>>44312721It has some realistic basis on the surface. For example; former Hanamori or Elira, Enna, and Millie, etc. There's clear points of connection that were used to form the earlier waves, but these connections become blurry once you become a regular viewer and see what the individual livers are like. Elira for example, gets blamed for the drama Millie and Enna were involved in, but any regular viewer can see Elira gets along with all kinds of people, even people typically considered "excluded" from "the clique" such as Nina, see the Lucky Dragon Host Club streams. Likewise, Pomu is undoubtedly one of Elira's friends but she typically isn't considered a part of "the clique" as far as catalog posters are concerned. Really, I don't think a clique can describe what we see here. A clique is defined as a circle of friends that preferentially interact within the group. NijiEN as a whole is a corporately defined clique, individual waves could technically be defined as cliques to some degree, but the typical friend group cliques here tend to be all over the place with many people being a part of many different cliques simultaneously. Brushing all of these complicated social interactions as "the clique" is misinforming. If anything, "the clique" is better defined as people who get involved in drama
(I used the term drama VERY loosely here) vs people who stay in their own lane. With that, everyone has as much vested interest as possible to define "the clique" as people they don't like vs people they like, so the term is utterly useless in describing what's really going on.
So TL:DR, it's fanfiction.
