Hololive’s Minato Aqua graduated from Hololive on August 28, marking the occasion with an ambitious concert that attracted more concurrent viewers than any other VTuber event.
The celebratory stream lasted just over an hour, featuring a range of songs sung by Aqua and other Hololive members. At its peak, this stream reached 749,854 viewers, the most of any VTuber event in history, as tracked by Playboard.
Minato Aqua’s graduation spiked as high as 963,662 concurrent viewers. However, this anomaly was likely a bug in YouTube’s view counting, with the sudden spike only lasting a few moments before correcting itself.
Aqua’s graduation also received $237,571 in Superchat revenue, the second most of any stream in the VTuber industry. This feat was only beaten by Kiryu Coco’s graduation on July 1, 2021, which received an unmatched $306,442 in donations from fans.
Similarly, Kiryu Coco’s graduation was also the most-watched stream from any VTuber before Aqua’s send-off. It peaked at 483,873 concurrent viewers, an incredible feat that was still comfortably beaten by the Hololive 2nd Generation member.
This most recent graduation was not only the second most superchatted VTuber stream of all time but also the eighth most on YouTube altogether, cementing its place as one of the platform’s most historic moments.
The stream’s success isn’t too surprising given how rare these occasions are. Despite debuting its first talents back in 2017, Hololive’s main branch has only had three members leave of their own accord: Minato Aqua, Kiryu Coco, and Mano Aloe.
It’s a similar story with Hololive EN and Holostars EN, with Tsukumo Sana, Magni Dezmond, and Noir Vesper remaining the only members to do so.
However, several others have been terminated for various reasons, like Uruha Rushia and Yozora Mel. Back in 2020, Hololive even went as far as to close down its entire Chinese branch following the infamous Kiryu Coco controversy that led to Cover Corp withdrawing from Bilibili, though they recently made a return to the platform earlier this year.