Are there any twitch or youtube e-celebs that like Shenmue?
Well, I can't say I know if you would consider him an "e-celeb," but Vinesauce's Joel (Vargskelethor) has a pretty reasonable following and he is on record as liking Shenmue a lot. When he finished Shenmue 1, he said it had entered into his list of favourite games, and is currently going through Shenmue 2 with a stream every once in a while.
His open-mindedness and appreciation for the unique experience that is Shenmue was evident very quickly, so somewhere between an hour and a half to 3 hours into watching his playthrough of the first game, I knew it was definitely for me, then got HD release and finished it around a week ago or so.
Keep in mind, I knew virtually nothing about Shenmue prior to watching his streams except that it had something to do with forklifts at some point. So whether he's large enough to earn the "e-celeb" status (209,414 followers on Twitch as of this writing, 344,063 subscribers on his uncut streams channel, and 631,528 subs on his 'highlights' channel) aside, I think it's more important for there to simply be streamers who are passionate about the unique kind of game they're experiencing. Dunkey made a video about Shenmue that has over 2.4 million views, but he disliked the game. Had that been my only experience with Shenmue, I don't think I would've wanted to play it.
If there's some huge streamer or YouTuber who also happens to like it, that's even better, but primarily, we just have to hope that even medium or smallish streamers or YTubers are
positive, because that sort of disposition to the game is absolutely infectious to their audience, and could very likely do far more to increase sales than anything.