>>5938078Just speculating and pulling this out of my ass, but..
I think she did make the decision to leave on her own. I think she felt that 1) she has made enough money to live comfortably in her NEET lifestyle for the foreseeable future, and even if she did need income, at this point she has enough of a following that, if even a fraction of her members switch to her roommate channel, she'll get plenty to live on.
And 2) she views her presence as more of a detriment now than an asset. As a problem for her friends/coworkers. Which is sad, but isn't an unreasonable take, considering that whenever she collabed with anyone, or if they even bring her up in a stream, they got harassed too. And with EN pretty obviously being held back from working with her, that just reinforced that viewpoint.
I think everyone in EN probably would have worked with her prior to these past couple weeks given an opportunity. Kiara obviously wants to be similar to her. Calli would do it for the exposure at the least. Ina collabs with a bunch of her JP senpai, and Ame probably would too if not for the language barrier. Gura.. I have no idea with Gura, that meeting Coco during the grad stream was weird, but that could just be Gura being a weird antisocial person.
And Coco, IIRC, said that she had reached out to EN management and basically left on 'read'. Which I totally buy, the EN management team probably didn't want anything to stand in the way of continuing their huge success. From a business standpoint, it's understandable, even if I think it's a shitty thing to do when they owe their existence and success to Coco.
So while I think it was Coco who decided to leave, I think she came to that decision due to her own self image of being a toxic asset and that being reinforced by EN management. I don't know if that was her "creative differences" or Cover really was trying to reign her in and not allowing stuff beyond that.
Regardless, I think it genuinely was her trying to protect the other Holos from being harassed that was her primary motivation.
And if she's financially secure, there's not a whole lot for her to lose in reality. She's not dying, she can still meet up with all her Holo friends, even if they're sad they can't stream together. She can still live with Kanatan and by Suisei and Anemachi. And even if it's far less than she made before, she can still make a living by playing video games and chatting with fans online. So if she can take a dive and potentially help her friends without really losing that much, why not?
Whether it really helps or not, I guess we'll see. I still saw all the same zhang spam in FBK's after grad stream. I hope it really does work out.
Cover really does owe a huge chunk of their success to her though. They wouldn't have reached anywhere near the audience they have now if it hadn't been for her bridging the gap, especially in a time with so many people looking for something new online. I know I probably wouldn't have even started watching vtubers if it hadn't been for her helping to bring them to a western audience.
