Agnes Yulo Diego (born February 16, 1993), known online as Akidearest, is an American

YouTuber A YouTuber is an online personality and/or influencer who produces videos on the video-sharing platform YouTube, typically posting to their personal YouTube channel. The term was first used in the English language in 2006. Influence Influent ...

. She is best known for discussing

anime is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...

manga Manga (Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is u ...

, otaku culture and

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

-related content on her YouTube channel.

Early life

Diego was born in

Bakersfield, California Bakersfield is a city in Kern County, California, United States. It is the county seat and largest city of Kern County. The city covers about near the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley and the Central Valley region. Bakersfield's populat ...

, on February 16, 1993, and was raised in

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

before then eventually moving to

Las Vegas, Nevada Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...

. Growing-up, Diego got into creating

Anime music video An anime music video (AMV) is a fan-made music video consisting of clips from one or more Japanese animated shows or movies set to an audio track, often songs or promotional trailer audio. The term is generally specific to Japanese anime, howeve ...

s (AMV) and had a prior YouTube channel that hosted some of her work. After completing a degree in psychology at university, Diego decided to pursue YouTube as a career.

Career

Diego created her second and current YouTube channel "Akidearest" on December 18, 2014, with a focus on discussing anime, manga, and otaku culture; her first video, "REACTION: DMMD Love Scene," in which Diego reacts to a scene in ''

Dramatical Murder is a Japanese BL visual novel developed and published by Nitro+chiral. It was originally released on March 23, 2012 for Windows PCs as a first press edition, with a regular edition released on April 27, 2012. A sequel titled ''Dramatica ...

'', was released on December 26, 2014. Considered as her break-out video, "5 Songs That Will Change The Way You See Vocaloid," was released on January 12, 2016; the video delves into serious topics that fans to causal listeners of

Vocaloid is a singing voice synthesizer software product. Its signal processing part was developed through a joint research project led by Kenmochi Hideki at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain, in 2000 and was not originally intended to b ...

might not expect. On August 21, 2017, Akidearest hit one million subscribers. From 2017 to 2018, Diego co-hosted a weekly SBS

podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing ...

titled, ''The Anime Show'', with Joseph Bizinger (The Anime Man), which ran for 68 episodes that discussed about anime, manga, and

otaku is a Japanese word that describes people with consuming interests, particularly in anime, manga, video games, or computers. Its contemporary use originated with a 1983 essay by Akio Nakamori in ''Manga Burikko''. may be used as a pejorativ ...

culture. In January 2019, Diego moved to Japan, at which time her channel expanded to include her experiences while living in Japan. In same year, Diego also made an in-game cameo appearance in '' The World Next Door'', by Rose City Games.

Personal life

On November 4, 2016, both she and fellow YouTuber

Joey Bizinger Joseph Tetsuro "Joey" Bizinger (born 28 September 1994), known online as The Anime Man, as well as his stage name , is an Australian-Japanese YouTuber, voice actor, songwriter, and podcaster. His video work focuses on Japanese popular culture, w ...

announced that they were in a relationship.

References

External links

* {{IMDb name, 8516122, Akidearest 1993 births Living people American expatriates in Japan American people of Filipino descent American YouTubers American female YouTubers People from Bakersfield, California People from Las Vegas YouTube vloggers YouTube channels launched in 2014