What Is Kirinuki? The Japanese Word for VTuber Clips
If you follow VTubers in English, you have seen the word without being told what it means. Kirinuki (切り抜き) is simply the Japanese word for a clip cut out of a stream — but behind that plain translation sits an entire fan economy with its own job title, etiquette and agency rulebooks.
The literal meaning
切り抜き breaks into two parts: 切る (kiru, to cut) and 抜く (nuku, to pull out or extract). Together they mean cutting something out of a larger whole. The word predates streaming entirely — it is what you call a newspaper clipping saved from a page, or a shape cut out of paper.
Applied to video, the full term is kirinuki douga (切り抜き動画), literally a "cut-out video": a short segment extracted from a long broadcast. In English-speaking VTuber communities the shortened kirinuki is used on its own, and it means specifically a fan-edited highlight from a stream.
Pronunciation is straightforward: kee-ree-noo-kee, four flat syllables. Written きりぬき in hiragana, 切り抜き in kanji.
Why the Japanese word stuck in English
English already has "clip". The reason kirinuki travelled anyway is that it names something slightly different from what English speakers mean by a clip.
A Twitch clip is a capture — you press a button, the platform stores twenty seconds, and it lives on Twitch. A kirinuki is a production. Someone watched a six-hour stream, found the moment, cut it, added subtitles (usually translated), designed a thumbnail, wrote a title, and uploaded it to their own channel as a standalone video. The word carries that editorial labour with it.
That distinction matters because kirinuki are how most people actually discover VTubers. Very few new fans start by watching a six-hour archive in a language they may not speak. They find a two-minute clip with subtitles, then follow the source.
Kirinuki-shi: the clipper as a role
Japanese gives the person a title too: kirinuki-shi (切り抜き師). The suffix 師 marks a practitioner of a craft — the same character used in 絵師 (artist) and medical or trade professions. Calling someone a kirinuki-shi treats clipping as a skill, not a chore.
A kirinuki-shi typically runs a dedicated channel for one talent or one agency, uploads consistently, and develops a recognisable editing style. Established channels can out-perform the source streams in raw view count, because a well-cut two-minute highlight travels much further than an archive.
The role is formal enough that agencies register it. Hololive's operator Cover runs a clipper registration system, and the conditions for monetizing a clip channel differ depending on whether you are registered. If you want the practical steps for that agency specifically, see our guide on how to clip Hololive VODs, and the equivalent for Nijisanji VODs.
The rules that actually govern kirinuki
Kirinuki exist because agencies permit them — deliberately, in published derivative-work guidelines. That permission is conditional, and the conditions are where clippers get into trouble.
The recurring conditions across major agencies look like this:
- Credit and link the source. The original stream URL belongs in the description, and the talent's name should be identifiable.
- Never clip members-only content. Paid or membership-gated streams are almost universally off-limits, and this is the fastest route to a strike.
- Do not misrepresent. Editing that changes the meaning of what was said — deceptive cuts, fabricated subtitles, clickbait that implies something that did not happen — breaks the guideline even when every other rule is followed.
- Respect archive timing. Some guidelines ask clippers to wait for the archive rather than clipping mid-live.
- Monetization has its own rules. Whether you may run ads, and whether revenue is shared, depends entirely on the agency and often on registration status.
None of this is legal advice, and the guidelines are revised over time — read the current official page for the agency whose talent you are clipping. We cover the money side in more depth in can you monetize VTuber clips?
How a kirinuki gets made
The traditional workflow is entirely manual, and it is why most people who try clipping stop after a few videos:
- Download or scrub the archive — often three to eight hours long.
- Hunt for the moment. This is the expensive part: the interesting thirty seconds are buried somewhere in hours of footage.
- Cut the segment with padding so the setup and reaction both survive.
- Reframe to vertical 9:16 if the clip is for Shorts, TikTok or Reels.
- Subtitle and translate, if serving an audience that does not speak the source language.
- Thumbnail, title, description with the source link, upload.
Step 2 and step 4 are where automation helps most. Finding the moment can be approached by analysing the stream's audio — laughter, sudden volume spikes, screams, changes in vocal pitch — rather than by watching everything. Reframing to vertical is a layout problem specific to VTubers, because the subject is an avatar rather than a human face; we wrote about that in game vs model layouts.
That is the part we build. VTubeClip takes a stream URL, finds candidate moments by audio analysis, and renders vertical clips that keep the model and the gameplay both in frame — no generative AI involved, since nothing is created or synthesised, only cut and framed from the streamer's own footage. Subtitling and translation remain a human job, and for kirinuki that is usually the part worth doing by hand anyway.
Related vocabulary you will run into
- 切り抜き動画 (kirinuki douga) — the clip video itself.
- 切り抜き師 (kirinuki-shi) — the clipper.
- 切り抜きチャンネル (kirinuki channel) — a channel dedicated to clips.
- アーカイブ (archive) — the VOD left after a live stream.
- 二次創作 (niji sousaku) — derivative works; the category kirinuki legally sit in, alongside fan art.
- ガイドライン (guideline) — the agency's published rules for that derivative work.
Frequently asked
Is kirinuki only for VTubers?
No. The word applies to any stream — variety streamers, gamers and radio-style broadcasts all have kirinuki channels. It is most strongly associated with VTubers because agency guidelines made the practice organised and because subtitle translation gave those clips an international audience.
Do I need to speak Japanese to make kirinuki?
Not to make them, no. Plenty of clippers work with English-language VTubers, and vertical Shorts of reaction moments often need no translation at all. Translating Japanese streams is a distinct skill and a large part of why some clip channels grow quickly.
Is "kirinuki" ever written in English letters in Japan?
Rarely. Japanese-language search and titles use 切り抜き almost exclusively — which is worth knowing if you are researching the scene, because searching the romanised spelling misses nearly everything written in Japanese.