First impressions of EN2 before their streams start for today -
For me, the most important thing is not feeling like I'm directly being pandered to. V-tubers are literally designed to pander, but it's a suspension of disbelief sort of deal:
Ascending order of watchability:
Kronii - Love her design and voice, but nothing else, which kind of sucks because she had a pretty based taste in anime and manga. The Kuudere narcissist archetype is a huge put off. Some people are in to that, I get it, but she was honestly my least favorite of the bunch to watch. It felt like she was someone from corporate had to go down to a local McDonalds to give a speech to all the autist burger-flippers about how cumming in the deep fryer is a health hazard. It didn't feel like she wanted to be there, but had to for a paycheck. I can already tell she will be wildly successful and all the coomers who search the "emotionless sex" tag will drown her in akasupers(emen).
Baelz - This one isn't about pandering, but her voice and mannerisms just really don't do it for me. She simultaneously over-exaggerates her reactions for clippers and overly self-censors. Potential for growth if she does something other than Zatsudans and Kusoges and tones it down/up where appropriate.
Fauna - Wrote her off as another soft-speaking ASMR whore to be sent to the glue farm with all the others, but her spore stream was low-key enjoyable. Probably because its a game she enjoyed and had experience with. As long as she keeps that up, she's a serious contender for background stream despite the massive ASMR debuff that she has.
Mumei - I have biases here because shes has my favorite design and voice of the bunch, so honestly I don't think I can rank her yet. Her streams have been too short and too outside her stated interested to get any sort of gauge on what kind of streamer she will be. That being said, her Journey stream was a big improvement over the debut, and I can only see her trend upward as she gets more comfortable. The growl/scream she did when someone unexpectedly joined her Journey stream did funny things to me. I get Ayame vibes from her, pure daughter-wife material. I hope we see her geek out over history or something though so she doesn't just become another cute face in the crowd.
Sana - Least favorite design, neutral-positive on the voice, unironically the best streamer of EN 2 out of the gate. Streams only things that she cares about, actually good at games, got super invested into the game she was playing even if it wasn't necessarily right up her alley (spending 30+ minutes trying to get a strawberry in celeste), and it seemed like she was actually comfortable streaming. Her Celeste stream was probably the best EN2 one so far. The metaphorical and literal dark horse of EN2. If she can fight off the GuraAme timeslot debuff and Susan's raging racism, I can see her going far. At the very worst, she will have a smaller, but very dedicated ina-esque viewerbase.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.