桃園球場的看台上，我身邊有個男生戴著一頂我認不出角色的帽子，胸前的T-shirt印著一個藍色頭髮的虛擬人物。他在盯著大螢幕——不是在看打席上的打者，而是在等螢幕上的VTuber形象重新出現。那場比賽的投手是誰，我懷疑他說不出來。
樂天桃猿宣布將於2026年9月11日至13日舉辦彩虹社（NIJISANJI）聯名主題日。彩虹社是日本最大的虛擬偶像事務所之一，旗下有數百位VTuber。這是繼味全龍與hololive production宣布聯名之後，第二個日本VTuber事務所正式進駐中華職棒。這兩件事同期發生，說明台灣職棒球隊已把VTuber聯名當作一種系統性策略在執行，而不是偶發的IP授權。
無身體者進入崇拜身體的場域
從劇場評論的角度來看，這個安排存在一個結構性悖論。VTuber是「無身體的表演者」——他們透過虛擬形象和聲音存在，沒有物理在場，觀眾所消費的是聲音、語氣和角色設定構成的人格投影。棒球恰好相反。投手的球速、打者的揮棒弧度、野手的守備範圍，都是人體能力的精確計量，是一項把身體作為核心敘事的競技。
把一個「無身體」的存在放進一個「崇拜身體」的場域，這兩種感官邏輯並不自然相容。但正因為不相容，這個碰撞才值得認真分析，而不只是被當作一條娛樂新聞略過。
棒球場過去承載的那種記憶
台灣職棒（CPBL）成立於1989年10月23日，第一場職業比賽在1990年3月17日開打，那一年被稱為「職棒元年」。棒球成為官方認定的「國球」是2000年的事。但在官方命名之前，棒球在台灣的神話地位早已確立——1968年8月25日，紅葉少棒以7:0擊敗日本全明星隊，成了一代人的集體起點。後來是王建民，2005年加入紐約洋基，連續兩個球季各拿下19勝，那是屬於台灣30至40歲這一代人的共同仰望視角。
這些記憶構成了棒球場的情感底層。走進球場，某種程度上是走進一個特定世代對「台灣男孩長大」的集體敘事裡。
當新一代穿著彩虹社周邊走進同一個看台，他們攜帶的是另一套完全不同的情感座標。對他們而言，彩虹社的VTuber才是熟悉的臉孔——那些聲音陪他們打遊戲、熬夜備考、填補下班後的空白時間。紅葉少棒的神話，他們可能只在歷史課本看過一次。
這不是批評。這是觀察：同一個物理空間，正在發生兩個平行的情感敘事，而且彼此並不干擾，至少目前是。
這更接近一場受眾移植實驗
ACG次文化有自己的聖地：動漫展、Cosplay活動、VTuber的直播間和快閃店。台中廣三SOGO曾有NIJISANJI EN的期間限定店，NIJISANJI EN也曾在亞洲7個地點同步開設快閃店，台北是其中一站。這些場合的受眾，和職業棒球場館的長期票房受眾，重疊程度極低。
樂天桃猿這次做的，不是簡單的IP授權。它把兩個幾乎不相交的受眾群體，放在同一個物理空間裡，9月11到13日，連續三天，看他們會不會產生化學反應。這是一場不小的賭注——如果彩虹社的粉絲買票進場，但不買棒球，只是來朝聖，球隊長期的票房結構不會改變；如果這部分人真的留下來，開始對棒球本身產生興趣，那才是真正的受眾擴張。
我認為台灣才是這場實驗最適合的土地。動漫文化從1980年代起就深度滲透台灣青年生活，Cosplay文化讓「用不同身份認同佔據同一個空間」變成一件自然的事。台灣社會對文化雜食有相當高的容忍度——棒球場同時是VTuber朝聖地，在台灣這件事沒有文化衝突，只有「夠不夠有趣」的商業問題。
比賽結束後她說的那句話
那天離開球場時，我前面的一個女生對朋友說：「我今天第一次看棒球，但明年如果他們再辦，我還要來。」她說的「他們」，我聽不出指的是樂天桃猿還是彩虹社。
這個模糊，是這場實驗目前最誠實的結論。9月的那三天，才是真正的數據。
— 郎組雲
延伸閱讀
When VTubers Took the Dugout at a CPBL Game
On the stands at Taoyuan Baseball Stadium, the man next to me was wearing a T-shirt printed with a blue-haired virtual character. He was staring at the big screen — not watching the batter at the plate, but waiting for a VTuber avatar to reappear. I doubt he could have named the pitcher.
The Rakuten Monkeys have announced a NIJISANJI collab theme event scheduled for September 11–13, 2026. NIJISANJI is one of Japan’s largest virtual idol agencies, with hundreds of VTubers across its roster. This comes alongside the Uni-President Dragons’ announced hololive production collab days at Taipei Dome — making NIJISANJI the second Japanese VTuber agency to enter the CPBL circuit. Two deals from two different agencies arriving in the same window suggests this is a structural strategy, not an opportunistic IP license.
A Bodyless Performer Walks Into a Temple of the Body
As a theater critic, I find the structural contradiction here harder to ignore than the headline. VTubers are bodyless performers. Their existence is built on voice, persona, and projected character — the audience consumes a personality without a physical presence. Baseball is the opposite. Pitch velocity, swing arc, defensive range — everything in the sport is a precise measurement of human physical capacity. The body is the narrative.
Placing a bodyless entity into a space that worships the body doesn’t resolve easily. That friction is exactly what makes this worth analyzing, rather than filing it away as entertainment news.
What the Stadium Used to Hold
The CPBL was founded on October 23, 1989. The first professional game was played on March 17, 1990 — “Year One” of professional baseball in Taiwan. Baseball’s official designation as the national sport came in 2000, but the mythological weight arrived decades earlier: on August 25, 1968, the Hongye youth team defeated a Japanese all-star squad 7–0, and that scoreline became the origin story of a generation. Then came Wang Chien-ming, who joined the New York Yankees in 2005 and won 19 games in each of two consecutive seasons — a record for Taiwanese players abroad that gave a specific generation its collective point of pride.
These memories form the emotional substructure of the ballpark. Walking in carries a certain inherited weight.
The new generation entering these same stands wearing NIJISANJI merchandise carries a completely different emotional GPS. For them, those VTuber voices are familiar — accompanying late-night study sessions, gaming marathons, the dead hours after work. The Hongye legend exists, if at all, as a textbook footnote.
Two parallel emotional narratives. Same physical space. So far, not interfering with each other.
This Is Closer to an Audience Transplant
ACG subculture has its own sacred sites — anime expos, Cosplay events, VTuber pop-ups. NIJISANJI EN ran pop-up stores in seven Asian locations simultaneously, with Taiwan included. A NIJISANJI EN anniversary pop-up ran at Taichung’s Guangsan SOGO. The audience for those events and the regular ticket-buying audience at a CPBL game share almost no overlap.
What the Rakuten Monkeys are doing in September is placing two near-non-overlapping audiences in the same physical location for three consecutive days and observing what happens. If NIJISANJI fans buy tickets to attend but don’t engage with the baseball, the team’s long-term audience structure doesn’t change. If some of them actually stay, develop a curiosity about the game, and come back — that’s real audience expansion, not just an attendance spike on three themed nights.
Taiwan is probably the right country for this experiment. Anime culture has been embedded in Taiwanese youth life since the 1980s. Cosplay normalized the idea of occupying a shared space through multiple identity frameworks simultaneously. The cultural tolerance for this kind of collision is genuinely high here — a baseball park doubling as a VTuber pilgrimage site doesn’t produce culture war in Taiwan. It produces a box office question.
What She Said After the Final Out
Leaving the stadium that evening, the woman ahead of me told her friend: “I’d never watched baseball before today, but if they do this again next year, I’ll come back.” The “they” in her sentence was ambiguous. She might have meant the Rakuten Monkeys. She might have meant NIJISANJI.
That ambiguity is the most honest result this experiment has produced so far. The three days in September will tell us whether it’s also the most durable one.
— 郎組雲
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