>>49389600>>49389884I think there's two factors at play here.
One is the old AKB48 model. When you market your group as a collective, and it grows big enough, even the loss of big personalities doesn't shake things up that much. AKB has churned through hundreds of members and yet the collective identity of AKB48 remains. It makes your entertainment company resistant to scandal and to members quitting, and ironically lets you give members a degree more autonomy - if you fuck up, we're still safe.
The other is yes, that many fans are fans of Hololive, and not so much the talents, whether they realize it or not. Hololive, and Cover, are entertainment groups, and they produce a product that isn't JUST virtual streamers, a la Nijisanji. In an interview with business insider, he's talked about his desire to make a virtual youtuber group that felt like "live anime", comparing Hololive to K-ON. Where vtubers on twitch are often direct and don't put on much of a facade, don't try any amount of kayfabe, Hololive girls have leaned more and more into character acting over time, HoloX is basically just an anime premise. They're 2D waifus brought to life.
And all this is dependent on the company. Not only do the company's resources allow them to create these "real time waifus" through expensive events and media, that cement them into a semi-fictional setting, but they also impose conditions on behavior that make them less "3DPD". How many times have you heard someone say something along the lines of "Thank hololive for teaching me that women are better off with strict moral rules" on this board?
Whether you think this is a good thing or not is up to you, but Hololive isn't just a medium for the girls to express themselves. They're the ones creating the product, and the girls are just an ingredient.
