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ok numberfriends I just got back from some heavy researching over that korean Isegye group. In summary they sound more like a kpop idol group than vtuber streamers. Read along for details.
ISEGYE:
>created and owned by 우왁굳의 게임방송 (woowakgood)
>woowakgood is a streamer who seems to do mostly gaming in general, with special mention to minecraft and vrchat mods.
>woowakgood has 1.35M subs on youtube and 824k followers on twitch (making him the 3rd most followed channel in Korea, with the two above them being ESports stuff, so you could say he is the biggest KR streamer)
>ISEGYE IDOL - Idols In Another World - is a project created and owned by woowakgood, and heavily promoted by him, even on his main channel.
>왁타버스 WAKTAVERSE, the group's official channel (technically called a sub-channel) is directly linked on woowakgood's social media.
>it was converted from his own sub-clips channel into waktaverse
MAIN HISTORY:
>in the past, in his streams woowakgood used to randomly select members of his own viewers to interact with him, mostly in vrchat
>and from the above came the idea/project to select 6 fixed members to do that instead. They would continue to participate in his content and even broadcast independently when he would not be online, but still them still belonging to woowakgood.
>although it is known as a project that was started by inspiration from the success of HoloLive, at first, he did not even think of a vtuber using a 2.5D character, and it started as one of the contents of VRChat that is an extension of his own.
>for this reason, fans of isegye also naturally flowed in from woowakgood's broadcasts, so the popular memes in woowakgood's broadcast are also used naturally during each member's broadcast. A unique ecosystem called "Wakta Bus".
>woowakgood and the isegye idols have basically the same fans, who share memes, content, stories, etc together, forming a unique culture. It is often compared to a huge island or continent that is one step away from other streamers in Korea and is clustered around woowakgood, and the barriers to entry are high , so viewers who do not know the broadcasting culture of woowakgood and start watching the broadcasts do not easily adapt.
>basically isegye encountered tremendous success because it drinks from woowakgood's huge fandom which had been developing for 10 years.
>interestingly, Isegye as a topic also seems to be banned on the kr vtuber board because of heavy shilling spamming from supposedly their fans.
>Isegye project applications were opened on late june 2021, with nearly 200 applicants reviewed, and said to have drawn great attention from the start, with many experienced people applying. They were mainly judged in their singing skills and live interview conduct.
>from this pool of applicants woowakgood also selected dance coaches, composers and even a manager. They were more focused on music skills than streaming ones.
>The process took 50 days, and many parts of the selection were broadcasted. The applicants' fanbases also ran campaigns to support their idols, but im not sure if it mattered much to the final say from woowakgood.
>the group started activites in late august/september 2021.
>all the isegye idols' twitch accounts existed before that time and were converted into vtuber accounts, in one way or another, from their viewer accounts. Most were facecammers before, like definitely jingburger, lilpa, cotton and viichan; while gosegu and vo_ine im not sure. They all were known viewers before though, so they had at least some fans prior to joining.
>if you look at their twitch vods library, you'll notice that the majority of their videos have more views than they have followers - which is extremely weird, as even the biggest streamers only get close to that with massive campaigns on streams lasting for far over 10 hours
>there are a few possible explanations of how could they manage to do so: viewbots; embeds (even 1 pixel of the stream running outside twitch or maybe just front-page embeds); or it is woowakgood's 1M+ fanbase constantly getting redirected into the isegye streams, but never bothering to even give them a free sub.
>based on what ive already explained here, seems that the last option is the correct one.
TLDR
>all in all, they seem like elaborate converts in more than one way. Their carried over their own fanbases, their old names were known, they are more an extension of woowakgood metauniverse thing than their own individuals. All of this screams KPOP idol stuff way more than normal vtubers.
