During one of his latest streams, Félix “xQc” Lengyel was watching AI VTuber Neuro-sama, who recently became one of the most subscribed streamers on Twitch. After hearing her voice, xQc pivoted into a broader point about cutesy voices and songs in anime.
He questioned the amount of cutesy, childlike content there is in the medium, and how he thinks it fuels and validates some fans who he perceives to be genuine threats to society.
Chat, overall, how come a lot of the anime have a lot of voices and songs that sound like children are talking? It’s like children-looking stuff, children-looking songs, children-looking whatever. Lullabies that are for children. It’s like, a lot of it is children. And people love that to the point where feel like it might be fueling a part of them that’s genuinely a threat to society. And I think it validates them in a way. I think it’s kind of odd to overpopulate that type of endeavor. But what do I know? I’m just spitballing here.
As if he’s not divisive enough, this accusatory tone sparked some more debate, but people generally agreed that he’s misinformed on the topic. Many also remembered the time when he was playing Gal*Gun 2 in VR, and how he behaved during that livestream. The others thought there was some validity to his claims, even if they came from a place of ignorance.
A big part of the pushback is that xQc treats anime like a single, uniform thing, when it’s really just a medium that covers everything from kids’ shows to adult dramas.
In Japan, the industry is organized around target demographics: kodomo (children), shōnen (boys), shōjo (girls), seinen (adult men), and josei (adult women). Naturally, there is a lot of stylistic variety, and plenty of work simply has nothing to do with cutesy presentation.
It’s also worth noting that cute vocal direction is a long-running thing across Japanese pop culture. It communicates youth, comedy, and innocence. This overlaps and is a part of Kawaii culture, which celebrates the cuteness of characters, animals, and mascots without any untoward thoughts or actions.
Still, xQc does have a point, though. There absolutely are corners of anime and VTuber fandoms where people lean into infantilized presentation, and it can sometimes become uncomfortable and even creepy. However, many felt like this does not warrant a sweeping statement about anime in general.
XQc himself is a controversial figure, and this statement is likely to entertain people for at least a couple more days, until he says something new that will reignite some other age-old debate.
