Holo EN management has proven once again that they are predictable and incompetent at innovation. Red Shota was an obvious pick-up but the rest of these feel lazy, real B-listers who feel like Niji benchwarmers rather than a Hololive line-up.
It's the same problem they've always had: they want the fagdollars and the fujodollars and the Chinese yumedollars, but they're ashamed to ask for them. Their indecision cripples them.
We get Clown Man, annoyingly heterosexual voice with no anime voice acting at all, but because he does comedy bits like an early 2000s Adult Swim show without the 'politically incorrect' bits, sure, throw him in as a "brotuber".. except wait, we want Luxiem dollars. Okay, give him a fujobait model!
Kusogaki Shota. In his PL he was anti-parasocial, preachy like he was on debut, and relatively gay.. except wait, we want girl money too! So he gets told by management to make multiple references on-stream to liking girls to smooth out any risks of him being a 'designated fag' who can't farm girl dollars, which is both completely unbelievable and pushes away some of his potential gay audience.
We get a fucking unapologetic ES screaming weeb.. except wait, we don't want a dark skinned guy shitting up the group image like Sana or something! So we get some stupid lore and he gets dressed up like a goddamn Genshin Impact 4-star. I thought the model was going to maybe be a girl up until I finally heard that voice. What a weird combo.
Finally, there's the Vox Akuma stand-in.. except wait, he's already immediately self-conscious about being parasocial and having horny fans, and if he's anything like his PL, he's going to go menhera from being called Mr. Cum over and over and burn out faster than Vox.
If management just fucking committed in one direction or another, it'd be fine. But here's the snag - brotuber is a hard niche to monetize. They lucked out with Vesper. The rest of the boys? Confused messes. Magni's model is fucking trash, he even vented about it on his PL. He can't fujobait or BFE or anything looking like that. The other two boys are completely forgettable. Altare and.. what, Regis? I don't remember. Who cares. This is a blog post. I'm just so disappointed in who filled the bench after Red Shota, and how hard management is trying to force these boys into the Chinese market (note the debut times), appealing as wide as possible and missing a real audience in the process..
