Column: How Gawr Gura and VTubers could help Dodgers further tap into Japanese fan base
Column: How Gawr Gura and VTubers could help Dodgers further tap into Japanese fan base
Is it possible the Dodgers could win over new fans in Japan by tapping into an activity which is wildly popular among Japanese teens?
In the service of digging into what the Dodgers might be doing to entrench themselves as Japan’s favorite major league team, I am interviewing an animated character.
“I’m a shark-girl from the lost city of Atlantis,” Gawr Gura tells me. “I swam to the surface to hang out with you guys on land about 9,000 years ago.”
Tell me more.
“I’ve been told I have a heart of gold and a head of bone,” she says. “I have a long history of saying and doing ridiculous things on the internet.”
This is the part where I tell you that Gura — she said I could just call her Gura — will be shouting out the traditional “It’s Time for Dodger Baseball!” exclamation at Dodger Stadium on Friday.
The first paragraph is peak surreal journalism, I love it.
Hope that both parties get what they’re hoping for, Vtubing deserves to be seen as “just another way of streaming”, and I guess the team deserves praise for being on board with such a weird collaboration.
Though, as someone who knows very little about the MLB, I find it odd that they would’ve picked Dodgers even if they didn’t sign Ohtani, did the team already have some connection to Japan or was it just coincidence?