I like to joke that certain figures comprise a pre-history of VTubers. Anyone who plays into the idea of a virtual character or alter ego, in part or in full, counts: the Wizard of Oz, Max Headroom, Sharon Apple (Macross Plus), Kevin Flynn (Tron), and so on. But one individual on my silly list is apparently making a comeback: Jem from Jen and the Holograms. To celebrate her 40th anniversary, she is returning with six new songs, including an extended version of the main theme from her original cartoon.

Jem and the Holograms is a TV series from the 1980s, targeted at a young female audience. The heroine is Jerrica Benton, the owner of a music label who also performs as lead singer of Jem and the Holograms. What makes Jem a “proto-VTuber” is the fact that she uses a special holographic technology, a sentient computer named Synergy, to create an alternate persona for the stage. Just like modern-day VTubers, she releases music videos of her original songs in this guise.

And while this might be mere coincidence, I noticed that the newly recorded rendition of the Jem and the Holograms intro is a length that has always been rare for American cartoons: about 90 seconds, the same as a a standard anime opening or ending.

(Or perhaps Synergy is the VTuber?)

Another interesting wrinkle is that, much like the return of the VTuber boss of bosses Kizuna AI this year, this Jem revival features her original singer: Britta Phillips. One of the biggest and most painful lessons the VTuber community learned in AI’s heyday is that the fans do not accept a different human behind the avatar. These entities are not viewed as “character designs” or “concepts” with interchangeable performers; the persona in front and and the person behind the curtain together form a VTuber. It’s more complicated in Jem’s case because she had separate singing and acting voices, and there was a 2015 live-action movie, but there’s still a sense here of the OG coming back.

Though certainly not intended to be an example of the future of VTubing, this Jem thing makes me wonder what will be possible someday. For a form of entertainment that is arguably not even 10, what will 40 years of VTubing even look like?