>>109501445I dislike most management forced groups for the simple reason that it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of Hololive and what people like about it. To be fair, that's not an issue unique to Hololive, literally every company on Earth has a disconnect between the people running the company and the people actually working for the company but that's another conversation.
Hololive is built off of streams. Streams are how most fans find the talents, but more importantly streams are also how talents find each other.
Numerous other essayposts have been made about the importance of streams so I won't go too in depth here but basically many great and long lasting moments from Hololive have come from streams, those are the foundation for the magic of Hololive and they in turn, are what make concerts more special. That's one of the reasons I miss having a big unified Minecraft server that so many people used to play on, because it allowed for interactions between Holos. It gave us many cool interactions like Sora's famous "So you're an enemy", the Aqua Shion Neighbor Wars, and all the various construction companies. It's always a treat for the audience to see girls interact with each other especially if they don't usually or haven't before.
What management does with these collabs and forced groupings is they just take what they think will make money and sell and throw it against the wall, with no regard for chemistry or what makes Hololive great. Umisea, HoloWitches, Advent VS Justice, these are all forced pairings that originate from management just trying to make things happen, and as such, they are artificial and don't last long and don't do well. None of those can hold a candle to say Advent alone, or Shiranui Kensetsu which many people say was the highlight of 4th Fes. They met in Minecraft streams, streamed a lot together, and eventually formed their own group with their own songs. When 4th Fes rolled around, Suisei was on Day 2 while the rest were on Day 1. Everyone was disappointed but of course you can't have someone on both days. So Shiraken did their song as the last song of Day 1 and in the middle, Suisei suddenly appeared and sang with them. It was absolute kino and magic and the crowd was roaring even before she popped up because they knew. It really lent to the feeling of idol magic and "anything can happen".
I think FUWAMOCO are aware of this which is why they've made such an effort to have Advent collabs whenever they can. Advent is definitely the closest EN gen and one of the closest Hololive gens overall and that's because they constantly stream together. And then when you see them all on stage together singing and dancing, it's like "Fuck yeah, they're really doing it together."
But the audience has to see that first to buy into it. It's not exactly like the toddler mindset of "If I didn't see it, it didn't happen" but fans like to be involved. Of course Holos can absolutely bond and form friendships offstream, but that doesn't always work out like Marine and Ao, with fans even having a negative reaction to it. Although that could also be because Marine rarely streams anymore so every rare stream being a collab hurt her. (See how streams are still important?)
Things like Umisea and HoloWitches fail because it's just Cover taking members and seeing if they will go together, without regard to the history of the girls or actual reality. They're not the only ones to do this, Niji tried to make two of their organs sisters and that failed horribly. It's much better to build something up from streams first and then have it become an idol unit like Big 3, SMOK, Shiraken, etc.
Anyways Advent VS Justice sucks, if they want to do something with it, they should let the girls experiment first. For example I think a "small bau bau" Autofister vs FUWAMOCO would have way more chemistry and staying power than Advent vs Justice and I don't even like GG.
