The attendance log doesn’t show the full context of the replacement conspiracy theory. Fans today ridicule the idea that AI-chan was replaced, but the threat of replacement seemed quite real in the beginning. This document is an attempt to explain how the rumors started.
In April 2019, there was news that the Unlimited (now Brave Group) staff was mistreating members of the Game Club Project. Later in June, Unlimited began replacing the voice talents. They justified these actions on July 17 by explaining that the Game Club Project members were never VTubers; they were actually CTubers, or Character YouTubers. Undermining the importance of the voice talents didn’t sit well with fans, and the channel suffered from an average like-dislike ratio of less than 50% until the dissolution of the group in February 2021.
Kizuna AI cloned herself in June 2019. With this recent controversy in mind, people saw similarities and feared the worst.
In the three months following A.I.Party! 2019, all video uploads featuring AI-chan looked old. For example:
It appeared as if they were using a reserve of AI-chan videos recorded before her birthday. To many, this made it seem like they were trying to trick people into believing AI-chan was still around when she really wasn’t.
Kizuna AI’s voice model, Kasuga Nozomi, had a voice acting role in Granbelm shortly after A.I.Party! 2019. (She was a minor character so I don’t know if it would’ve taken much time away, but I’m still counting it as a possible reason for Kizuna AI’s absence.)
AI-pii explained the absence by saying AI-chan was busy preparing for Summer Sonic in August and would be back on the channel after the event.
Activ8’s statement added on, saying that Love-chan and AI-pii had taken over A.I.Channel and A.I.Games to better acquaint the fans while AI-chan focused on music. (This was merely an explanation of the ongoing situation, but confused readers believed it was a declaration of a permanent shift of activities.)
AI-chan returned the same day of Activ8’s statement in a livestream where she also explained her absence. (Some commenters point out moments where it sounds like she’s crying. Was she forced by upd8 to cover up the real situation? Was she sad about fans’ reactions to the new AIs? Was she dealing with a personal issue at the time? Was it even crying? Was it just weird laughter? I don’t know. I won’t speculate anything from a few seconds of ambiguity.)
In the month after Summer Sonic, her uploads were still scarce (as stated in the previous section, some were from the June reserves).
From October 2019 on, she seemed to have actually returned to YouTube. Often appearing alongside Love-chan and AI-pii, nobody could reasonably argue that these new videos were months-old recordings. Although her appearances weren’t as frequent as they were before (she used to upload almost daily to both channels), she was back.
This is where the replacement rumor should’ve ended. But it didn’t, which is partly why Love-chan and AI-pii felt the need to shed the identity of Kizuna AI and leave her channel in May 2020.
It still persists among the uninformed and even some fans who ironically claim they saved Kizuna AI, but thankfully the rumor is now dead in the general VTuber community.