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Lets see if they continue to grow.
I'd say Council has a number of problems though.
One is timezones. Their main EN market is Australia since they're all in that west pacific timezone and stream in it.
Not an ideal scenario.
Second is that they have that whole weird lore shit. They've dropped it mostly by this point but its still a millstone about their necks.
Third is most of them are lacking that strong force of personality you need in this industry.
Actually lets focus on them individually here.
Mumei: Actually one of the standouts in the group. Her personality is generally gentle and soft but she has moments where that flips. She does best in collabs as she's not great on her own. Still her clumsiness, forgetfulness and weird habits get her a standout position among Council in terms of personality. But she is low energy, more someone to watch when wanting to chill.
Kronii: The definite winner of council. She's got a personality that vibes well with most of vtuber viewers in that she's a profoundly antisocial loner. Probably autistic.
Her voice has a certain hypnotic monotone quality. Also does best in collabs as on her own she will mostly ramble incoherently or do gamevoiceovers while doing autistic shit. Paired with Mumei you've basically got a great duo in terms of entertainment.
On her own she's someone to watch when you want to chill. Low energy. Noticing a pattern?
Fauna: Soft voice. Experience in a niche field of entertainment. Not really capable of emoting very well. Probably the least entertaining of the bunch. Someone to watch when chill. Low energy.
Bae: The only high energy member of the group which really makes her stand out. She's not bad and I feel a lot of the current hate comes from the high expectations dumped on her at the start. She's clearly pretty young and still not grown out of the whole "lol randum" phase. Despite that she loses in terms of chaos potential to Mumei of all people.
She's doing her best and while not amazing she's competent enough to be entertaining. Does best in collabs. Actually thats another pattern to notice, you ever see how many collabs Council does? They do a lot.
Now we come to Sana. People here LOVE to shit on Sana, its practically /vt/'s national sport.
But does Sana deserve it? Does she deserve the hate?
No.
Sanas biggest problem as a vtuber is a fairly simple one: she's a normal girl. A simple normal and nice girl. Now being nice is actually quite unusual and noteworthy with modern females but still it's not something that will make her stand out among the strong personalities present on the vtuber scene.
She's the sort of girl who if your son brought them home you'd tell him to put a ring on her finger and do it soon. She's a good, nice girl.
But that's all she's got. It's not enough to even make her stand out among Council and they're not the strongest of personalities themselves.
And finally their fourth big issue is the constant comparison to and competition with the massively successful Holomyth. Who are in general streaming in a much more advantageous collection of timezones and were basically a lightning in the bottle moment for Cover.
So has Council been a failure for Cover? I think no.
Council is clearly bringing in the dosh or they'd have started sidelining them by now. Not as much dosh as Myth but I don't think Cover wants another Myth.
The problem a company may have with Myth is that its difficult to replicate and they don't entirely understand WHY it worked. This isn't unusual in entertainment and is one of the reasons for the modern formulaic/homogeneous approach to entertainment. If you can understand why something works then you can reliably replicate it. It may not be as amazingly profitable as managing to find the lightning and bottle it, but it'll pay the bills and be something you can reliably scale.
So for Cover the mediocrity of Council could well represent a great success. They understand why Council worked as well as it did and now they can apply that to subsequent EN generations.