I used to not like Ina. Well, not exactly "dislike", but I felt that she was completely underqualified to be a content creator, let alone a vtuber for Hololive.
Her personality literally matches all of the normal Asian diaspora girl types I've met in college / art school. Being "punny" is cool but that's literally what half the IRL people around me did as a "personality trait", and is that really 800K subscriber content creator worth peak humour anyway? Listening to her streams can be comfy but the flip side is that she is just incredibly awkward and half the time has trouble thinking of what to talk about in the first place. In collabs she relies on other people for topics for the most part (I noticed this a lot in the JP collabs, since she would basically just say "ohh-" and "sugee-" 90% of the time unfortunately.) I do enjoy her art streams but that only comes like once a week.
She is also incredibly slow with words; you notice time and time again how she's unable to come up with comebacks, or sometimes not even able to put together a coherent sentence, having long pauses between words and fumbling with words in general (
https://youtu.be/XMo7Zjww-d4?t=2875 for an example just from yesterday). You just have to cringe sometimes. In general I thought 4chan would have a field day with her and rip her apart like the piranhas they are, but I was surprised 4chan unanimously loved her.
My general thought was: she doesn't really have much to offer as an internet personality / creator. Ame can be a hype machine for years and Gura has experience being a drunk gremlin, but Ina's just... a normal person. So why would you watch her when you can go outside and talk to any one of the many art school Asian American / Canadian girls and have the same experience.
And then I realized -- the people in 4chan CAN'T go outside and meet normal girls. THAT's why they love her so much. They're sick of exaggerated and "fun" personalities and want to be able to talk to a normal, realistic, if not a slightly awkward girl, since they're literally unable to for physical or mental reasons but still want to have that experience of having normal friends. Ina fills that particular niche.
After that I was able to appreciate Ina's role a lot more. Still cringe when I watch her sometimes though.
