>>85237512She's technically right, the semantics for a board that's mainly dominated by ESLs (myself included) and people with bias is what get people confused. So long post it is:
HololiveEN is the pioneer for the Western side of VTubing, and while Coco and Haachama had pushed the envelope for the interest for the Western Market, it was the EN branch that gave a bigger impact, interest and basically set some of the bases for what existed back in the day. Which it's a thing I'm seeing here, because people are getting confused with people that existed within the industry and might not think themselves as VTubers (for example Ironmouse) and those who had barely an impact (Moe) but where one of the first to set foot in the market, let me explain it.
Let's put an example of a town cemented on land that's already owned, like a village for example, early Western VTubers were that, at lot didn't say they were vtubers (in this example people who didn't belong to a specific, registered town), a lot were all over the place and a lot didn't had anything else to approach that closely, HololiveEN was the first company to set their eyes into this side of the market that was undefined and unexplored at its full potential. It redefined what VTubers were at that point in the west, and everyone wanted to be them, so a lot quickly jumped into VTubing in the hopes of joining, and even copy them or fully accepted the things they were establishing. That to me, it's a pioneer, they directed a new path for the western side of VTubers.
Outside of that, (and considering everyone is having this conversation) Melody and her pet project (VShojo) helped towards a new mindset born out of the revolutionized market that they were aiming for (yes, the Talent Freedom (tm)), besides Melody making a huge impact in Lewdtubing, and pioneering the Western side of it. Which again, it isn't a bad thing even if this board has a bias against them, since people that again, jumped because they saw the success of HololiveEN, would have try to join in to Holo, VShojo and many other indies at the time, helped to make an impact that you don't really need to join the big corpo to make it big, which branched the market and really helped to clean the pool for what would eventually come in future generations for those corporations, while impacting the indie environment, but are they founders of anything? No, just the first company western-based to ever been in the market, and they had their impact as well, and the talents that would join became pillars towards a side of VTubers that maybe you aren't a fan of, but they exist within the market, for every Nintendo there's a Sega, for every Android there was Blackberry, and so on, just because they exist in the same market, they have different appeals.
tl;dr She's right.
