>>40507423I'm not really deep into the RL japanese idol stuff, I don't hate it of course, I mostly just tolerate it. I'm superficially familiar with some of it simply by coming from general weeb scenes before and you pick up some stuff through simple osmosis (like for example "oh this anime OP was sung by so and so idol group" etc). I even like some individual songs from a few idol groups, but I never bothered to go deeper into them or become an actual "idol fan".
When Kiara talks about idol stuff, it's okay because she can often present some interesting stories that entertain you even if you don't know/care about the actual idols themselves, but I mostly just treat it like I would treat my girlfriend who's blabbering on about her favorite netflix shows I don't really care about (ironically another thing Kiara does as well). I pretend to be interested for niceties' sake, nod and smile, but mostly I'm just "happy that she's happy" about it.
It's "unfortunate" that Kiara is pretty alone in liking idols in HoloEN and thus has no one to really share her passion with (so I appreciate her getting to bond with JPs or indies over it), but also from a viewer standpoint, it's probably a net "debuff". Unlike in Japan where female idols can have a majority male audience (and thus as a talent you can appeal to and bond with male idol fans over your shared love of idols), in the west japanese idols are really niche and no one really cares for them. Most western men, even those in the weeb scene, aren't really deep interested in japanese idols, from my observation in the west it's mostly a niche female fandom (i.e. cosplay/convention scene girls who think idols are really cute and want to be ones themselves, basically Kiara and people similar to her). But given that her vtuber audience is probably around 90% male, and those don't really care for all that idol talk, it's not really a "winning" topic that appeals to the general audience. The other EN girls have interests and personalities that are much closer to the general western male fan, for example videogames (Kiara is not really an actual gamer, and whatever her tastes are doesn't really appeal to the general HoloEN male audience) or general western netculture stuff of which Kiara is also lacking given how she spent her formative years rather on jp netculture which her western audience doesn't understand or care for.
Again, this isn't meant as a knock on her (on the other hand you could also say this makes her at least "unique" and stand out from the other girls), but it's just probably another factor of why she doesn't really have the greater mainstream appeal of the other girls.
