haato cannot die if Haachama is alive. During a video named “I’M BACK”, Haato searched for her lost head by looking around her room in an “adventure game” style. As she clicked on different objects around the room, more information was revealed and teased, with the most interesting showing up when she looked at a calendar on her wall, and three specific dates were marked.

After this was a stream in which Haachama finds Haato’s head and connects it to her body, giving birth to Akai Haachama — you could say that it’s a fusion of the 2 personas. Then upon the day of her channel reaching 1 million subscribers, she released a video about the 2 personas, saying that they will “Always be together”. 

So yeah…

That’s about it for the Haato x Haachama lore — forgive me if I’ve made any mistakes, but this stuff is as wild and creative as it comes so piecing it all together was quite the interesting task! I do want to briefly go over some of my thoughts on all of this as well, as I think it’s something Haachama must have had a lot of fun doing. 

This whole thing came about because of a picture someone made of Haachama standing over a gravestone with the name “Akai Haato” on it. This whole Hololive “anime arc” was started because of a meme, and I think that’s amazing! It’s a great example of why I like Hololive as a company, and not just the talented individuals they hire. They allow these members so much creative freedom, and it’s very endearing. 

Idol culture is a terrifying one — we’ve all seen Perfect Blue — and despite some of the awful things that happened to some of the Hololive members throughout 2020, it’s amazing to see that they still have so much creativity — and that Hololive as a company will always back those creative efforts. 

Want more on VTubers? Look no further, I gotchu.

Header art by Kuria, designed for Akai Haato’s “World is Mine” music video. Support the artist on Pixiv!

^{Disclosure: Some links in this article may be affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if you make a purchase after clicking on them. This is at no additional cost to you and helps support Rice Digital!}