Sameko Saba

Sameko Saba is an independent English-speaking VTuber who debuted in June 2025. Her achievements include reaching 500,000 subscribers on YouTube before debut, and setting the record of fastest VTuber to reach 1 million subscribers in under 3 days. Saba is a cute and whimsical individual. She has a tendency to forget things and ramble off on tangents. Saba is a girl with long blonde hair, fuzzy animal ears, and a big blue fish tail. She has bright cyan blue eyes. Her hair features bangs and a small side-tail with ocean blue highlights and is held in bunches with two red-white striped ties reminiscent of a beachside life ring, and decorated with white and blue ribbons. She also has a small ahoge. She wears white clothing with a sailor uniform style collar and blue trim, accessorized with a striped blue armband and powder blue nail polish. Her main garment is a white shirt dress, which is sometimes unbuttoned to show a bare midriff and white shorts underneath with blue trim. Her dress has a light blue bow with a golden paper boat emblem. Her catchphrase is "yoho..!", and she enjoys playing with a paper boat that she refers to as her "Pey-pah-boat ~" Nickname(s): Mack the Fish Girl Gender: Female Birthday: 20 June Height: 150 cm Zodiac Sign: Gemini Fan Name: Kaniki (Crab Bros) Saba's Twitter account was created on 11 January 2025. On 2 May 2025, a US trademark application was made in the United States for the name Sameko Saba, for uses including "Entertainment services in the nature of live visual and audio performances by vtubers, virtual performers, virtual talent" and various types of merchandise.[5] Her YouTube account was created shortly after this on 4 May 2025. On 18 May 2025, she posted her first video, saba / saba, a short song. On 19 May, she made her first tweet, "yoho..!🐟". Within about eight hours she reached over 100,000 Twitter followers, and over 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. A day later on 20 May, she reached 250,000 YouTube subscribers. Following a series of preview teasers in June, her highly anticipated debut was announced for 28 June 2025. Shortly after the announcement, on 23 June, she reached the milestone of 500,000 YouTube subscribers. Her debut stream took place at 21:00 UTC, and reached over 200,000 viewers at peak. Memberships opened ten hours before the stream, and a huge number of members joined before and during the stream. She also announced a merch drop in collaboration with omocat, which sold out in less than 10 minutes. She reached 600,000 YouTube subscribers before the end of the stream. On 29 June, she reached 800,000 YouTube subscribers. On 1 July, Saba reached 1,000,000 YouTube subscribers. She set a new record for fastest VTuber to reach one million subscribers following debut, at 2 days 17 hours. The previous record of just over 13 days was set by Hyakumantenbara Salome, who took the record from Gawr Gura in 2022. On 11 July, she reached 1.25 million YouTube subscribers. On 12 July, she held her first collab stream, playing PEAK with dooby3D. On 14 September, Saba announced that she would be taking a break from streaming due to health problems. She would make two streams while unwell, one members stream on 22 September,[8] and a karaoke stream on 28 September, in which she would go into more detail about her health issues, including eye swelling and Eustachian tube issues, with occasional flare ups. On 1 October, Saba recovered from her illness. On 19 November, Saba announced that she would be taking another break from streaming due to health issues. On 13 January, she returned to YouTube with a short karaoke stream. Her mascot character is a small red crab with a white underbelly. He is depicted in preview clips bringing her seashells. The crab represents her fanbase. Her fans are known as "Kaniki," meaning "crab bros," a portmanteau of "kani" (Japanese for "crab") and "aniki" (an affectionate Japanese word for "brother"). The fan name was decided by a poll in two rounds; the candidates were "Crubbs" (27%), "Kaniki" (29%), "Keepers" (17%) and "Sabateurs" (25%). Kaniki was originally suggested by viewer OG-san in pre-chat. Her YouTube membership is called FISH LOVE. "Saba" in Japanese most commonly means "mackerel," a type of fish. It is also a slang term for "server," as in an online game server, and is also a Japanese surname. "Sameko" resembles a Japanese female given name, which often end in "-ko." It might be read to mean "shark girl" or "little shark." According to a 2025 trademark filing, the English translation of Sameko Saba is "little shark mackerel." She lives in an old lighthouse by the ocean. She is the lighthouse keeper, tasked with making sure the light never goes out. She seems to have a penchant for collecting seashells. The lighthouse appears on a sort of island or peninsula. She has to take a rowboat to go on errands. She is a fish girl. She has overtly dodged questions about where the animal ears come from, insisting she's just a fish. She has four ears: animal ears at the top of her head, and a set of human ears. At debut, she showed ID claiming to be 35 cm (1'2") tall. This was later clarified to be a joke. "Could somebody who was 35 cm take care of a lighthouse? Nooo." Later, she published an official profile giving her height as 150 cm (4'11"). Rhythm games are her favorite genre. She likes retro games, and collects consoles to play games on the original hardware. She hopes to release original music, and plans to experiment with different genres. She drinks a lot of coffee. She likes Hatsune Miku. Sameko Saba (often styled “saba sameko”) is an independent, English-speaking VTuber character built around a bright, nautical “fish” theme. Everything below is based on her public, on-stream persona and profile-style lore, not any real-world identity. Visually, Saba reads as a cute seaside “fish girl” with a clean sailor aesthetic. She’s typically shown with long blonde hair accented by blue highlights, bright cyan/blue eyes, fuzzy animal-like ears on top of her head, and a large blue fish tail that sells the running gag that she’s “literally a fish.” Her outfit leans hard into ocean and harbor motifs: a white sailor-collar dress with blue trim, a light-blue bow (often associated with a paper-boat vibe), and striped/lifesaver-like accent details that reinforce the maritime look. In her debut-era profile bits, she plays with comedic “stats” rather than treating them seriously. She’s joked about her “gender” being “fish,” her height being tiny (presented as 35 cm), and her age being left ambiguous, while still presenting a clear “profile card” feel for the character. Lore-wise, Saba is framed as living by the ocean and working out of an old lighthouse, with the job of keeping the light from going out. That lighthouse setting becomes her home base: it’s the anchor for her cozy, seaside atmosphere and the reason nautical imagery shows up everywhere around her. A recurring flavor detail is that she’s portrayed as doing simple seaside routines—collecting seashells, getting around by rowboat, and generally living a “by-the-water” life. Those little touches keep the character grounded in a consistent setting even when the streams are just games and chat. On stream, her personality comes across as playful and mischievous, with a tendency to ramble into tangents in an endearing way. She also commits hard to the bit of being a “certified fish,” dodging anything that would break the joke while keeping it light and funny rather than overly “lore-heavy.” Content-wise, she’s talked about doing lots of gaming (including PC and retro-on-original-hardware kinds of vibes), and she’s shown interest in rhythm games. She also leans into karaoke/performance energy and has expressed interest in exploring music seriously, including the idea of original songs. On the production side (as publicly credited in coverage and community references), her character design and Live2D production credits are part of what fans point to when discussing the “who made this” craft behind her model. Those credits—artist, illustrator, and rigger—are often treated like the “staff roll” for her avatar. Community-wise, Saba’s branding frequently ties back to a small crab companion/mascot motif, and fan participation tends to orbit around fan art, clips, and ocean-themed in-jokes. That crab-and-seaside symbolism acts like a shorthand for “this is Saba’s corner of the internet.” Also, she may or may not be related to a certain little shark girl vtuber who used to be affiliated with Hololive. Is she related to Gawr Gura? She won't tell, she'll dodge the question, and she'll act like she has no idea who or what you're talking about.