Interviewing Vtubers: MizunoAki
This is the second interview of my Vtuber series. This one is a man I know very well. I have been watching Aki Mizuno since 2020 when he started streaming. And that was before he started Vtubing.
We started the interview by me simply asking, “Who are you?” In Mizuno fashion, he answered, “I am MizunoAki. I used to be a boy and now I’m a dog. And I’m a Vtuber and I stream on Twitch and I like YouTube and making funny videos. And I scream a lot. That’s basically all you need to know about me. I’m loud and I laugh a lot.”
When he streams, Aki loves to play horror games. He said, “I never liked playing horror games before but for some reason, after I started streaming, it became something that I really liked. I’m not sure why. I think I like being in pain and uncomfortable and I think people like seeing me in that state, too.” But overall, he’ll play anything.
Before Aki became a Vtuber, debuting April 2021, he was an IRL face cam streamer, similar to VaughnIXI. Aki, also known as Phil Mizuno, was able to build an audience and community based on the fact that he was a cosplayer. Even in 2020, he spent several streams cosplaying as Aki Mizuno well before he thought about Vtubing.
He would often lurk in VaughnIXI’s streams and sometimes ask questions pertaining to Vtubing. I witnessed this as I was Vaughn’s moderator on Twitch. Little did I know, Phil would break into the Vtubing world months later.
How does Aki define a Vtuber?
He says, “Anyone who is using some kind of avatar in some form to represent themselves on a stream. So, not necessarily completely animated whether it’s 3D or PNG. Like whatever it is, I feel like as long as what you show people is a character you found somewhere or you made yourself. I feel like it adds another dimension to streaming. It’s cool to face cam but a vtuber has a mystery around them. And the thing I like the most is you can let your personality and voice be the star of the show rather than you… I think there was a definition in there somewhere.”
How did you find out about Vtubing?
“I would not be Vtubing if this didn’t happen by chance. So there’s an artist in Germany. Her name is ToTo. We weren’t really friends at the time but we followed each other. I really enjoyed her art and, hopefully, she liked my stuff, too, but I really loved her art. I guess she was just doing sketches one day and chose my OC, Aki, as a Vtuber character.”
At the time, he didn’t know anything about Vtubing and just saw it as a cool drawing. He read the description and wondered, “What the hell’s Vtubing?” He began to look more into it and thought it was cool but didn’t know if he’d ever do it. This planted the seed for him.
Aki went on, “I messaged her saying it was cool and I didn’t know what Vtubing was.” She offered to do his model if he ever wanted to try Vtubing. After sitting on this for a week, Aki thought it would be cool and messaged her back. He jovially said, “That’s how the whole journey started. A random drawing by someone I really admired.”
What was the final moment that made him truly say yes to Vtubing?
“When I watched my past VODs, I got self-conscious. That’s fine and totally normal. But for me, the expectation of me cosplaying all of the time on stream was always there. I felt guilty when I streamed as myself because when I first started streaming on Twitch, I was in cosplay all the time. That’s what I did. I was a cosplayer. People wanted to see that, not just me. I felt like the real me was buried under layers of fabrics and wigs and no one cares about that.”
When he started streaming as himself, out of cosplay, Aki felt like he was getting tired of seeing his own face, “I was anxious that people didn’t want to watch me because I wasn’t cosplaying.” Aki had the thought that Vtubing would be the thing to bridge his cosplay and streaming together.
“As sad as it sounds, it came to a point where I became way too self-conscious about myself. And I was like you know what, I’m just gonna be a 2D boy and I’ll look the same forever and I can be in my underwear and I dont have to shave and I can feel good.”
This came from 6–7 years of cosplaying so with Vtubing, he wanted to bury the insecurities. He says when he goes back and watches his IRL videos and compares them to his Vtube content, they are the same, meaning to him, he hasn’t really changed. Thanks to Vtubing, Aki feels that he is in a happier and more confident place.
Is this a fun hobby or a career goal?
“I’ve always wanted to stream even I was cosplaying. I dont play games a lot but I like playing with others. It started off as a hobby and once I realized how much I like streaming the Vtubing part made me fall in love with it. It started off for me like that and now it’s something that I’ve really committed a lot of my time and energy.”
Talking about his 2.0 character, “That’s why I did the debut in December. It took nine months to figure everything out and come up with the model and all that stuff. But it’s because I wanted to give it a show at making it full-time and it could be a career. And it’s nice that I dont have to look a certain way even when I get all old and gray and crinkly and stuff, I’ll look like this lil’ boy forever.”
“And I love making merch and it’s perfect. Like everything I enjoyed doing before, including cosplay, because I can still cosplay him. It all kind of made sense for me to go this route. And whether or not I’ll be able to make this a full career or job, I feel like it’ll lead me to do more things with this character that help me do my own content for a long time.”
I asked him how he stays organized and his response was, “What’s that?”
“Before my new model, I was a mess. I still kind of am. I think it was because I was trying to juggle too many things. I think my brain, as crazy as it is, it has a method to its madness. I dont like using calendars and all that stuff because for some reason, I’m more organized when I’m not organized. But now, since I really wanted to commit to streaming, I realized that as much as I can function being crazy, other people can’t always follow that. I convinced myself that for the new model, debut, and new streaming path in the new year, I wanted to be a little more organized so people can know what to expect and it would be easier for them to watch streams.”
He said it wasn’t something he ever really cared about until he realized that it would make other people’s lives easier. Aki believes it helped his mods (on both Discord and Twitch) as well, so they know what’s coming.
When he did IRL streams, Aki just streamed at the same time at 7 PM EST almost every day. Then, it moved to just three times a week. When he made the transition into Vtubing, he kept the schedule. However, now as “Aki 2.0,” he’s changing his schedule according to what his week will be like. He explained that “one of the things I had to think about for the schedule is what times I was going to stream at because of the way my life currently is. After getting a house and having to do all these things around it, it changed the way I go about my day. There’s a lot of responsibilities that I have to do, so making the change to stream earlier (in the day) helped me.”
He’s been fortunate enough to not encounter many issues while Vtubing
When Aki decided to open an OnlyFans account, a subscription-based platform used by creators and most known for the sex workers that use it. There were hecklers when he decided to open an OnlyFans account. Some thought he was selling out/prostituting himself, even though it wasn’t his own physical body being shown.
Luckily, it didn’t bother him much. Especially seeing that thanks to the success of AkiFans (what he nicknamed his OF), one of the artists (there are 2) was able to quit their job and focus on being a full-time artist which is any artist’s dream. He’s happy that he’s able to provide this kind of opportunity to someone.
He actively advertises his “AkiFans” content with posts like these.
Aki wishes there was more support for smaller and mid-sized streamers.
When we talked about his opinion on the Vtube community, he said, “It’s not great to see larger streamers not willing to work with/ignore streamers. There are so many amazing people without large platforms that work just as hard.”
He compared supporting them to supporting local businesses. Aki said it’s satisfying and should happen more often.
Interestingly enough, he doesn't collab with too many streamers. He said he reached out to others and never got a response. He was disheartened about it but got over it soon after. There was another instance where he was denied a collab due to his numbers being low. (Even though he had 25.5k followers on twitch at the time.) He just sees this as another reason why he has to work hard.
Has cosplaying helped him?
When I asked this question, we both agreed that, in a way, Vtubing can be considered cosplay even if it's virtual. Here’s what he had to say:
“I think so. Even if I didn’t cosplay, I’ve always had the same kind of personality. I think it’s because I worked in retail for so many years, I just really enjoyed talking to people and I like to make people smile. That’s cliché and disgusting but I actually do.”
He went on, “I feel like cosplay planted a seed in my head that sometimes you feel more like yourself when you’re not actually yourself. So, in cosplay at a con, if I’m cosplaying Bakugo, I’m not myself. I’m not walking around in normal pants, shirt, and hair. I’m a character and I feel like it brought out a lot of nice characteristics and personalities in me. Aspects of my personality that I didn’t have before. So, with Vtubing, I brought that mentality in. I would love to be myself but a different aspect of myself.”
Aki feels like being a character can sometimes make you more comfortable. When he first started Vtubing as Aki, he tried to keep up a character and it “only lasted two days.” He defined it as him trying to be angsty and serious and that quickly fell out of fashion as he leaned toward his natural way of speaking. His personality came out and he stuck with it since.
If his responses seemed chaotic, that's because they were. Either way, I thank him for the time taken out for this interview and the hard work he continues to show. If you're interested in checking out Aki/Phil Mizuno check out his Linktree and cosplay Twitter.
And a special thanks to Mikuraii Zekni for her editorial assistance!
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