>>34542602EN3 will never be able to meet the hopes (or even just the expecations). Too many things are different, both inside the vtuber landscape and outside in the real world.
- no lockdown buff: Myth wasn't such a breakout succes (just) because of their own talents, but also because they came at a fortunate time when the whole world was shut inside and only had online entertainment. This won't be the case going forward
- novelty is gone: For many EOPs, Myth were the first vtubers they could actually watch full streams of without having to only rely on translated clips. But now, the initial novelty of the gimmick "wow, a LIVE ANIME GIRL I can watch play minecraft and actually understand and interact with?! That's so fresh and unique, liked and subscribed!!!" is long gone and routine and boredom set in, as more and more people realize they are basically just normal streamers with an avatar, and treat it as such.
- more alternatives: even if you are still interested in vtubers, unless you are just a bubbled brand drone, you now have more alternatives to watch then ever before. When Myth came out, it was pretty much the only game in town, for a time, but now audiences have more choice than ever and are fractured as a result, and can disperse to other vtubers they may like better instead of just having to stick with the limited underwhelming selection one corpo puts out.
The hype already cooled off with Council, who wasn't able to replicate the growth Myth had (for reasons above and others), and there is little hope to think the trend would reverse with EN3, especially with all the recent management fuckery and general downward vibe surrounding the product.
Sure, people like to cope that Cover has "magical scouting abilities" (roru) or that "look, HoloJP managed to find a golden generation in their 3rd gen and grew again, s-surely this will r-repeat again, r-right?" (rumao), but it looks more and more like Cover doesn't have any special sauce skills and just gotten lucky a few times (didn't make as many retarded mistakes as their earlier competitors, had fortunate outside circumstances) but now their luck has run out and their branch management is instead doubling down on making retarded mistakes they avoided for so long.
