Here is an interview from a month ago where he talks about the future of Hololive post-Breaking Dimensions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUhYPvYGepE
This is an interview aimed at Japanese college students talking about what Hololive is and what to expect as part of Hololive's staff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pLPaeA3K5w
Here is an interview done with Anime News Network where he talks about Breaking Dimensions, talent-manager interactions and exposure of Hololive to normies/the mainstream audience: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interview/2024-10-04/bringing-hololive-to-the-u.s-an-with-motoaki-tanigo-ceo-of-cover-corp/.215676
On a side note, outside of Hololive, VShojo's Matara Kan is now a member of a mainstream talent agency, William Morris Endeavor: https://x.com/MataraKan/status/1846340762495004849
This is the same Endeavor that owns WWE and UFC, so the mainstreamification of vtubing is all but inevitable in my opinion, it's up to the current audience to not allow tourists to ruin it.
Vtubing can't go any more mainstream than anime itself is because it requires being "cool with" anime to begin with to accept the models they use for all of them.
And I think anime has reached its peak mainstream already, which is still not much, so vtubing has a pretty low ceiling to reach and it'll be hard doing so because the parasocial and "want to fuck" angle is very important to all vtubing audiences (no matter what they tell you) whereas lots of anime can break into the mainstream because of the lack of that.
And vtubing is one of the most rampant industries in the West for trannies. It allows them to stream as the hot anime slut they always wished to be. Its worse than anime itself (which is also filled with them) and they are a far bigger obstacle to preventing tourists and the denigrating of the industry than any Corpo bullshit.
I also think that you probably need to be more than casually into the mainstream anime to be into Vtubers. It's like owning a Great Dane or other giant breed, you can't just like dogs, you have to love dogs or you'll end up being annoyed by them.
You do, its why despite enjoying anime plenty I've never really gotten into it beyond some funny clips I've seen and enjoying the awesome stupidity that is Mori's rapping.
But that's the point, vtubing is a sub interest under anime. Which means it can't exceed anime's mainstream appeal period, and needs a lot to even catch that low ceiling. And right now anime's mainstream is huge relatively but still niche and wierd to most people, so vtubing is miles from that.
Maybe it’s just me because I don’t watch that many indie vtubers, but I’m not sure there’s that many MTF vtubers out there, but maybe with all the various sub-100k YouTube channels, there’s plenty of MTF vtubers there