Ruru Rara Rily Opens With an Apology for a Lost Ship, and Ends the Night With It Back

INDEPENDENT — Ruru Rara Rily, an independent streamer, began a seven-hour Minecraft stream on Wednesday evening, Japan time, with a mock apology press conference. Outside of a stream the day before, she said, she had gone raiding pirate ships on the #ぶいせかマイクラ server, a shared Minecraft world that eleven channels were streaming that night. She was counterattacked: a crowd of hostile creatures she called “uncles” boarded her pink ship ahead of her and took it. She read aloud the statement she had posted on the server and admitted it was her own doing.

The loss came on top of money trouble. A debt ranking on the server listed her in first place, which she called a public execution, and she said her supplies were gone and she had no insurance. One of the first Super Chats came with a note calling it an apology fee. She said the day’s puzzle event was her best chance, and promised that anyone who helped win the ship back could take whatever was left aboard. Before her team’s turn she spent the early hours on the server’s athletics course, an obstacle course that saves progress every five stages, working into the thirties with viewers cheering her on. Later she set her sights on stage 40.

“Honestly, this is a total screw-up.” — Ruru Rara Rily, at the start of her apology press conference

Around 9 p.m., her team went into the event, a story-driven raid on the lord’s mansion while he was away. Players threw a potion that launched the gate guards skyward, worked through a garden maze where wrong steps could kill, calling out remembered routes to one another, and solved a block-pushing puzzle underground by working from opposite sides. Notes written by the lord, found in a chest, showed he had summoned the players from another world to earn money for him and meant to collect it. A boy’s voice then said he had done the summoning and that the lord was holding his family. The team cleared the event, posed for a photo and agreed to start preparing to take on the lord.

Back in town, she told fellow talents her ship was still occupied by the uncles, and several offered to help take it back. She checked the server’s money ranking, where one player held 100 million, and joined friends at the casino. Koneko Miu, who runs a photo shop on the server, offered to buy a “yoshiyoshi” voice clip, a comforting recording, from her for 1 million in the server’s currency.

Late in the night she went to the End with a teammate to pick up an elytra, the glider wings, then joined a group that flew far south to a pirate-ship site whose coordinates had been shared. They searched the wrecks for loot, gunpowder among it, the main ingredient of the fireworks used to boost gliding. Photos aboard a pink ship followed. Near the end, she said the ship had come back and that she had finally become a pirate in more than looks.

Closing the stream, she thanked viewers and called it a very good night of play. She said her instant photo cards would soon go on sale at Koneko Miu’s shop. Because her group’s regular Friday broadcast was to carry important information, she said, her next chance to stream would be the server’s final day.