Agnes Yulo Diego is far better known by her online moniker, Akidearest. She is a Filipino-American YouTube star known for vlogging about anime, manga, otaku culture, and all things Japanese. She currently has an audience of more than 4 million souls across all of the major social media platforms, a number that continues to grow. Born and raised in America, she moved to Japan in 2019 and has been there ever since, immersing herself in the culture that has so inspired her.

Diego was born in California in 1993 but grew up in Virginia and Nevada. She is a psychology graduate, but anime has always been her first love, and having created anime videos for many years, she decided to commit herself to her YouTube career upon finishing university. She launched her Akidearest channel in December 2014. Her breakthrough came in 2016 with a vlog piece called ‘Five Songs that will Change the Way You See Vocaloid’, a video about the “virtual idol” singer phenomenon. It remains one of her most popular pieces of content today with more than 7 million views. Her other popular videos include one about how she made her Alexa sound like Pikachu and one where her boyfriend (fellow YouTube anime legend Joey Bizinger) did her anime voiceover.

Digeo’s other successes include a podcast she ran with Bizinger called The Anime Show and a cameo in the puzzle game The World Next Door. Now ensconced in Japan, she also regularly vlogs and blogs about living in the country to her ever-appreciative audience.