What Happened to VTuber Gawr Gura? "Thank You for Letting Me Be Your Little Shark"
"I'm feeling optimistic."
Published April 16 2025, 2:57 p.m. ET
YouTube is one of the most popular social media platforms in the world. But on YouTube, there's a specific subsection of the platform that caters to an enormous international community: VTube.
VTube is "Virtual YouTube," where creators make content and use virtual avatars to represent themselves.
Just like real-life content creators, they can gather thousands to millions of followers and huge, vibrant fan bases.
One of the creator communities in the world of VTube is Hololive-EN, a gaming community that brings together some of the most famous VTubers in the world to boost one another's content, collab, and share fame.
Gawr Gura was one of the most popular Hololive-EN creators until things changed in 2025. Here's what we know about what happened to her.
What happened to Hololive VTuber Gawr Gura? Here's what we know about her big announcement.
Gawr Gura is known as the shark-girl VTuber to her many fans and nearly 4.6 million subscribers. Her VTube avatar is a young woman with white hair, blue eyes, shark teeth, and a shark tail.
When she plays games, her avatar appears in the corner, mirroring her expressions. In addition to gaming, Gawr Gura is known for her humor and the down-to-earth way she interacts with her fans. But everything changed on April 16, 2025.
The VTuber made a video called "Important announcement." She explained that she was "graduating" from Hololive-EN, which is a fancy way of saying either she is leaving the group or was let go.
An emotional-sounding Gura thanked her fans, expressing the joy she had while going from "being too shy to sing in the shower" to singing in front of "hundreds to thousands" of fans. She said her departure was due to issues with "management."
Hololive released an announcement of their own, writing on X (formerly Twitter) that she will be leaving as of May 1, 2025. "Since her debut as a member of hololive English -Myth- five years ago, Gura has touched the hearts of fans around the world, become a beloved face for VTubing in its early stages, and played an instrumental role in the growth of Hololive Production."
They thanked her fans and wished her well.
Fans reacted to Gawr Gura's announcement with a flurry of videos.
Fans weren't thrilled with the news. On Gura's YouTube video, they shared their sadness and support for the creator.
Under Hololive's announcement, they shared their disdain. This is not the first Hololive-EN creator to leave in recent years, and most cite issues with "management" for part of their reasons for "graduating."
One fan wrote, "This is the end of Hololive EN.
"You've caused the departure of four of your stars, for contractual and moral reasons."
Another wrote, "Disagreement with management. How the hell are you guys this greedy/incompetent?"
On TikTok, dozens of videos quickly popped up with users lamenting Gura's departure. One video simply shows a user enjoying Gura's early humor on Hololive videos, then cutting to their sadness at discovering her departure in 2025.
In comment sections across the platform, fans warned that Hololive was driving out the "good" creators and ruining the group's brand.
Luckily, long-time fans of Gura know that before she was Gawr Gura, she was Senzawa. Whether or not she will return to that original VTube character remains unclear, but fans have their fingers crossed.