GAWR GURA — 6 Song Tribute Study: 'Reflect,' 'SHINKIRO,' 'blue horizon!!,' 'Tokyo Wabi-Sabi Lullaby,' 'Country Roads,' & 'When I'm Gone'

I'm not crying but my tear keep coming out

i still wait the ash again react :) that song represents her the most. along with reflect.

I'm glad to see more review of music Gura sang. Unfortunately she doesn't have a lot of originals, and you'll probably have the most insight of how she approaches music from her karaoke's. Hope you have a chance to hear more of those.

There is so much talent in the vtubing sphere but I must say that Gawr Gura is probably the most naturally gifted entertainer I’ve ever had the pleasure of witnessing. Not just her singing voice, but her sharp wit and ability to command the mood and vibe of an audience of thousands is truly unparalleled.

Little fun facts: Gura's hoodie is joked that she never washes it, Guba and Gumbus are nicknames that Cali and Kiarra have given Gura, the floaties are necessary cause she can't swim ( I think it is in real life that she cannot swim), the "a" is also iconic cause she opened her debut stream with just saying "a"

Hololive is full of amazing singers for one reason or another. Be it Risu, Calli, Suisei or Irys. But somehow Gura's singing can really touch your soul.

40:30 The other girl in the popcorn scene is Murasaki Shion. Everyone calls her Shion (she-on). She was/is Gura's kamioshi, hence the blush from Gura but has also graduated last year. 56:50 I think having the raw karaokes also helps add to the parasocial aspect of streaming. We get to see them grow/improve with time.

o7

I fell down the Vtuber Sphere about a month prior to the first generation of Hololive EN's Debut. Watching them become huge stars, then make that dreaded all-black thumbnail to announce their graduation, was a relatively rare thing in Hololive for QUITE a while. Only within the last two years have we seen a big turnaround. My first excperience with graduation was Kiryu Coco, my oshi, and it had me balling my eyes out. Gradually, I've become numb to graduation, mainly because there is a small percentage chance they may come back in a previous life or alternate life. But also, because being a Vtuber should be viewed as a full time job, and for some people, it just doesn't work out for them long-term. I always take a screenshot of the "Thanks for tuning in" screen of the graduation stream, as a memento that they were part of my life in some way. I have a folder with about 40 screenshots so far, and many more to come. Tim, you should have a conversation with some Vtubers about the work put into being a Vtuber, if you ever deep dive into the mechanics of what it takes to be a Vtuber entertainer. Especially on the corporate side, they are putting 5 times as many hours behind the scenes into the few hours we see them on our screen.

So.. I'm PRETTY sure the end of Shinkiro, Marine is saying goodbye to Gura who is returning to the ocean. Gura looks puzzled clearly thinking of a way they can stay together. Marine turns to walk away but Gura stops her, Marine turns around excited thinking Gura is about to say she wants to stay.. And then red Gura eats Marine.. Marine wakes up in a white dream world where her and Gura are together, but in reality Gura swims off into the ocean having eaten Marine..

I would have almost argued listening to Ash Again (again), at the end of your video now that you have an understanding of who "Gura" is. also the Country Roads thing is a whole joke since the Holomyth girls have sung it an insane amount of times and I think it was their first group song (cover) together but I could be wrong on the timelines

When I'm gone always hits me hard.

Gura's karaokes were absolutely magical. She has such a fantastic ability to mesh emotionally with the song, to the point where especially in the early days she would break down crying while singing. She would always be embarrassed when it happened, but to me it was one of her super powers as you could just _feel_ her emotions through her voice. One of my favorite versions of this was her singing a slower version of Ah-ha's "Take on me", which turned the poppy 80s track into a tear-jerker. You could easily do a full reaction just on her karaoke streams (I'm sure there are archives of them out on Youtube). A few more favorites off the top of my head: Colors of the Wind (Pocohantas) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvHnj694wcA Crazy (Gnarls Barkley) Somewhere Only We Know (Keane) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR9Nov26YFA Fix You (Coldplay) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TzUETj943U Titanium (David Guetta) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM9g781DqQA Skyfall (Adele) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUGGy3nn8F0

These last two Wednesdays have been particularly hard-hitting for me. Mumei was my Oshi, the one who I kept up with above everyone else, the one who convinced me to stay following Holo. Gura was the one who introduced me to Hololive in the first place, through, of all things, a clip of her covering a Sabaton song. She was my next-most-watched in Hololive. Now both of them have moved on from Holo, and we don't get to have them interacting with the others anymore, getting into their shenanigans and all of that, and it's still kinda painful. Gura and Mumei were part of an unofficial group lovingly referred to as SNOTcast - Shark-Nature-Owl-Time, along with Ceres Fauna (Nature, also graduated now, who featured in "It's Not a Phase) and Ouro Kronii (Time, genmate of Mumei and Fauna) and they were the source of some of the most zany and entertaining streams I've ever seen. Sadly, we never really got a musical piece from the four of them but that wasn't really the point lol

"blue horizon!!" is FILLED with in-jokes and funny things that became canon for her lore and such. It's basically a love letter to her friends in Hololive and her fans. "a" wasn't just he first tweet, when she was doing her debut stream, after the initial stream start stinger she came on screen silent, kind of moved around a bit, opened her mouth and said "a" and then started rolling the end stream credits, kind of trolling everyone that the stream was over, before she came back on and did the rest of her actual debut, introduction, and sang her first song (Another City Pop song called Ride on Time). That little troll, coupled with her first tweet basically cemented "a" as her trademark, it's basically her signature (like Michael Jackson's moonwalk). "Goob or Gooba", "Gwambus", "Gumbus", and many others were just nicknamed for Gura that various people gave her that she liked to play around with. "Shrimp" came from the word "simp", during her first stream someone mentioned "simp" in chat and Gura being an old school troll and very media savvy from her previous online persona, decided to "mishear" the word as "shrimp" because it was close enough and it fit into her whole shark theme. So from that her fans instead being her "simps" became her "shrimps" (she basically turned a derogatory term into a fun and harmless meme). Dino Gura was a model she had when HoloEN did a special collab stream using VRChat. "OBS for Chummies" is a joke on the "for Dummies" series of technical books that are meant to help someone with zero knowledge to acquire some knowledge on how to use a particular application like OBS, Excel, Windows 11, etc. Or to teach basics of a programming language like "Python for Dummies". "Oh nyo!" was one of her catchphrases, which she picked up from her IRL mom. It's basically a cute "Oh no!" There are many, many more references. Too many to list without writing pages and pages of explanations. XD

Some of the references from Blue Horizon: Her birthday is June 20th, the release day for the film Jaws Her Youtube members were called "MemberShrimp", which is why you see little orange shrimps scattered around. It's also a play on the word "Simp" which is a somewhat derogatory term for overzealous supporters. The different costumes cycling in the beginning (the "uh oh, uh oh" part), are all her different streaming outfits Gura is _tiny_ (141cm / 4'8") and someone made a fan animation of her riding on a Roomba which she _adored_ and played on her stream loading screen for ages. Like many streamers, she has had her arguments with OBS, including one stream where she hosted a game show featuring the rest of Hololive English. She spent _days_ setting up this amazing set of OBS scenes in the game show format that she could switch between like a real game show with talking head scenes for each member and game round. Unfortunately, it was way too taxing on her PC, so her computer crashed mid-stream which you could tell broke her heart. She returned a few days later with the help of some of the other EN girls including Amelia Watson (the blonde in the background in the scene with her trident through the monitor), who is very good with tech and well known as "EN Tech Support", she also semi-graduated in 2024, and her and Gura are good friends. The floaties on her arms are a recurring joke that despite being from the lost city of Atlantis and a shark girl, she needed floaties to swim, hence her dead in the kiddie pool after taking them off. The names on her watch (apart from the "a") are all nicknames she gave herself. She tended to cook up all sorts of silly nicknames for herself like "Gooba", "Gwumbo", "Goobidiba" (her genmate Takanashi Kiara loved that one), or "George". The mirror scene is a reference to a story she told when she was younger. She wanted to try make-up, so in secret bought a make-up kit and was trying it out on herself when her mom walked in on her and she practically died from embarrassment. The Gura in a dino costume is a reference to a Halloween outfit she used in the MV "Myth or Treat". The purple-haired girl is Murasaki Shion, a Hololive JP member which she adored and would make jokes about wanting to marry her. "Heart of gold and a head of bone" is a phrase that quickly became a perfect description of her personality. Gura is an absolute sweetheart but is well known for bonehead moments. It's also a bit of a pun because sharks don't have bones. "Hydrodynamic" is a running joke about her chest size, in which she jokes allows her to swim better, the rest of the girls in the pool are members of Hololive EN's second generation, whose proportions are all ... very opposite of that. Gura is known to be an absolute monster at rhythm games, and one of her first streams proving this was the game Muse Dash, which she completely floored her audience by crushing round after round on max difficulty with zero mistakes. The gun scene is a reference to "Q", her original song with Mori Calliope. "Same desu" is a reference to her stream intro catch phrase "Domo same desu", which translates into "Greetings, shark here". Also fun fact, the lead animator for the MV is DuDuL (https://www.youtube.com/@DuDuLtv/videos), a fan that made tons of hilarious animations of Gura that she loved to commission for projects.

Slight correction watching this back. Gura's record to 1mil subs was broken in 2023 by another Vtuber reaching it in just 8 days. There is some contention over that as the company backing her pulled some tricks to make it happen. BUT NONE OF THAT MATTERS because in June last year Sameko Saba broke the record again by reaching 1mil subscribers before her second stream.

Thanks for this Tim. It's bittersweet because Gura was such a pillar of the vtubing world but due to personal health issues she posted very infrequently in the later years of her career. Even now in her reincarnated form she hasn't been online in months and months. We all miss her a lot. Gura has a soft sweet voice, and her vocal control and intonation are stunning. A Gura karaoke stream was a non-negotiable must-watch for me, in part because they were so rare but also because her voice is so comforting and sweet. You can't go wrong choosing any of her karaoke clips to listen to. It wasn't represented here but she loves throwback jazz singing, like Sinatra etc. and it fits her voice so well. Thanks for checking out our beloved shark!! If you ever feel like crying definitely check out her live 3D performance of Ash Again from her graduation stream, it's intense.

not sure if anyone said but her last live mini concert she did will break anyone,

Thank you for checking out and celebrating the amazing artistry and creativity of our wonderful Gooba. She's an anxious but silly and sweet soul. If you're checking out and celebrating Daryl's work you *have* to check out Papaya Fantasia (her tribute to Gura's genmate Amelia Watson who also graduated and was Daryl's oshi) and her orchestration of the internet project Myth's Bad Ending (animated gorgeously by Mazu, the animator for Gura's Ash Again), in addition to her new 4 part series Starlight Fantasia. PS. You forgot to either connect the leads on your keyboard or record it with obs lol. We didn't hear any of your noodling and key checking.

29:30 - not sure if intentional, but going by the text you may want to censor your discord comment here, if that's at all doable at this point. It's not a gigantic secret, but lots of people like to try and maintain the illusion

Regarding the height, all current Hololive members models are pretty close to their real life height, because they need to interact in 3D live, so its either you use close to real proportions or it looks unnatural and broken.

I really enjoyed this! I was smiling the whole time even if the last one gave me tears. Thank you for this and really glad you enjoyed her voice. Also yes go poke Riku about the song :P

If you really want to hear some off the chain bass lines, I highly recommend checking out Noisy Sweet Home by Jon-Yakitori feat Eye. Jon Yakitori is an incredible producer who does a ton of vocaloid as well as work with human artists. He quite a few songs with Ado such as Anti-systems and Shikbanese. He even has a song with 9Lana. Anyway, Noisy Sweet Home will have you falling in love with the dope guitar riff from the first second and blowing your mind with the funky baseline during the chorus