Kawasaki Sui Counts Late-Night Live Streams and Judges the ASMR Boom Over

INDEPENDENT — Kawasaki Sui, an independent VTuber, told viewers during a late-night chat stream on Tuesday that the boom in ASMR streaming has ended. She reached the view after reading out the titles of live streams with more than 100 concurrent viewers in the same time slot and finding only two ASMR broadcasts among them.

Sui said she remembered ASMR making up roughly one in five or six streams in that slot in the past. She cautioned that a single ASMR channel posting big numbers proves little, because a trend has to be judged across many streams. She called the genre one that is shrinking, said bans had thinned the field, and suggested that remaining listeners come looking for particular performers, so few new ones arrive. Of the other titles she read, Overwatch appeared repeatedly, which she put down to an event; outside planned series, she said, no game stood out, and chat streams and singing streams were the most common.

“I think the ASMR boom is over. At least judging by these results.” — Kawasaki Sui, after reading out the stream list

The stream, a *zatsudan*, or chat stream, began at 11 p.m. Japan time and ran more than five hours. Sui opened by saying she had skipped her usual jogging to rest and had tried the open-world game NTE for the first time. She noted that her birthday had been five days earlier, and viewers sent belated greetings. Later topics included a character from the old game Madou Monogatari, the defunct game maker Compile, consumer loans, light novel print runs and royalties, the price of manga, bar prices, memory chip makers, motion sickness and Burger King. Sui also spent part of the evening reading viewers’ names in full.

About four hours in, Sui asked viewers whether she could drive a truck until around 4 a.m., said the chatting was over, and started Euro Truck Simulator. She drove deliveries along a route she described as southern Spain, following navigation voice prompts, and called the session a reward for herself. She said she liked hauling cargo to a destination more than driving without a goal.

Sui signed off just after the five-hour mark, told viewers she planned to play Romancing SaGa on Wednesday, and said an ending video of about 10 minutes would follow. Viewers sent 21 paid messages over the course of the stream, and chat filled with farewells at the close.