>>86097295It's always been weird how sponsorships have been given out because Scarle used to get picked for almost every game sponsorship. She was playing Raid Shadow Legends almost every month because they kept sponsoring her.
Maria and Fulgur had literally nothing to do with hanamori but Fulgur is part of Noctyx who gets almost as much stuff as luxiem nowadays.
Obsydia got a JP jean sponsorship and you'll notice that luxiem were a part of the sanrio stuff too.
Lazulight got a tiny bit of a bone thrown to them because they were the first wave. Same reason lazulight got a chunk of the moon while obsydia got nothing despite both coming from the same exact audition pool. Same reason why myth is still chosen for everything including song sponsorships for stuff like One Piece, MGS and Suicide Squad Isekai despite council being only a year younger and advent having people like Nerissa who are professional singers.
>>86097601Also keep in mind just how many people in the Indie pool knew each other back then. Even Pomu knew elira way before elira was even a vtuber and Rosemi knew both of them and auditioned in the same pool as elira. A lot of them started to audition after they failed to get into hololive.
Millie and Enna flat out admitted they didn't even tell Elira they were auditioning and she kinda dreaded the fact that they got in. She spent several months actively avoiding collabs with them. Millie was also one of the bigger Indies at the time. She was growing exponentially and was and still is a hell of a singer. The fact that she came pre packed with someone else who was also a really good singer and had a YouTube channel with videos that had several hundred thousand views on them. Well, you'd be dumb not to take that.
Shu literally had a crush on Elira with his other account having a banner that said "Do It For Her" with Elira's face plastered all over it and followed her around like a little lost puppy dog for nearly an entire year.
And Uki was friends with both Pomu and Elira before joining. He auditioned at the same time as shu. Likely encouraged by shu and possibly Millie and Enna. Keep in mind that this was also way before the branch blew up, audition pools were still fairly low. After it blew up, hanamori members stopped showing up until Claude who auditioned after most of the popularity of the branch has been lost and had a semi large following beforehand.
