For the second time in the history of the Game Awards, a V-Tuber has been nominated for a category on Twitch. Her boss wants you to give the anime girl a chance – even if she only speaks Japanese.
Who is it about? Alongside Twitch and YouTube stars like Kai Cenat and Moist Critikal the V-Tuber Sakura Miko is nominated. She is employed by hololive, one of the largest companies in the V-Tuber sector. Her avatar is an anime girl with pink hair.
Her favorite games include GTA, Undertale, Minecraft, and Pokémon, as she reveals on YouTube. She also streams party games that have only been released in Japan or horror games like Shadow Corridor.
However, the streamer only speaks Japanese and no English. All viewers who are not proficient in the language will have trouble understanding her. But her boss summarizes quite well why you should still give the streamer a chance.
Sakura Miko only speaks Japanese, but that’s not a problem
What does her boss say? In an interview with PC Gamer, Matoaki Tanigo, the CEO of hololive’s parent company, revealed that his talent faces tough competition, especially due to the language barrier. However, he advises even those who do not speak Japanese to give her a chance at least once:
I hope they at least watch her stream once. If they don’t understand Japanese, there are many highlight clips of her created by fans.
Such clips usually provide translations, and there are even fans who offer translations during the livestream.
Is she really that funny? On Twitch, the V-Tuber has 334,645 followers (as of November 22, 2025, at 9:30 AM). On YouTube, it’s even 2.46 million users who regularly follow the streamer.
While she doesn’t quite reach her competition, according to Statista.com, 1.5 billion people worldwide speak English, while Japanese only has 125.6 million speakers. So, the numbers don’t look that bad anymore.
If you want to see for yourself, you can check out the following clip, which is one of the described highlight clips by fans:
This video can also be understood even if you don’t speak Japanese. Sakura Miko has to imitate certain sounds like bird chirping or a robot with her voice. Depending on how well she does, she gets points.
Every time she reaches full points, she simply screams into her microphone – a language that can be universally understood.
In another highlight, Sakura Miko sings Japanese songs, even a famous intro from Naruto, while being chased in GTA in her pink car (see Reddit). Here as well, you don’t need to understand a word of Japanese.
If the other candidates in the Game Awards category don’t convince you, you could give Sakura Miko a chance. Last year, her colleague Usada Pekora was nominated, who even has an appearance in Death Stranding 2. A new anime has also been announced for Death Stranding: Creators of Death Stranding reveal anime for the video game, explaining how it relates to protagonist Sam
