>>106689164I would argue that western idols are, as they always have been, based on the greek idea of muses. people who spark inspiration in others, and people who you feel emotions for even if you dont know them in person.
The japanese idol is kind of based off the idea of the Idol Journey, where Oshi is like supporting that journey. To incentivise that process of oshi-katsu being more popular in the west, you need to have more of a Cinderella story, rags to riches thing going on, aka the Hero's Journey. And while I would say Japanese Idols are representative of their fans' interests, those interests are fundamentally Japanese. North American Idols should be the same, having fundamentally NA interests.
I think the people who got the closest to being "NA Idols" in Hololive were Ame, Mumei, Gura, and Fauna.
Ame: Charity, DIY, "ameway" / Broadway, (South)
Mumei: Emo, Horror, Hyperfixation style attachment, (North)
Gura: T-swift style songs, Early Millennial Style memes, Bipolarism, visual/metaphoric communication, (East)
Fauna: Cozy, 2010's early internet, gap moe (cute and sexy), (West)
these girls probably added more to western soft power than all of Hollywood for the last 7 years, or at least, from my perspective.
The reason why people want the vtubers to become idols is because the previous generation of idols died/retired, and no one came to replace them. There is a vacuum.
Will mint and densetsu.exe be able to fill this void? I'm not sure, I think they could be aware of this issue though. Just look at how Mint operated as Pomu, she knows how to get people invested into a meme. The way it's set up is heavily nu-Akiba style chika idol coded (based off my understanding of dearsqn's twitter page), but from just the trailer alone, you can tell that the lyrics arent just random positive stuff, but actual coherent thoughts. Also the music itself I think might be lightly inspired by macross, but my ears are still green when it comes to that sort of thing. Robotech was big in America, you know?
