>>23859221to start off with, just a perfect storm of basically everything
the previous life (of which people were speculating about before she even debuted, but by no means did it guarantee that those people would decide to follow gura), loli, memes from debut, good voice and on top of that good singing, starting off with a well known song, appealing to the japanese audience (often times unintentionally (or was it intentional all along?)), popular clips resulting in a youtube algorithm feedback loop; similar to what happened with vtubers like korone or miko or pekora (and by extension others in hololive/ other vtubers) if you watched basically anything anime related on youtube around late 2019 going into 2020. and of course the pandemic, but vtubers were growing in popularity before the pandemic. and most things on the internet saw increased viewership at that time of course. it's still one of the factors i feel is important to include, though
she's not dumb by any means and i know for a fact she would still be successful if she joined hololive at a different time, or never even joined at all. but so many things were done perfectly (whether intentionally or unintentionally)
for example, her duolingo stream was executed in a near perfect manner to increase her popularity among japanese fans and rocket her into mainstream popularity in Japan, going outside of the vtuber sphere. you may get that stream recommended to you frequently even
still, probably because japanese fans are watching it again and again to this day.
i've seen a few people here and there say shit like "she didn't work as hard as the others to get it, so she doesn't deserve/didn't earn it", but you don't just achieve 3mil+ going on 4 mil through dumb luck. the pandemic is the only factor out of her control. the success came as a result of her and her efforts, as it does for everyone else. the algorithm may seem like luck, but even if an algorithmic feedback loop happens, it still has to be something that catches people's attention and that they actually want to watch and share around for other people to see it. otherwise, the content just loses momentum and doesn't go out into recommendations for other people to watch: that's how the algorithm works.
another thing, it takes years to learn how to sing. it's not something anyone just knows how to do, even if they seem "naturally talented" or started at a young age. they still had to spend hours, days, weeks, months, and years, honing that ability. especially to do it well in another language they don't even speak, which I have seen mentioned many times in the comments of her japanese songs covers.
anyway just a few things i noticed
