Projekt Melody: both interesting and disappointing

13/02/2020 DRSC Pro Culture, Culture-English, DRSC Pro
From Melody's Twitter.

Over the past few days, a new 3D star has appeared, Projekt Melody, although, so far, her performances have been both interesting and disappointing.

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Projekt Melody is, in a few words, a 3D animated character that essentially performs cam shows on Chaturbate, one of the many camming websites. According to the description provided by Projekt Melody [from now on abbreviated as “Melody” and referred to as “she”], she used to be basic program on a PC until she opened one of those well-known porn e-mails containing a virus, which corrupted her and turned her “naughty”. Furthermore, the “AI” presents herself as being 19.

While her Twitter account was created in Summer 2019 and the first real looks at her 3D avatar only appeared recently, she’s managed to gain an impressive amount of attention thanks to complaints from other camgirls and industry workers, with these seeing her as illegitimate, claiming Melody uses an under-age character and a few other accusations. It’s thanks to this impressive amount of attention that we are here and decided to have a look at what’s going on. Interestingly enough, before starting to cam, Melody uploaded a few dance videos on her YouTube account, with, for example, an animated version of “Call on me”:

Currently, Melody is essentially a 3D animated avatar that uses some kind of tracking software for the body and face, but that’s where it stops. Behind the avatar there’s likely a real girl doing the job of a camgirl with a vibrator (if we go with the information provided, a Lovense Lush one, commonly used by camgirls to “interact” with the viewers). While this is interesting, especially seeing the popularity of VTubers in Japan, the limitations are there: this remains a 3D animated character that, for now, during hours of stream, doesn’t get fully naked and, once again, for now, has no other toys to play with, making the viewing experience rather curious and lacklustre, unless one is really into this kind of stuff and the panting/moaning voice is enough stimulation for them.

As mentioned earlier, “real” flesh camgirls have also voiced their disapproval of this new competition, although the reality is that the actual public of Melody is one that is already into these kind of 3D animations, cartoons, hentai and VTubers, and thus already avoid the regular streamers, meaning camgirls and 3D camgirls should be able to co-exist, as they cover different segments of the market.

Melody has also announced her intentions of uploading to YouTube and later on being active on Twitch, which could be a great answer to the current wave of popular Japanese VTubers such as Kizuna AI, Kaguya Luna or, more recently, the HoloLive group, VTubers that, as mentioned, enjoy quite a lot of popularity both in Japan and in the English-speaking world. But, as most English viewers do not speak Japanese, they rely on fan-made translations, translations that take time to make. In many cases, translators will also end up moving on to different projects or giving up altogether, as it is an unrewarding and time-consuming task where they do not make any money. This phenomenon of translators giving up can be observed in many big channels such as Kizuna AI, which results in a drop of viewers for the affected VTubers. With Melody being American, she might be able to tap into this unexplored market and increase her current popularity, although she already enjoys 70K followers on her Twitter account right now:

For VTubers, not much is needed to become good and enjoyable, apart from a personality that the public appreciates and doing activities that entertain viewers, ignoring, of course, the already existing camgirl side. From the few clips we’ve seen of Melody, this personality is already present, and all that remains to be seen is whether she’ll be able to put it to good use and gather a strong community around her, as done by Japanese VTubers.

Another large part of fans of Japanese VTubers are also Spanish-speakers, although we have yet to see a Spanish VTuber appearing and gaining some popularity, but, if properly managed, this one could easily amass hundreds of thousands, if not a few millions, of subscribers quite easily, with Spanish being the 3rd most spoken language in the world, with over 470 million native speakers.

Now, some suspect that the person behind Melody is actually a man with a voice changer. While this is a possibility and shouldn’t entirely be ruled out, as there’s been precedents with Japanese VTubers, it would be quite a lot of work to fake the whole show, which, in some cases, lasts around 3 hours without breaks. As of right now, Melody has only appeared using the usual Lovense Lush vibrator, as well as a magic wand, which makes faking the whole thing difficult but not impossible. Furthermore, a quick look through her Twitter account reveals quite a lot of “feminine” traits, such as an interest for yaoi [also known as BL for “boys’ love” or, in short and simplified, gay hentai mostly aimed to and read by women]. Ultimately, while many might end up leaving if this turns out to be the case, in the few precedents of VTubers turning out to be men instead of women, the community still stuck behind them and ignored this, being there for the content and the avatar rather than the real person behind the screen. In Melody’s case, this is harder to do, although not impossible – after all, there’s a large category for hentai with “traps” and other similar fantasies that might appeal to a broad audience. But, as we’ve mentioned, faking the entire show would take a lot more work than finding a girl to assume the role of Melody and paying her to stream on a regular basis.

Lastly, to finish this article and coming back to its title, currently, Projekt Melody is interesting as the project could ultimately branch out in many different directions and satisfy an existing demand for an English-speaking VTuber. However, in terms of “porn” content, the streams still need some work and diversity, with the model having remained mostly clothed and only used two different toys so far. For now, we believe it is worth keeping an eye on this new “VTuber” and give it a chance, as the future could surprise us. If Projekt Melody becomes successful enough, there is no doubt we will start seeing a new wave of “VTubers” dedicated to pornographic content, which could open the door to an entire new type of content, such as collaborations between various models, video series, mangas and many other products.

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