I think EN2 is a mistake -- EN should only have been 1 generation with maybe a vSinger as a sixth member for a nice even number.
Why?
Hear me out: these are some legitimate reasons for concern.
1. EN gen 1 already exhausted the western market and fell off from the hype
This is probably the biggest issue. EN1 has already hit basically the market floor in demand, when they went viral on twitter for weeks on end in September/October, all the popular e-celebs and polfags picked them up, etc. etc. They were fucking huge and were growing astronomically.
You also had massive internet influencers/e-celebs shilling the EN girls, them continuously hitting front page on reddit, being referenced in anime meme pages and anime forums, etc.
They no doubt reached their peak popularity already in that first month or two of debuts. Gura was averaging 60k viewers pre-bug, hitting 70k on her first Minecraft stream and 130k on her second Karaoke stream. Ame was averaging 30k, Ina 20k, Mori 20k, Kiara 15k, etc.
Now look at them, they're clearly not as hyped and popular as they used to be, even if you factor in the YT bug (Gura, for example, was still averaging 30k~ on Soma after the bug and 40k on MC, now she gets 20k).
This is a problem for EN2, because EN1 has already locked down the "niche vtuber watchers" of the normalfag population that they already fully tapped into, which means that there will be serious amounts of overlap and conflict in their viewerbases, which brings me to point 2:
2. Massive overlap in numbers will lead to unmet expectations for EN2, low viewercounts, and reduced satisfaction
As a direct consequence of EN1 having already engaged the majority of the western audience and establishing stable communities within it, EN2 is really only going to compete within those established communities.
There is no room for EN2 to grow when it comes to tapping into new audiences, with a very small exception going towards possibly attracting viewers of other vtuber companies/indies, though that number is likely to be too small to be significant.
This competition will lead to a lot of overlap, with many of the newer fans of the current EN1 girls jumping ship, to feel more "exclusive" in their new EN2 fanbases as an "original fan", rather than a "bandwagon newbie".
This means that both groups, EN1 and EN2, will suffer. EN1 viewer counts and VOD views will drop, EN2 won't have as big viewer counts nor as rapid sub growth counts either, since most of the western audience has moved past the vtubing phase, and as much as you fags want to preach about how most girls don't care about numbers.. they care to an extent. Especially when EN2 starts seeing their performance falter in comparison to EN1 in september/october/november last year, they'll be very annoyed and upset. It'll create a natural rift in the company.
3. Hiring risk
Most of us have learned our lesson of doubting Cover's scouting capacity as was evident with EN1, but there is no doubt still some concern over EN2, especially when the population of interest is a particularly volatile one with regards to political activism and tasteless personality issues.
With likely 5 new members, the chance of an oddball being included in that group is greater than 0. Not to mention if a girl is found out ot have a current boyfriend, shit will get south for her real fast as discord and lolcow trannies latch onto it to destroy her career
Discuss
