Shigure Ui - VTuber

Shigure Ui is a Japanese VTuber and professional illustrator that is known for creating the design of Hololive Production’s Oozora Subaru. Aside from creating Subaru, Shigure Ui is also credited as the character designer and illustrator for the light novel series Osananajimi ga Zettai ni Makenai Love Comedy and the character designer for the anime series titled WIXOSS Dive(A)Live.

Shigure Ui Background

Although Shigure Ui’s VTuber career is a rather new development, Shigure Ui made her original Twitter account in August 2009 and has been active as an illustrator since December 2015.

Shigure Ui History

Shigure Ui would make her YouTube channel on September 16th, 2018 -- the same day that Oozora Subaru would make her debut as a VTuber. While Ui was not a VTuber herself at this point, she would appear on several other VTubers channels for various kinds of collaborative streams. Many of these streams involved Subaru and other VTubers from Hololive and were hosted on their respective channels. As time went on, Subaru would eventually persuade Ui to make a VTuber avatar for herself, resulting in her making her YouTube debut on May 18th, 2019. As her own illustrator, Ui later made herself a second outfit for her Live2D avatar and got a major update to her Live2D model in March 2020. The rigging for this “2.0” model was done by Rariemonn, a Live2D rigger that has done model work for many different VTubers both inside and outside of Hololive. As of April 2021, Ui has approximately 450,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel and is expected to reach 500,000 in the following months.

Shigure Ui Physical Description

Shigure Ui is a self-proclaimed 16-year old girl with short, shoulder-length blond hair and green eyes. As a high school student, her main outfit is her school uniform, which can change slightly depending on the time of year. Her winter uniform consists of a white, long-sleeve button-up shirt, a brown striped skirt and matching jacket, a blue ribbon tied with a white pom-pom, and a pair of tall red socks with brown shoes. Her hair also has a looped braid on each side that is decorated with white pom-poms, as are her socks.

Her summer uniform follows a similar color palette but has some notable changes. The striped brown skirt and jacket are replaced with a red skirt and a solid brown cardigan, while the long-sleeve undershirt is swapped with a short-sleeved one. The socks with this uniform are also black instead of red, though the shoes are left unchanged. The braids in Ui’s hair are also worn as small twin tails, which give a bit of added variety to her face as well.

Shigure Ui Personality

Since her debut in May 2019, one thing most viewers have come to know Ui for is her calm, relaxing voice. It is often compared to the voice of Hololive’s Tsunomaki Watame, who Subaru -- Ui’s “daughter” -- has mistaken for Ui on several occasions. While she often has a relaxed and carefree disposition, Ui also enjoys messing with her viewers and rejects their antics at an almost humorous pace. This playful side of her also sometimes carries over to the way she treats Subaru, leading some fans to jokingly call her a neglectful mother for acting cold toward her daughter.

Associated Company

Shigure Ui is an independent VTuber, meaning that her activities as a VTuber are not influenced or managed by any specific agency or other company. That said, Ui is often associated with Hololive, the all-female VTuber group of Hololive Productions. This is due to her creating the design of Oozora Subaru, a member of the agency’s 2nd Generation. That said, even for a commissioned illustrator, Ui’s presence in the company is quite notable, as most other illustrators do not collaborate directly with their ‘daughters”.

Notable Videos

As an illustrator, Ui has a tendency to stream herself drawing most of the time, though she does also sometimes play games and host chatting streams as well.

Drawing Streams

Much like Subaru and her own avatar, Ui has a heavy preference for drawing young high-school-aged girls, though she says she likes all kinds of girls. Specifically, Ui will draw original characters or illustrations of Subaru -- particularly whenever a specific holiday or celebratory event like anniversaries or live concert performances occur. Aside from the content of the streams, viewers that desire to learn more about drawing digital art enjoy using Ui’s illustration streams as a reference to help them learn more about the drawing process.

Other Activities

Shigure Ui also often collaborates with many other VTubers, with some of the most common being Oozora Subaru, Maimoto Keisuke, and Inuyama Tamaki. Ui, Subaru, and Keisuke often collaborate together as a group named the “Oozora Family”. This trio is quite close and participates in a variety of different activities together. This can include playing games like Tetris 99 and Dream Club and other activities like Yumeno Graphia, a project owned by Nijisanji’s parent company, Nijisanji, that lets one interact with virtual characters one-on-one.