Quoted By:
NijiEN qrd
The first 2 waves were called Lazulight and Obsydia. While the talent of each individual was less than holo, their social-dynamics were excellent. It was genuinely great watching their collabs. One of the things that made them special was they seemed to be genuinely friends, and would often pop into each other's streams uninvited to chat, leading to all kinds of impromptu situations.
The problems started coming with Ethyria, which was filled with nepotism hires. They came in with firm expectations for how much money they wanted to make, and when they underperformed, they started leeching however possible. They also started complaining to management that they were "forgotten" leading to management shelling out absurd amounts of benefits to them.
Luxiem was the first male wave, and it went viral in China, creating a massive surge in popularity. NijiEN used to have an 8k box, but Luxiem smashed through that, all of a sudden big collabs had a 60k+ box. They made so much money it was ridiculous.
Ethyria had dollar signs in their eyes, and all shipped themselves with a male member for popularity. The other girls were feeling left out, so they started doing the same. This began severely eroding the male fanbase, although it wasn't noticeable yet since they were the minority.
In mid-2022 ILuna released. It was intended to follow up the success of Luxiem and Noctyx, the first mixed-gender wave.
They got more viewers on their debut than any wave in history, they could have launched the branch to new heights. But they were such a catastrophic failure, within a few weeks they were all 3-views.
It goes without saying the hiring decisions were bad. But it seems like some horny manager was pushing the girls to fulfill his fetishes, encouraging them to be "femdom". This lead to some really awkward "banter" and turned off the female fanbase in a big way. The male models were also unattractive and undersized, female coomers weren't interested. Since the male audience was a thing of the past, the wave had no leg to stand on and collapsed.
XSoleil was the next mixed-gender wave. 2 of the girls were random JP nepohires, the fact these people were hired displayed how out-of-touch management was with the EN market. The other girl was the one everyone was excited for, and she was fired shortly after debut because of some petty manager flexing his power. Only one of the males was appealing, and he was a coomerbait Vox-ripoff who had seemingly no sense of morality.
At this time, the talents were expressing extreme dissatisfaction with management. The girls were mad that they seemed to be promoting the males over everyone else. They insisted to be included in the ARLive, and this caused the event to be cancelled since it was too many people. Then the males had a primadona meltdown since they had already recorded for the event, and started a protest by not streaming.
At this time Pomu was planning on graduating, but decided to stay for her "friends". Soon she would realize what a mistake that was.
New online rules in China, plus the tantrum of the males, plus numerous cuckholdry scandals, caused the audience to start imploding. It had been eroding ever since ILuna, but nothing like this. Just as quickly as they surged, over the course of 2023 the numbers catastrophically dropped. Ethyria leeches started having a mental breakdown over their lost revenue, and created numerous dramas to regenerate their popularity. This is why the Secret GC stream happened, along with numerous other scandals.
As the numbers dropped, members started having more mental health breakdowns. Nina graduated. Pomu officially filed for graduation. It was all breaking apart. Finally they pushed Selen's buttons one too many times, and she attempted suicide, in the process exposing that NijiEN was ruled by a nasty clique of insiders who were buddy-buddy with managers.
Selen's redebut as Doki began the indie renaissance, luckily Pomu got out in time to join her. Over 2024, the branch debuted one final lackluster wave which got criminally low numbers, and stopped all debuts.
The company actually promised the branch all sorts of fantastic goodies in 2024. But since NijiEN was reputation, even this couldn't kickstart any popularity. The final big giveaway is happening this month, EN is getting a starring role in Nijifes. Some talents have been clinging on this whole time for this moment. Afterwards though, there will probably be a lot of graduations, and the branch might be folded entirely.
In general, NijiEN started out as Hololive-inspired. Cute interactions between girls, who were maybe a bit edgier in their jokes. But by the end, it became utterly disgusting, nasty twitch humor, piss and shit jokes, mixed-gender offcollabs. It strayed so far from its original self and became unwatchable. It's no surprise the numbers are still dropping even now.
