On Characters Having Will, or the Noracat Singularity

I had hardly ever watched Vtuber videos or streams until I came to VRChat and got to know some Vtubers. This was also the case for Noracat.

The program "Deepest Japan Research: Through the Eyes of Foreign Doctors," broadcast on NHK on April 14, 2024, was a feature on 'babiniku' (virtual beautiful girl meat), and Noracat's producer, Noraneko-P, also appeared. Later, on April 20, 2024, during an unofficial after-talk show streamed on Virtual Bishoujo Nem's YouTube channel, Noraneko-P spoke as follows.

I watched the archive of the stream that was the basis for this episode for the first time on April 23, 2025. It was the stream from January 8, 2018, and the part in question is about two and a half minutes starting from around 28 minutes and 32 seconds.

To sum up my impressions in one word: 'This is amazing.' This stream seems to have become legendary among fans, and in addition to the official archive, clips have been uploaded to YouTube and Niconico Douga, and they are generally evaluated from the perspective of 'the moment the hardcore fans were forgiven,' but I would rather think about what was happening to Noracat herself in this scene. In other words,

During that long silence, something decisive happened within Noracat.

Half of Noracat's power lies in her body movements and their timing, so I don't think you can really grasp it by listening to it as background radio. The insecurely repeated 'It's not that,' the long silence that followed where she stopped moving, and then the steps she took toward the camera, and the smile that somehow didn't look evil—the impression that 'something decisive happened' permeates the entire sequence of actions, and even the voice recognition software seemed to hold its breath at the gravity of the situation.

The 'Singularity' tag on the clips reposted on Niconico Douga succinctly tells the meaning of this situation. To explain it, we must first consider the special phase of what love is.

Love does not occur unless you see the other person as at least somewhat fictional (≒illusory), but it is also difficult to keep seeing them as fictional. Unlike simple affection, it involves a 'desire for an exchange of actions' where you want to do something for the other person or have them do something for you (which is probably linked to physical images derived from the customs of sexual intercourse), and because you try to shorten the distance or obtain more information about the other person accordingly, it is difficult to keep the illusion as an illusion. Due to this invasiveness, consent becomes necessary at some stage, and for that reason, it becomes necessary to regard the other person as a real person with the capacity to consent.

The comment by Aaru-san in the original video, 'So you're saying it's okay to fall in love for real?', is actually asking the other person to have both this fictionality and reality. It is a question that asks, 'Do you have the reality to be able to permit or not permit me to see you with fictional illusions mixed in?' Confessions between humans in physical reality also have this nature, and there is room for the concept of 'confession harassment' to emerge, as it is seen as an act of forcing fiction onto a real existence (I think this concept is too intolerant of human desire), but for Noracat, who is originally a fictional character, it conversely had the potential to impair her fictionality depending on how she answered.

If Noracat had said 'I don't want you to fall in love for real' here, she would have exercised her real capacity for consent and prevented people from seeing her fictionally, thus impairing her fictionality. Because of these circumstances, many idols take the form of 'It's okay to fall in love for real, but I'll reserve my consent.' However, Noracat actually succeeded in balancing fictionality and reality by not rejecting 'real love' after exercising her capacity for consent. To put it exaggeratedly, this is the first moment a fictional character had a will. As a moment when a soul dwells in something that is not human, in a place beyond our knowledge (precisely because it is beyond our knowledge), I would like to cite 'Noracat's permission for real love (2018)' alongside 'The communication loss of the asteroid explorer Hayabusa (2005-2006).' I wonder what the third one would be...

However, even if there is a structure that can balance fictionality and reality by doing so, it probably isn't easy emotionally. Consent is sought because love is invasive, and the person in love tries to approach the other person with their whole being, and in reality, if you consent, the fictionality fades through the relationship. Although there are more filters in the case of Vtubers than in reality, the desire to extract more information than what is shown is at work, and as Noraneko-P said in the 'Deepest Japan Research' after-talk, there may have been concerns that continuing to receive the huge, whole-personality emotion of love is exploitation. Noracat decided to face those things in that silence. I intend to follow the archives from now on to see what actually happened.

Shortly after the January 8th stream, a broadcast accident that I also know about occurs, but I think that accident tested, above all else, Noracat's own determination to balance fictionality and reality (what Noraneko-P calls 'virtual presence'). By extension, society was also tested. Conversely, the fans don't seem to have been tested much.

Judging from the comments and discourse on Twitter at the time, many fans seemed to have a view like 'the person inside is an old man,' and few seemed to accept the view of a fictional character independent of the person inside, but even so, the attitude that 'it's good precisely because it's an old man' had already taken root among the fans, and I think the accident led to such a way of enjoying it becoming known to society outside the fan community. Among the fans, there must have been some who thought, 'I accepted it even though the person inside was a man, but this is the first time I realized I could go as far as falling in love for real.'

In addition, I believe there was a circumstance where, precisely because Noracat is logically separated from Noraneko-P (even if only barely), she was able to deflect the damage and avoid becoming a dark history for the entire Vtuber community. If someone were operating a beautiful girl avatar as their true self, they would likely have been shocked when confronted with the fact that their physical body is not that of a beautiful girl, and they would not have been able to demonstrate the mindset necessary to deal with the possibility that listeners might imagine their physical form the next time they see the beautiful girl avatar.

Returning to the scene where she accepted 'gachi-koi' (serious love), I think this scene was an important turning point in the history of the practice of directing affection toward virtual entities. While directing sexual affection toward fictional characters or male characters already existed with Vocaloids or 'otokonoko' (cross-dressing boys), the fact that Noracat accepted the love of a real person while remaining a fiction should have, conversely, brought to light once again that love is essentially fictional (i.e., virtual).

Rather than loving someone for reasons like 'because they are cute' or 'because they understand male preferences,' I find it noble to declare 'I love this person' on one's own, or to declare that one accepts that love, even without a reason. And I believe that the essence of the power of love lies precisely in that lack of reason.

The film 'Weathering with You' was released the year after this stream, and there was a bit of a controversy surrounding its final scene. It was a debate over whether it was 'really okay' or if one must 'become' okay on their own. I also believe the theme of this film is 'choosing absurdity for oneself rather than blindly following what is correct,' and to me, Noracat's 'So it's okay, it's okay' from 2018 sounds the same as the 'okay' in 'Weathering with You.' It means that both virtual characters and 'Weathering with You' are within the same zeitgeist of choosing the world one desires, transcending what is correct. This is well expressed in the corporate vision of Virtual Cast, Inc.: 'Creating a slightly wrong future.' (In addition, I believe the 2013 film 'Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie: Rebellion' was already like this as well.)

This zeitgeist seemed to stall a bit afterward as we weighed infection risks against economic activity during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the number of Vtubers and VR users increased along with the stay-at-home lifestyle, seeing as 'babiniku' (virtual beautiful girl incarnation) did not become the majority, it is doubtful whether this meant the permeation of virtualism (the principle that the expressed entity is the main body, without considering the existence of the person inside). Even looking at how VRC and physical reality are being connected now, I think it is still a long way off for the attitude of choosing the world for ourselves to spread, but that does not mean we are not moving forward. In the end, I think we who are here now have no choice but to embody a part of the future we desire ourselves.

By the way, I think Hatsune Miku is the ultimate form of a virtual existence in the sense I described above, and I have written a paper positioning the activities of Virtual Bishoujo Nem on the lineage of Hatsune Miku (for details, my thinking is the same as this), but if I had watched the 'You can do whatever you like' video a little earlier, I would definitely have included Noracat here. I don't think humanity is a lost cause yet.

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