Hatoba Tsugu

Hatoba Tsugu (Japanese: 鳩羽つぐ) is a Japanese virtual YouTuber run by Edanoue, Inc. She started in 2018 and is known for short, quiet videos of everyday moments that many viewers find mysterious and unsettling.

Profile

Item	Detail
Debut	February 28, 2018
Agency	Edanoue, Inc.
Platforms	YouTube, X (formerly Twitter)
Genre	Video blog
Character designer	LM7

Career

Hatoba Tsugu began her activities on February 28, 2018. She is operated by Edanoue, Inc., and the character was designed by the illustrator LM7. Her first video, "Hello, I'm Hatoba Tsugu", shows her introducing herself shyly while classical music plays. The camera then slowly pulls back and shows her standing in front of a white screen in a bare, gloomy room. The video drew attention quickly. A column in the August 2018 issue of the magazine MdN, published on July 6, 2018, said the first video had passed one million views about four months after her debut.

At first, new videos came out only about once a month. During 2018 and 2019 the channel posted short pieces with simple titles, such as "Shopping", "Cooking", "Summer Vacation", "Lingering Summer Heat", "Sheltering from the Rain", "Walk" and "Ginkgo". After a video titled "title_0" in January 2020, the channel went quiet for about two years. In March 2022 she returned with new videos, including "room" and "courtyard", and web media such as Kotaku reported the comeback. Kotaku noted that her sepia-toned clips had by then gathered more than ten million views in total, and that the debut video alone had been viewed more than 2.5 million times. Later uploads include "Bad at Cooking" in September 2022 and "Doghouse" in April 2023.

The character has also been made into merchandise. Good Smile Company released a Nendoroid figure and a painted 1/8th scale figure. The scale figure is titled "I'm Hatoba Tsugu.", stands about 185 mm tall, was sculpted by Ranran and was released in September 2020.

Activities

Streaming style

Most virtual YouTubers focus on live talk or game streams. Hatoba Tsugu instead works mainly through pre-recorded videos posted on YouTube and X. The videos show scenes from the character's private life and school life. They are usually very short, and in many of them she does a simple task and says only a few words. Her introductory video places the character in Nishiogikubo, a neighbourhood of Suginami, Tokyo. Other videos show places said to be based on real scenery. Kotaku described her as unlike the usual chatty, cute virtual YouTubers, and noted that her videos use no jump scares or cheap horror tricks yet still create a feeling of dread. The project gives viewers little direct explanation, so audiences have often debated what the videos mean.

Music and works

"Hello, I'm Hatoba Tsugu" (debut video, February 2018)
"Shopping" (April 2018)
"Summer Vacation" (August 2018)
"Sheltering from the Rain" (November 2018)
"Ginkgo" (November 2019)
"room" and "courtyard" (March 2022)
"Doghouse" (April 2023)

Characteristics

Hatoba Tsugu stands out for her minimal style: sepia images, few words, uneven gaps between uploads and an atmosphere that is both innocent and slightly uneasy. The debut video's description simply asks viewers to "please treat me well". Media coverage has called her one of the most mysterious figures among virtual YouTubers, and the project has kept an audience over many years despite releasing few videos.