"Welcome to your rouge awakening! This is Akai Haato!"
A sassy kouhai. She is often prickly, but she'll try to get a lot of attention from those who have made friends with her. She loves red ribbons and heart shapes, and she'll wear them often in her hair and on her clothes.
Her name "Akai" translates to "red" and "Haato" is how Japanese pronounces the word "heart", so she is strongly associated with the color red and hearts.
Haato is a Japanese exchange student who studied in Australia. She returned to Japan in late 2020.[11]
Haato is weak to horror and jumpscares and will cry easily if she makes a mistake. She started out as a Tsundere but has since become more sociable. Despite the air of superiority she displays (sometimes even teasing/light bullying her fans), she will not hesitate to play the fool to entertain the audience. When she gets all emotional and serious, she really, really opens up to her audience about her feelings and problems.
Haato often does things on a whim and is self-centered. She’s a contrarian that tends to find things bothersome in addition to being very hasty and easily bored. She plays around with this personality with her viewers, but her true nature is that she is very loving with her viewers.
Her actions and choice of words stand out for being childish, but what also stands out is how she sometimes really behaves like a grownup and shows her philosophical thinking.
This first began when Haato felt that her initial nickname of Haato-sama was too distant so in one of her streams, she made up a story about her sister calling her "Haachama".
Haato had admitted at the end of the stream that the story was made up and apologized for it.[12][13]
During the 2020 Hololive New Year's stream, the Haachama nickname came up again thanks to Okayu[14] screaming it out loud whenever Haato did something clumsy. The name was then popularized by Marine later on.[15]
It was during the time when she was in Australia that she began to put out more boundary pushing and crazier content that Haachama is known for. The first emergence of Haachama can be traced back to a Getting Over It playthrough stream in which she played with her feet (giving up mid-way), paused for a moment to take a whiff of their scent[16] and even later stated that she enjoys sniffing them.[17] That same day she had a drawing stream where she also used her feet to try to draw some hololive members.[18] Interestingly enough, the first time she used "Haachama chama" as her greeting phrase instead of "Oharuuju" was also a Getting Over It playthrough stream[19] which featured the well known Haachama Opening theme song[20] composed by REDALICE.
She then had another stream where she hosted a press conference to announce that she sniffed her own feet and exclaimed that they were smelly,[21] then afterwards went on to review feet videos sent by haatons. The content that she produced since then became wilder and more unrestricted. These included R18+ Lewd Illustration review streams[22][23] as well as short clips that are seemingly senseless and incomprehensible even to her Japanese viewers[24][25]. Her unarchived ASMR streams were also nothing short of extraordinary and somewhat absurd. As time progressed she went on to change her YouTube channel name to "Haachama Ch. 赤井はあと" thus fully cementing the existence of Haachama.
She later revealed in Takanashi Kiara'sHoloTalk that her starting to do the crazy content she is now known for came as a result of her channel's demonetization, which ended up lasting for over a year. Despite this leading to a lack of income, demonetization and thus lack of restrictions made her feel motivated now that she could do whatever she wants without having to worry about it. [26]
The Haato vs Haachama story arc is a storyline consisting of a series videos exhibiting the battle between the two personalities, Haachama and Akai Haato, to retain control and remain the as the sole existence[27]. The story was heavily horror themed and featured numerous pieces of fan made content that further added to the lore and story progression. Fans showed their support for each side by using the hashtags #ONLYHAACHAMA, #FREEHAATO or #ONLYHAATO while others used #COEXIST to express their desire for both personalities to exist peacefully together.
However, on the 3rd of March 2021 she privated all the Haato vs Haachama lore videos and stated she would be unable to finish the story due to new rules from hololive management[28]. She also announced that she would be taking a break citing she wants to find herself[29]. The break lasted 27 days before she returned with a stream titled #COEXIST on the 30th of March.[30] She mentioned the reason she started the Haato vs Haachama arc story was because of a tweet she posted that stated she had planned something special for hitting 1 million subscribers though she didn't have anything concrete yet.[31]
The idea for the arc started when she held a stream playing Minecraft using her old model and basically started building the story from there[32]. The horror elements were added as she already enjoyed horror related content though she hadn't intended for it to be the main theme of the story. However as more fan art from her Haatons was created, she realized that they also enjoyed such kind of content as well and decided to go along with it. She also mentioned that being an Anime Voice Actor and releasing a movie or anime had always been a dream of hers and doing this story was a step closer towards achieving that dream[33].
Haato is known to her fans and other hololive members for her unusual way of cooking and the use of mysterious ingredients. Occasionally Haato does cooking streams where she has a mounted camera to capture the cooking process and takes pictures of the final product. Haato always eats her food, and usually states that it's delicious. The running joke between fans (EN and JP) is that Haato's cooking streams are a form of torture.
Haato mentioned that she cannot eat eggs or derived products due to allergies, perhaps contributing to her unusual taste in food and ingredients. Her other allergies include Kiwi fruits and Avocado's [34][35]
Haachama Sunday is a series of streams hosted by Akai Haato that consist of viewer submitted entried to a variaty of challenges and topics. Previous Haachama Sunday topics ranged from room reviews, cooking contests, Otaku fashion, Minecraft contests, among other topics.[36] Fan submissions are done through Twitter, by using a hashtag dedicated to the event.
After returning from a hiatus on July 24, 2021, Haato announced that she would be hosting the Reddit Shitpost Reviews [37] that were previously hosted by Kiryu Coco[38]. After hosting the first instance of these new Reddit Shitpost Reviews, she announce she would keep the reviews at 11:00 JST, while hosting "Haachama Sundays" at 24:00 JST.[39]
Sep. 01 Achieved a 100,000 YouTube subscriber milestone.[50]
Dec. 09 Creation date of the YouTube sub-channel as a result of her main channel getting demonetized. Ceased activity on sub-channel as a result of the main channel regaining monetization.
Her fans are called "Haaton" (はあとん). It is a combination words of Haato + Ton/豚 (Pig). Haatons are portrayed as yellow pig characters with a notable beheaded mark around their necks.
Streamer Side
Scene
Lines
Romaji
Meaning / Notes
Greetings
はあちゃまっちゃま~!
Haachama-chama~!
Introduction
はあちゃまこと、赤井はあとで~す!
Haachama koto, Akai Haato de~su!
Translation: "Haachama here, also known as Akai Haato!"
Farewell
おつるーじゅ!
Otsuruuju!
Otsurouge! - Portmanteau of "otsukaresama" (meaning "thanks for the hard work") and "rouge" ("red" in french)
Cooking streams are one of Haachama’s representative streams. There are times when she cooked well, but usually things that resemble industrial waste are created.
She’s often mistaken for a Half-Japanese. But actually, she is 1/4th British.[69]
Following her family’s plan, she studied abroad in a virtual foreign country (virtual Australia).[70]
As of March 2020, Haato is unable to return to Japan due to immigration restrictions in accordance with the international COVID-19 measures.[71]
While Haato studied in Australia, she originally and currently lives in Japan. She has also visited Singapore and the Philippines in the past.[72]
Haato had many complications in her life as an exchange student. For example, she attended a prison-like school in the Philippines[73] and in another case, a suspicious gun-wielding person came to her school in Australia.[74]
Haato can speak English, however, she only has a few words which she can properly pronounce with confidence. She also often asks her viewers for help with the meaning of words she does not understand.
As a result of being far away from Japan for so long and not studying under a Japanese school, Haato's knowledge of literary Japanese and her Kanji are below the par for an ordinary Japanese citizen. When reading complicated texts, she often asks for help with kanji she cannot read from her Japanese viewers.
Capitalizing on this weakness, she created a short series in April 2020 where she would read a piece of literature and instantly stop the stream if she does not read the kanji right.[75]
In the large-scale collaboration stream “The King of Funny Answers to English Tests!” (ホロライブ珍回答王), Haato ended up being corrected again and again by the native English speaker Kiryu Coco. Furthermore, despite being the host, Haato was crowned as the first King of Funny Answers competition.[76]
She has a very good relationship with her sister as evidenced by them going out and singing the song "Shiny Smily Story" together.[77]
Once, she forgot to turn on her stream while playing Getting Over It. Viewers and fans in chat acted and sent messages as if they were watching her play. Thanks to this, Haato “air-streamed” for 30 minutes until she finally realized that she was not actually streaming. She unleashed a great wail of lamentation and regret. However, after the stream has ended, she left the stream in her archive and this stream has turned into a sublime meme that is remembered and occasionally brought up by fans for fun to this day.[78]
She had ballet experience in her childhood, and physical training is one of her strong points. In her 3D stream, she showed it off by contorting herself into an amazing Bridge from a standing upright position.[79]
In an education level test, Haato did not know that there were 47 prefectures in Japan. Also, some ridiculous aspects of her are revealed on that stream. For instance, she believed that the prefectures of Japan are in other foreign countries and that Level 10 of the Kanken Test is the most difficult level.[80]
Shares the same Illustrator with the following VTubers:
Her channel used to be verified, but she lost it after she changed the channel name to Haachama Ch. She has changed the channel name several times since then. The list of verified members can be found here.
Due to her advanced English skills, Haachama/Haato has been considered to be part of Hololive English 0th Generation, a fan-made nickname for both Haachama/Haato and Kiryu Coco.
According to Yuzuki Choco[81], before the 3rd Generation of talents was introduced, you didn't know who else was debuting in your generation until the day of debut. Starting at Gen 3, talents would know and hang out with each other before debut.
Is the one of the few hololive members to have multiple fanmarks; she initially used ❣️ (heart exclaimation mark), but changed it to ❤️ (red heart) at some point in 2020; ❣️ briefly returned when her "Haato" personality has taken over her Twitter account around May 2021; she then changed her emoji on her Twitter username to ❤️🔥 (burning heart) in fall 2021, though ❤️ remains as her primary fanmark.