Meet Twitch's New Star of Streaming Charts- she is Anime Avatar Ironmouse
There’s a new face topping the charts of video game live-streaming site Twitch: She’s an anime avatar with flowing pink hair.
Known as Ironmouse the character is operated by a real woman, whose facial expressions and movements are relayed using motion-capture tools that feed data through computer animation software. With her high-pitched voice, Ironmouse sings karaoke or cracks jokes while playing hit games like Elden Ring for a rapt audience of 11,000 live viewers. Her antics have made her the female streamer with the most subscribers on the platform and the third-most subscribed streamer of all time. She ranks right behind Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, who was one of the first Twitch streamers to break into the mainstream, playing Fortnite.
Ironmouse currently has more than 1 million followers, and as of March 7 had 171,800 subscribers who pay a $5 minimum monthly fee to patronize her content, according to data from TwitchTracker. Behind the cutesy veneer, with her tiny fang-like teeth and purple eyes, little white horns and frilly, white princess dress, Ironmouse’s operator is a Puerto Rican woman who keeps her identity secret to protect herself from harassment.
“It’s like putting on a superhero costume,” Ironmouse said in an interview on gaming chat app Discord.
Ironmouse is among the most prominent English-speaking VTubers, or virtual YouTubers -- a genre of entertainment that spawned on YouTube in Japan six years ago. The form has since migrated to Twitch, where the service’s live-streaming format gives fans the impression of interacting with a living anime character. There are now more than 17,000 VTubers across the globe, according to Japanese analytics firm User Local.
On Twitch, which is owned by Amazon.com Inc.,
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