My Dad’s the Queen of All Vtubers?! is a comedic deconstruction of the VTuber industry. This manga plays a lot of aspects up for gags, but actually shows a lot of how it works. This review will be looking at the first volume in this series published by Kaiten Books.
This manga is written and illustrated by Wataru Akashingo. This is his first commercial work, though he did create a short self-insert story for the Rent-A-Girlfriend – The Official Anthology. The English localization is by Andrew Hodgson, who has worked on a number of manga, light novels, and visual novels. One example we’ve previously looked at is Our World is Ended.
Story
My Dad’s the Queen of All Vtubers?! gets straight into it. Takashi is watching his favorite VTuber, Kizuke Yai. Thinking about how Yai is rumored to really be a cute girl in real life much like the avatar, he walks in on his father to find that he is the person behind Yai’s VTuber model. That this nationally renowned VTuber with one million subscribers is actually his dad.
Running off to tell his mother, he walks in on her secretly streaming as a VTuber too. Only she’s streaming to a crowd of one, who insults her and moves on. Unlike the cutesy Kizuki Yai, she gets accused of being a guy and not ‘wife material’. Having dreamed of being an idol in her youth, she had her passion reignited by watching Yai stream. Despite this, she hates her.
This leads to Takashi reluctantly trying to learn the tricks of the VTubing trade himself, to teach his mother. It follows him on his adventure in debuting as a VTuber and through embarrassing situations. Between jokes around how the idol he had a crush on was his father to seeing his real-life crush obsessed with Yai, there’s a lot of humorous situations. This is one of the most hilarious manga I’ve read in a good while.
One common thread in the humor seems to be how Takashi’s father is very feminine and his mother acts like a stereotypical old man. You can see the father doing the cooking and the mother chugging beers and eating nuts. This seems to shine through beyond the avatars too, with real and VTuber personalities seeming to merge at times. This was represented quite well by the body language shown too, with feminine postures by the father even when not using the VTuber avatars.
Struggles of VTubing
Takashi’s personal struggle is amusing to watch over. A reoccurring point in My Dad’s the Queen of All Vtubers?! is how he is slowly being manipulated into VTubing. While Takashi wants his father to eventually stop, his father wants Takashi to join him. The father-son collab his the end goal there. It seems like everyone but Takashi wants to be a VTuber though.
More generally, one thing I liked was how it showed some real struggles that I’ve known VTubers to complain about. The mother starts to get known and growing when shouting at her fans in one example. It isn’t what she wanted to be known for. She wants to be an idol and to appear in a certain way but just isn’t having luck with it. There’s another incident where someone goes live without realizing it – I’ve done that myself. It’s a pretty common streamer problem.
Not everything is accurate though. Takashi’s VTuber model is prepared in what seems like overnight. A male voice heard on the most famous VTuber’s stream likely wouldn’t be glossed over easily either. Some fans can get really obsessive.
Art
The use of art in My Dad’s the Queen of All Vtubers?! is quite impressive. The style changes as needed and visual gags are pretty common. I mentioned the body language before and it’s really used well here to emphasize personality. Seeing the real-life and VTuber models come together can be used to great effect too.
Overall I liked the art. It felt high quality throughout and included some particularly detailed panels where appropriate.
Verdict
I picked up My Dad’s the Queen of All Vtubers?! due to my own interest in the VTuber scene. Like many, I first got into it via Hololive. I then went on to look at the indie scene, created @VTuberTweeter and did some writing around the area. It was interesting to see how well a lot of the experiences I’ve heard of came out in this story. But more than a VTuber story, this manga is just hilarious. I was laughing out loud at several points during reading it. If you have any interest in the concept, it’s more than worth picking up. Just remember that this is a comedy and that some of the topics shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
VOL.1 MY DAD’S THE QUEEN OF ALL VTUBERS?! IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Looking for our review of Volume 2 of My Dad’s the Queen of All Vtubers?! – click here!
Want to read something else? How about checking out the Dr Stone: Reboot Byakuya manga? Or our visual novel reviews?
Many thanks go to Kaiten Books who provided a review copy of this title.
A gamer since the days of Amstrad and DOS and someone who has dabbled in a variety of professions. He enjoys a wide variety of genres, but has been focusing on visual novels and virtual reality in recent years. Head Editor of NookGaming. Follow him and the website on @NookSite.
