>>40398951This didn't just happen for Renai Circulation, it also happened for her Only My Railgun cover. The fact that hundreds of thousands of people couldn't tell that it wasn't the 'real' singer singing it is testament enough to her ability. Many Japanese singers became successful even though they simply sound competent, if not very distinguishable. IryS at the very least meets that standard. She's definitely no Aimer, Ado or Lisa with a thoroughly distinctive voice you can hear from the first note, but come on, you can barely tell Minami Kuriyabashi apart from Nana Mizuki with half the pop stuff they sing. The standard she has reached is more than high enough for it to be nowhere near the limiting factor.
On the other hand, I have no end of criticism for the songs that have been pushed out. At this point I have zero doubt its her management or music team that is overwhelmingly the cause of the issue. Even in the worst-case scenario there's only so much you can fuck up a song as a singer - and she's not doing that. It's easy to do a thought experiment - if someone else covered her music, would the cover annihilate the original? That's not going to happen. No holos are snapping them up for karaoke like hotcakes. They simply aren't memorable pieces. Suisei isn't going to do a cover of Ai no Jikkai and get even five million views.
So many of her songs try to do too much and trip over their own feet, whether in lore-related bullshit or musical complexity. It's so difficult for the average listener to connect with their lyrics - they only create any emotional resonance if you're well-versed in a strange kayfabe version of this 'Hope' nephilim character that bears the faintest resemblance to the actual vtuber, and even for that barely anything has been revealed. They just expect you to, I don't know, do critical literary analysis of the song lyrics so you can piece it together like Dark Souls lore. They're so up their asses about the lore that they made a last name for her and then hid it because that would add to the mystique or something, who the fuck knows.
Frankly, I was flabbergasted when Moment of my Life released. It's one of the most muddled, over-complicated pieces by far, and I thought they couldn't get worse than See the World. It's certainly not a catchy song. Try to hum it after listening to it once - it's impossible. In it, IryS sounds like she tries her damnedest to carry it, but it rampages all over the place with no easily discerned structure or direction. The nicest thing you can say for it is that it's certainly a musical experience. It leaves the listener feeling like IryS sounds in the song - lost and desperate even while singing her heart out.
Well, maybe it's the composer? But the guy who composed this is Ren Morimoto, who also composed Asuiro Clearsky, Plasmagic Seasons, and Interact Fantasia. The people who made See the World were Takuya Sakai and Taishi - who made Suisei's 自分勝手Dazzling. Yet See the World and Moment of my Life share that uncanny lack of direction and sound more alike to each other than their respective composers' other, vastly more successful work for Hololive.
I wouldn't be surprised if IryS' songs are being filtered through some sort of committee. When broken up, each part of the song sounds coherent and makes sense on its own, but become exhausting and befuddling when lumped together. The lyrics are bland and inoffensive, but thoroughly unmemorable when taken as a whole, each passage seeming like it wants to shove off the responsibility of emotional satisfaction to the next passage.
