>>1166670I mean, they are Chinese. Of course a Chinese site will be their bread and butter. Because they're both strongest in a language that filters out foreigners, their appeal was basically limited to being a sideshow that could bust out hidden depths and surprise clip watchers when speaking in their native language. But as esl streamers with no big corporate or agency backing, failing in a foreign market on a foreign site is a matter of course without serious star power or weeb appeal. And since weebs don't like China, their bilingualism was always just a novelty rather than a buff.
tldr They were at best a good trojan horse to export Chinese language, culture and ideas by winning over hearts and minds in cooperation with a trustworthy brand. The branding is what was needed for them to succeed, which they had a chance at in a market where English speaking hololive vtubers were well received. The chongs basically fucked themselves by getting their representatives canned and limiting their appeal to a website westerners don't even use. If communist stupidity hadn't caused their own self inflicted harm, the English speaking members of Hololive CN could've avoided their current irrelevance. People would've cared if their country wasn't so shit, and that's actually the tragedy of it all.
As vtubers, they're not actually bad voice actresses. Just filtering for anyone who hasn't been eased into watching Chinese vtubers, which a lot of people (myself included) haven't been due to China constantly shooting itself in the foot because communism values authority and cronyism over competence.
