It's been a while since I made a V-Tuber news post, but the events of the past two days made it pretty clear that doing so now is necessary.
Sakamata Chloe, a member of Hololive JP's sixth generation, 'Secret Society holoX' (usually just called holoX), will be 'concluding her channel activities', similarly to Amelia Watson, on January 25th, 2025. Laplus Darkness, another member of holoX explains that she understands why Chloe is leaving, because even she says the amount of work that she expected from Hololive is a lot more than she previously expected, and that workload is a lot of why Chloe has chosen to leave.
The big news that got me to want to make this post today is that Ceres Fauna, a member of Hololive EN's second generation 'Council' (now 'Promise' with the graduation of Sana Tsukumo and addition of IryS to the group), will be graduating from Hololive on January 3rd, 2025. She isn't planning on leaving the door open with the affiliate status, like Amelia and Chloe are/have, once she leaves, that is the last that we will see of the Ceres Fauna persona. She specifically states that her reason for graduation is 'disagreement with management, and that she liked being an idol, that she was getting more comfortable with singing. This is notable because with Amelia and Minato Aqua, who have both left, Aqua choosing to graduate, their reasons for leaving were moreso for the sake of their creativity, as Amelia, now dooby3D, has an entire motion capture studio in her home that she mostly wasn't allowed to use in Hololive, and Aqua's problems were with the workload outside of streaming, which leads to something that I actually didn't know until last night.
Cover Corp went public this year, and Motoaki Tanigo, also known as Yagoo, was essentially forced to make Cover go public or be forced to sell the company. Cover was originally a tech company that only started the V-Tubing aspects of things because the person behind Tokino Sora wanted to become a virtual idol. This was done with the help of venture capital money, and because more people are learning this, a large portion of the viewerbase is blaming this new string of graduations and leaving on the investors pushing the girls to lean more and more into the idol aspects of being a vtuber, when a large portion of the fanbase mostly watches streams, and doesn't really care about the concerts. Who knows where this will take us, but Cover Corp going public, and Fauna graduating when there weren't any real signs that she was having problems is going to stain Cover for the foreseeable future. If the investors try to push Cover towards Nijisanji's route, I think everyone will simply be pissed out of their mind and the company will crash and burn for the sake of investors' short term gain.
I have seen conflicting reports of Sakamata Chloe's PL, but here are both of Fauna's channels. The non-ASMR channel has exploded in subscriber count within the past 18 hours since her announcement, as it started at 71k subscribers and has exploded to over 200k subscribers since the announcement of her graduation.
The barrier for entry was too low, and way too many companies/people wanted in on the pot and invested a shit ton of money thinking it was an infinite growth industry.
Its the standard failure period basically every bubble goes through.
Yep, except this time these investors have no clue that if the girls have issues, the fanbase will abandon Hololive, as seen with how Nijisanji fell off a cliff after the termination of Selen Tatsuki
tldr
Going public might have killed a Vtuber corporation. Speculation abounds.
This is all tabloid tier shit as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't matter and only woman care about it.
Unfortunately the Vtuber sphere is overwhelmingly male and they are obsessed with pushing it everywhere endlessly. Its the new opiate for the simpish weeb masses.
Women only care about it in terms of how easy it is to make money off it. Its streaming without even having to have tits or even getting dresses, but all the same parasocial powers.
Only someone like you could spin that as a negative. Lol
Do you think wahmen should ever be able to earn a living by streaming?
Edit Also this. Don't offer your opinion if it's something you clearly don't know anything about
He's also assuming that female vtubers are just as duplicitous as the Twitch thots, and at least corpo vtubers definitely aren't. In fact, Cover actively screens against bitchiness and that sort of nonsense in order to prevent another Uruha Rushia from being hired ever again.
lol
This is why you are called simps. Because you actually believe this.
I'm just going to say we agree to disagree, mostly because most corpo vtubers have been doxxed for ages, and with that information, along with everything that's been revealed over the past year, and how easily for example people abandoned Elira Pandora after the infamous 'black screen stream', that's the one thing the vtuber audience is actually somewhat good at, being able to tell whose being a lying bitch or not.
I'm pretty sure I've said this before on another one of these posts, but because of the literal structure of vtubing, models instead of faces, actually having to play the games and not just focus the camera on T&A, etc, the people behind the avatar have to put some semblance of who they actually are into their streams or else they'd be caught in lies constantly, like Pokimane was about her boyfriend, as an example.
Enough of them use their non-corporate accounts and have those videos still up for the viewer to check that stuff out. Do I think everyone's a saint? No, especially a lot of indies, who are the 1-2views (4chan terminology for how many digits are in the viewer count) with badly rigged models you mention in that other comment, but a lot of the bigger ones have had their pasts gone through with a fine tooth comb, which is why I have the belief that I do that at least a large portion of them are not as duplicitous as the Twitch thots.
I didn't call it negative or positive. Its a statement of fact that the bar is lowered there compared to being a twitch thot in terms of appearance, which is why there are thousands of them everywhere constantly cropping up daily to stream to a handful of simps with badly rigged models.
I see we are back to the "only big corpos exist in my bubble" land though.
How is this a neutral statement? This is the equivalent to tradcons saying videogames are for manchildren when someone complains about how shitty the game industry is, and that's your fault for not picking carpentry as a hobby
I don't see how this is a bad thing. I see it more as vtubers actually having to be entertaining as oposed to Amouranth or Pokimane flashing their tits. Also, that's why lots of pngtubers fail to gain any traction.
I mean, this is about Cover. Just the fact that there is a place that isn't flooded by idpolitics is a plus. Losing it in one way or another is worrysome because it's proof you either have to bend the knee to globohomo or go to Tencen level of corporate greed
Because that's not the statement I was referring to, I was referring to the literal thing you quoted which was completely neutral in tone.
Its also my entire point, its one of the major barriers to streaming removed (appearance, dress and hygiene) which lowers the bar of success in their minds, while offering the same level of power and income as one of those Pokimane types. Its why there are so many failing shittubers littering every platform.
There are more problems in life than just the Woke axis.
Twitch thot apocalypse next ty
Ok
All right. I will reveal my ignorance. What even the fuck is vtube?
At the most fundamental level, it's streaming but instead of a webcam you use motion capture and an avatar. Technically speaking, anyone that does that—and the avatar can range from very simple to very complex, in any number of art styles—is a "vtuber."
In the context it's often used (including in this post), it refers to a loose collection of several talent agencies and their associated streamers, as well as various independent streamers that have connections with them. The agencies are predominantly (maybe entirely?) Japanese, and the industry some loose parallels/crossover with Japanese idols (which are sort of like pop stars crossed with models).
Someone else could probably give you a better rundown, but those are the basics as I understand them.
It's where grown men use anime girl avatars to stream with instead of themselves.
LOL no. Most of these girls have been doxxed and they're actually girls behind the screen, at least all of the big ones, corpo and indie.
LOL I CAN HEAR THEIR VOICE....
AND THEY ARE CLEARLY MEN.
why are you trying to gaslight something so easily proven?
Many of the big-name corpa ones do IRL streams, so unless you're also suggesting they hire professional voice actress impersonators pledged to secrecy that never break NDA, you're hunting far greater game than the Wild Goose, you're seeking the Red Herring.
Your comment has nothing to do with what I said.
Just a rambling diatribe.
I am not ready to say that Cover is at that point yet. There are warning lights flashing, yes. But considering that no one who has left Hololive has yet to raise any negatives about it tells me that we are not yet totally in the danger zone.
It is also worth mentioning that Yagoo still has the controlling share of the stocks, so it is not like investors can force him to go all the way, even if he is fighting the board in the process.
I'm fairly certain they are bound by NDAs and can not say any finer details. For all we know, Holo management may be just as bad as Nijisanji.
Niji ex-tubers are also bound by NDA's, that hasnt stopped them from venting their frustrations and saying how toxic it was with innuendoes. Hell, the former Livers I have seen have used their innuendo powers to actually say they werent mad, just that they didnt agree with the direction.
That is a world of difference from "Almost drove multiple of their employees to suicide" Nijisanji.
meanwhile current phase connect are all 'yeah this place used to be shit till they got their act together. In your endo.'
To be fair, Phase Connect is explicitly Sakana/Fishman's experiment on what happens when you give mentally ill women fame.
And here I thought the West's entertainment industries had already been running that experiment for >50 years.
Leave the poor coffee merchant alone. He never asked to be saddled with a pile of menhera made manifest, he just wanted to sell his coffee.
he just wants his houshou marine at home
From what I hear, going 'more idol' means playing less gaming streams which affects the English side more since they are more variety streamers than just a pop group.
Seen the reaction from others where Pippa said she'd leave Phase if it went public. I think this another result of Japans weak currency making it's companies vulnerable to take over and influence.
Oh and for Fauna fans, look up Lemonleaf and you'll feel better..
Pippa's hardly the only one. Phase is held together by duct tape, prayers, and coffee beans. 10ma would definitely not be "modern audiences friendly" and be MADE to quit, and if the fox goes, so too would a lot of the rest of their talents... vShoujo might be a toxic workplace, but if you distance yourself from the other talents which they allow you to do, it's a valid safe harbor to rebuild a pastlife account. And they ARE picking up a lot of the castaways, they've picked up like a third of the grads these past two years.
vshojo is image comics of vtubing, nobody's really in charge
I don't think the idol part is the problem. Neither Aqua nor Fauna complained about the idol aspect. Most likely it's due to some sort of reestructuration and the investors wanting to make more short term money at the talent's expense...
it's probably not the singing and dancing specifically but having to do extra works such as sponsorship/brand collabs commercials
As someone that don't watch vtubers I'm curious, wouldn't it be better to go at it as an independent? Or is there technicalities involved that prevents this girls from starting at the bottom with maybe a jpeg avatar?
Nothing prevents them from starting at zero, grinding, and hoping that they catch on.
But when Sakana shows up, and says "hey, you know that thing you're currently doing right now? I can have you keep doing the exact same thing, but earning six figures, instantly. By the time you'd build up an audience base to make the same, you'll already be a millionaire with us.", well, it's hard to argue with the logic.
Corporate comes with a built-in fanbase, a built-in marketing department that knows how to get clicks, tech staff to make trailers or even just edit your own content, admins and mods to handle social media and chat, and most importantly, a giant paycheque. Of course, you also get to take vacations, which realistically you can't do as an indie because even a week off will kill The Algorithm's favor of you, but with corporate they can puppet the account and have cross-over takeovers done quick and easy. The trade-off: they set actual quotas and expectations of you, and some of those expectations are high and/or hard to meet.
You don't know much about vTubers, consider it similar to actors. You could be an indie actor, acting on YouTube little independent projects, maybe some minor collabs, or Disney comes up to you, and says "you're the next main character in our multi-billion dollar franchise". That's basically the equivalent of Hololive approaching these indies: Waitresses weighing the pros and cons of going into porn to make ends meet being offered headline acts is the same wealth disparity as a 10-subscriber nobody being picked up by the company that gets their vTubers on the big screen at the Dodger's Stadium to sing the midgame shows.
EDIT: Corporate also comes with legal departments and security forces. Stalking and harassment are part and parcel of the job unfortunately, and so is copyright concerns both creating and breaching of them, so those two departments are very useful to have.
These girls STARTED as indies and applied to join Hololive once auditions came up. A lot of them were either non-vtuber content creators or already vtubers, some of the JP members are ex-idols, a few of the original JP members actually have Hololive as their first real job, as they auditioned during their senior years of high school.
There are a lot of reasons why someone would want to go corporate, but some easy reasons are for boosted reach, a built-in audience that will support you, not having to handle merch yourself and more funds to do certain projects that would be very expensive to do as an independent vtuber. There's also just always having people to do collab streams with in the other members of your agency, but these girls have mostly already been content creators and wanted to join Hololive.
The girls also make a lot of money, but a lot of the girls put that money basically right back into their streams/content, but others save more.
God I hope vvtubers cease to exist. It perpetuates degeneracy to a new level.
It's creepy af.