A marine maid-styled virtual maid. She is trying her very best, yet is still sometimes awkward and clumsy.
Overview
Minato Aqua (湊あくあ) is a marine maid Virtual YouTuber for Hololive 2nd Generation unit. Her YouTube channel was created on July 31st and her twitter account was created few days later. On August 08th 2018 she posted her video debut to YouTube[11]. On April 8th 2019 she debuted her first 3D model[12] and debuted her 3D swimsuit model[13] a few months later in August 17th 2019. She also got a New Year Live2D costume in January 2nd 2020[14].
Aqua is most known to be a cute airhead maid who likes to prank her friends, but somehow it almost always backfires due to the combinations of her less than desirable luck and lack of preparations. Because of that, she tends to be the target of jokes and pranks from other members.
She loves to play competitive PVP games like Super Smash Bros, Mario Kart, League of Legends, and Apex Legends (where she managed to finish Season 4 at Diamond 4[15]). She also likes to complete challenge runs of games, some examples being beating Dark Souls in under 3 hours[16], a Sekiro speedrun in under 2 hours[17], or endurance Apex Legend stream until Diamond[18][19].
Her representative emote is an anchor due to her marine theme and anchors on her dress.
Personality
From her first debut video, Aqua looks like a pure and innocent maid who likes to play video games. As time went on, she evolved from a pure and innocent maid to a giant airhead who somehow always ended up in an embarrassing situations (sometimes deliberately). Despite that, she makes no attempt to avoid any actions that may ending up humiliating her because of her masochistic tendencies. She even dedicated one stream for other Hololive members to bully her[20]. She is also childish and likes to throw tantrums by smacking her table and screaming when things don't go as she initially planned. One of her catchphrases (which she shares with another 2nd generation member, Murasaki Shion) is "NEEEEEE".
Although her initial image may paint her as childish and a crybaby, Aqua is extremely resilient and will stop at nothing to reach her goal, especially in gaming. She often does very long endurance streams to complete the challenges she places on herself. She is also shown to be very mechanically skilled in a competitive games[21] being one of the best Smash and Apex player in Hololive. As evidence of this she was able to clear Jump King[22] which is widely considered to be an obnoxiously challenging platformer[23]. Her reason for becoming so good at gaming was because she thought that there was nothing that made her stand out from the rest and as such she wanted to keep practicing to get better at it so that people watching her streams would be able to enjoy them.[24]
According to other Hololive members, Aqua is kind but very shy and introverted while off-camera. One events that exhibits this is the time she and her Vtuber friends Takamiya Rion & Rize Helestia were going to USJ(Universal Studio Japan). The three of them were on the same train heading towards USJ when her friends contacted Aqua asking where she was, she replied stating "I'm sitting across from you in the same train car" which surprised them. [25]
History
2018
July 31 YouTube channel creation date.
Aug. 01 Twitter account creation date.
Aug. 08 Debuted date and uploaded first youtube video.[26]
Oct. 04 Achieved a 10,000 YouTube subscriber milestone.[27]
2019
Mar. 20 Achieved a 50,000 YouTube subscriber milestone.[28]
Jan. 19 Achieved a 250,000 YouTube subscriber milestone.[39]
Jan. 24 Participated in Hololive's first live, "Nonstop Story", and received her 3D idol outfit.
Feb. 06 Achieved a 300,000 YouTube subscriber milestone.[40]
Apr. 08 Achieved a 400,000 YouTube subscriber milestone.[41]
Apr. 30 Live2D model was updated to "Ver.2.1".[42]
May 30 Achieved a 500,000 YouTube subscriber milestone.[43] She is the 2nd VTuber endorsed by Hololive that has reached this milestone after Shirakami Fubuki.
Aug. 05 Achieved a 600,000 YouTube subscriber milestone on a Karaoke stream.[44]
Fans usually spammed なるはや待機 (naruhaya taiki) before Aqua starts her stream.
Her fanbase is called 'Aqua Crew' while fans call her AMT (Aqua Maji Tenshi).
Before she starts her games she usually says "game no sekai ni link start", a reference to the popular light novel and anime Sword Art Online.
Because of her tendency to play games alone, fans often call her Sololive.
She often makes random noises like "ora", "rua", "nya" when focused or frustrated.
One of her nicknames in games is AQUKIN, a reference to the popular Japanese Youtuber HIKAKIN[53]. Apparently she is a huge fan of HIKAKIN and parodied him on an 2020 April Fool's stream[54]
Aqua always add ちゃん!to viewer's names when reading super chat, because according to her, all of her fan is high school girls (JK). And fan spam ちゃん!on stream chat when she read super chat.
Meaqua. A pairing between Minato Aqua and Kagura Mea, an independent Virtual YouTuber who is really close with her.
CAMP. Group consisted of Kiryu Coco, Minato Aqua, Houshou Marine, and Usada Pekora. They're most known to be the original ARK addict who clocked an impressive amount of play time at that time.
Aquamarine. A pairing between Minato Aqua and Houshou Marine. This pairing went for a collab multiple times during Hololive Ark boom in the early 2020.
According to Yuzuki Choco[55], 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.
Facts
NEKO
Aqua adopted an (imaginary) cat which she named NEKO[56]. This is also the name of the cat on her casual outfit.
Her real life adopted cat is called Komugi.
She uses a ton of exclamation marks (!!!) and question marks (???) whenever she tweet. Sometimes she uses it when creating a title for her stream as well.
She is a good friend with an independent Virtual Youtuber Kagura Mea. Both have done a lot of collaboration with each other. Their pairing is commonly called "Meaqua" by fans.
She is a leader of her own Minecraft group called "Hololive Resistance" with Natsuiro Matsuri as a sole member. According to Aqua, the reason of the name "Hololive Resistance" is because it sounded cool.
Aqua has a tendency to do dogeza as an apologies to pretty much everything [57].
Fans often call her "Onion" due to her head being identical to that of a red onion.
Shares the same Illustrator with the following VTubers:
Is one of the Hololive Production VTubers with a verified YouTube channel. Other verified members can be found here.
Aqutan
According to Aqua, Aqutan is Aqua's little sister. She occasionally appears whenever Aqua feels like doing a loli voice. Her first appearance was at Fubuki's channel in April 13 2020[58]. Aqutan is an extremely innocent child but share a resemblance to her big sister when it comes to gaming skill as she's good enough to speedrun Sekiro in under 80 minutes[59]