>>2223296It's a combination of things:
-They are a male group in what was originally a female-only group, which rubbed people the wrong way and made them get a lot of hate for that, similarly to what happenned when IdolMaster created it's own male group.
-On top of that they never benefited that much from being part of Hololive as cover launched them with a strict ban on interactions with the main branch, which went as far as forbidding the girls from so much as mentioning the stars, which hurt their growth significantly as even though they were part of the company they didn't really benefit from the brand nor seemed like they were actually part of it, instead feeling more like they were a completely separate group.
-They also debuted around the time when Hololive's 3rd gen debuted too, which started to lean more into idol and GFE stuff as well as shipping between the female talents, and the company started to see more success because of it to the point that it was starting to become more self sustaining, which resulted in several of the girls from earlier gens following on those footsteps and collabing less and less with males, something that continues to this day and creating a community that is even less interested in male talents than before.
-All of that resulted in the Stars still feeling like outsiders even when the ban was lifted and the branches merged into what is now Hololive Productions as the girls continued to pretty much ignore their existence, with only a few caring enough to try and give them a hand, on top of Cover still not giving the boys enough attention and exposure which only continued to hurt their growth, though they have been putting some effort in fixing that recently, and the people that the group attracted not really being the kind to pay much attention to male talents, at least in the JP side as overseas people are more open to male talents and are thus more willing to actually watch the boys and support them.
All of that resulted in Holostars not having much domestic audience, and even overseas their audience is still relatively small compared to what the girls have, as people aren't exposed to them as much as the girls and there still being people overseas who will prefer to watch cute anime girls over cute anime boys, but still being more people willing to give tham a chance, which results in the Star having more overseas fans that JP ones.
