>>37153776Anon, I don’t know if this is bait or not. I’m going to assume it isn’t and give an honest answer, because this is actually an interesting question.
HoloEN was the first major EN corpo to exist. It came out at a time when people thought of vtubing as exclusively a JP thing. Plenty of indies tried being ENtubers, but nobody gave a shit about them because trying to do a JP thing in English is cringe.
Then HoloEN came along, and it had legitimacy because Cover is Japanese. It made ENtubing sound like not a joke, and it was the only major game for almost a year. Brand loyalty is a powerful thing, this has been known for a long time. Once you get someone on a brand, they’re hooked, and it’s hard to get them to change. It’s true for fucking toothpaste, of course it’s true for vtubers. Early JP vtubers were all “indies” in a sense, and it was through informal groups like the four heavenly kings and stuff that people tried out new vtubers.
After the new meta became streaming, Hololive was how many people were introduced to vtubers. Therefore, once it became possible to watch vtubers in English, most of them migrated to HoloEN. This board was created specifically as a containment zone for holotards who watched EN, so it’s always had that bias.
In order to get people to switch brands, you need both a push factor and a pull factor. Other corpos existing now is not a pull factor in itself. A corpo associated with Japan and that’s already famous is. It just so happens that HoloEN is starting to collapse as people are finally beginning to realize that it’s overrated and not any different from the other EN corpos, who tend to have less complacent talents, better rigging for models, more flexibility in the kind of content they make, and none of the JP clout to fall back on (so they don’t have any delusions that they’re better than they are).
What you are seeing right now is the push factor making many anons seethe because they don’t like the feeling. Look at all the posts saying “vtubing is dying” because HoloEN is reclining. In reality, HoloEN dying would be the best thing that ever happened to EN vtubing because it would leave no illusions about them being better than anyone else.
Anons are saying all this because they’re convinced that HoloEN’s chuubas are killing vtubing when A.) they could always watch JP again or B.) watch a smaller corpo that makes content geared towards them. I do think it’s a passing phase, just one that’ll take awhile. Corpos that can successfully poach fans who are tired of HoloEN will probably start to incline.
Meanwhile, it’s pretty clear to me: anything associated with EN has to naturally become separate from JP, because the algorithm will naturally cut you off from JP stuff once you watch EN because of all the EOPs. Any corpo who wants to have two branches that stay cohesive need to hire mostly or only bilingual talents for collabs to maintain the brand unity. HoloEN was useful in proving EN vtubing could be viable, but it’s outlived its usefulness and is now a cancer on the scene. The sooner anons realize ENtubing doesn’t need HoloEN anymore, the better they’ll feel.
