Peaky Hikers Named Gunma Special Envoys, A First For VTubers
The married VTuber unit Peaky Hikers will be commissioned as Gunma Special Envoys on Friday, November 13, 2026, the prefecture's program for people with ties to Gunma who can promote its tourism and local products through media appearances, events, and social media.
4 sources 12h ago
Reporting from 4 sources: KAI-YOU, Inside, MoguLive, PANORA.
Why it matters
The appointment puts a two-person unit built on farm work and stage craft inside a prefectural publicity program that usually draws on local figures rather than YouTube channels. MoguLive and PANORA both report the unit placed first nationwide in a Netorabo poll of local VTubers in 2026, which gives the prefecture a measurable audience to point to.
Key Facts
- Peaky Hikers will be commissioned as Gunma Special Envoys at a ceremony on Friday, November 13, 2026.
- Peaky Hikers consists of Meiro, who is from Tokyo, and Alpina Celes, who is from Gunma Prefecture.
- The Peaky Hikers YouTube channel has 61,000 subscribers.
- Peaky Hikers sold 6.3 tons of Pikihai Rice in 2025, and the stock sold out in about one week.
- Peaky Hikers ran a collaboration with 20 facilities in Ikaho Onsen and TORECO Co., Ltd. starting in June 2026.
Meiro, who is from Tokyo, and Alpina Celes, who is from Gunma, form the two-member unit known as Pikihai. Their YouTube channel has 61,000 subscribers. The pair have posted planned videos since 2018 on location shoots in Gunma, agriculture, and theater. In 2025 they sold 6.3 tons of Pikihai Rice, new rice Alpina Celes helped cultivate, and the stock cleared in about one week. In June 2026 they ran a collaboration with 20 facilities in Ikaho Onsen and TORECO Co., Ltd. in which visitors toured the hot spring town collecting limited-edition cards. Alpina Celes is a stage actress aiming to succeed her family's farm, and Meiro has written and directed for commercial theater.
The commissioning ceremony is set for Friday, November 13 at the prefectural level. The unit's videos grew out of an on-location reporting habit: in Nanmoku Village, the pair joined three other VTubers and, with special permission from village office staff, filmed inside the tunnels and underground lake of the former Iwado Mine ruins, which are normally off-limits. At Kawarayu Onsen in Naganohara Town they covered the Yukake Festival, where participants in loincloths splash hot water on each other in the early morning of midwinter.
Their stage work runs parallel to the YouTube channel. In November 2025 they held "Cross Theater Real-Virtual Limit Vol.0" at Kagurazaka Tenmado in Tokyo, a format where performers act inside the theater and their movements are tracked in real time into avatars on stage. Meiro wrote and directed it. Alpina Celes has appeared in a production that won the Yomiuri Theater Award.
Meiro framed the appointment around an outsider's eye: "For me, raised in Tokyo, there are many things I encounter in Gunma that make me think, 'What is this? Interesting!'" Alpina Celes said, "I am happy to be able to work as a Gunma Special Envoy in Gunma, where I was born and raised." The rice sales carried a slogan: "Eat the crops your oshi grew and support them!"
Written with AI by Yomimono from the 4 cited sources below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited. See our editorial policy.
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