Anime featuring virtual YouTubers premiered on Wednesday

The official website for Lide 's Virtual-san wa Miteiru ( Virtualsan-Looking ) anime revealed on Thursday that the fifth and sixth volumes of the anime's Blu-ray Disc release will each include an unaired episode. Both volumes will ship on May 24.

The television anime series features over 30 virtual YouTubers or VTubers — characters popularized via videos on streaming services and user-generated content sites. The anime premiered on Tokyo MX and other channels on Wednesday.

The virtual stars of the series include Mirai Akari, Dennō Shōjo Siro, Tsukino Mito, Tanaka Hime, Suzuki Hina, and Nekomiya Hinata. These six characters form a special unit called "Virtual Real" to perform for the series. Also starring is enka singer and more recently, "virtual grandmother" star Sachiko Kobayashi .

Daigo Abe is directing the anime at Lide , a new production studio established by Dwango , Kadokawa , Khara , INCS Toenter , and Asobi System Holdings for virtual anime and virtual characters. Daisuke Yokosawa is serving as "unifying producer," and Shinnosuke Suzuki is the production producer. Anime director Hideaki Anno ( Evangelion ) contributed ideas to the project; the Virtual Real group members wear the uniforms from Evangelion .

Yasutaka Nakata ( Five Numbers! , Modest Heroes , Crayon Shin-chan movies' theme songs), a producer for such musical acts as Kyary Pamyu Pamyu and Perfume , is composing the background music and the two theme songs. Kizuna Ai sings the theme song for the first six episodes, and the "Virtual Real" group sings the theme song for the last six episodes.

The series will have 12 24-minute episodes. Each episode is an omnibus of segments, each highlighting different VTubers. The series streams on Niconico Live and Periscope simultaneously with the television broadcast. The main Niconico service, d Anime Store , and other streaming services will then debut the episodes on Wednesdays at 24:30 (effectively Thursdays at 12:30 a.m.)

One regular segment of the series introduces "dream girls," created by fans with images and videos from the VTuber creation app Custom Cast and then submitted to the series via Twitter.