>>86146817They've already shriveled and have been hobbling along for the past 8 months while Doki has continued to grow - and for that matter they've been hobbling along while LITERALLY ALL OTHER ACTIVE VTUBERS have been growing, including the general majority of the vtubers in Nijisanji proper.
Worth noting is the revenue numbers (picrel). Six consecutive quarters of overall revenue contraction; all of the past four and five of the past six have had contraction for streaming and commerce revenue, with the one quarter with an increase in those categories increasing by less than the margin of error. Five consecutive quarters of YOY shrinkage, with the last one being a loss of 50%. The EN branch needs to bring in more than 631.5 million JPY ($4.35m USD) in order to avoid having two consecutive quarters of -50% YOY growth, and they only have five weeks left to do it.
And keep in mind that these numbers are gross revenue, not net. They still have overhead they need to cover, including but not limited to the "salaries" of the EN staff/management, and the manufacturing costs of the cookie cutter merch they sell, and the printing press costs for the posters for their various promotions, and the vtubers' cut of the gross revenue (however meager that cut may be). And once the overhead costs involved with keeping the branch at least nominally alive start exceeding the branch's gross revenue, the branch's fate will be sealed.
How the company will handle the end of EN remains to be seen. Whether the closure is a merger, like what Anycolor previously did with Niji ID and KR; or a series of graduations over the course of a few weeks, as Cover did with Holo CN; or an immediate termination of all hands, as AC previously did with VTA; remains to be seen. But keep in mind that everyone in the company knows EXACTLY why the EN branch is falling, even if they have to pretend not to know so that the company does not lose face - this is why I'm at least a little bit doubtful that they'll merge the EN branch into the main branch.
Also the EN branch cost the JP golden boys their first NA concert. That's not gonna earn any of the soon-to-be-ex-EN talents any brownie points with any of the JP talents.
