/vt/ - Virtual Youtubers

[Anonymous No.]

How did Cover grow from being a 2view company to the biggest vtubing company in the world? What made them reach the popularity that they have today? Which talents helped the most in growing the company? I am talking pre-EN here or ID, when Hololive was still trying to make a name for itself in Japan. Is it really all thanks to Gen0 like some people on here are saying?

[Anonymous No.]

Nigger

[Anonymous No.]

Hell of alot of Luck and a little bit of talent

[Anonymous No.]

>>12858470
And where did the talent come from? Gen0? Are they to thank for Cover's growth?

[Anonymous No.]

>>12858378
A lot of luck, Yagoo personal interviews, and free money from supas

[Anonymous No.]

>>12858378
quick tl;dr on incline moments up to September 2020 (holoEN release), pretty sure I missed a few too
Siro's Christmas stream broke
Azur Lane collab
Miko says nigger
HoloFantasy (Gen 3)
Matsuri bandaids clip (and, unironically, clip explosion)
Fubuki Scatman
Gen 4 and increased English outreach
Stay-at-home measures
PekoMoon
Eekum Bokum

[Anonymous No.]

>>12858628
fuck, I didn't see "pre-ID" which is IIRC after gen 3; basically cut everything past "HoloFantasy" and there you go

[Anonymous No.]

>>12858628
I'm not seeing Haachama or Matuli anywhere in that list anon, something is wrong.

[Anonymous No.]

Covid and Miko nigger clip

[Anonymous No.]

>>12858677
>Matsuri bandaids clip
Blindchama...

[Anonymous No.]

>>12858713
I'm not saying Haachama in that list, something is wrong.

[Anonymous No.]

>>12858677
>Matsuri bandaids clip
I forgot Haachama overseas arc, granted. Cooking arc is mid-2020, so doesn't quite count under OP's requisites.
Also, since we're on the topic: unironically, ASMR helped a lot in the early days. Choco and Mel helped a lot there... until YT put an end to that.
Earlier than that? Sora and Roboco held the fort. I remember a sub timeline where the two of them were basically keeping things afloat.

[Anonymous No.]

great scouting and a fuckton of luck

[Anonymous No.]

>>12858791
So it really isn't that much because of Gen0 that Hololive blew up? I thought they were the biggest reasons for Cover's success

[Anonymous No.]

>Nigga
Word that can ruin or save careers

[Anonymous No.]

>>12858378
Soras miracle made by far the biggest difference early on
Everyone that came after that was already getting several hundred viewers or over a thousand right after their debuts (except Suisei and Miko because they were not actually part of Hololive but they got their boost after they joined)

[Anonymous No.]

>>12858628
>>12858670
your timeline is all messed up
ID wasn't a thing until April 2020

[Anonymous No.]

>>12858670
ID was after gen 4 so only eekum bokum happened after ID

[Anonymous No.]

Thanks to black people.

[Anonymous No.]

>>12858873
Without Sora's 'christmas miracle', they would've stopped dead in their tracks, and without Miko blowing up in the way she did, Hololive wouldn't have penetrated the EN market as much as they did, so I'd say they all played a role.

[Anonymous No.]

>>12858873
Anon, to be perfectly honest...
Gen 0 is not an official label. They range from "from the beginning" (Sora) to "just after the start" (Roboco), and "between 1 and 3" (AZKi, Suisei, Miko).
As for what they contribute... no doubt they are solid talents, but of them, the only one who contributed to big growth was Miko, and that one was by accident. The rest are more gradual in terms of growth.

[Anonymous No.]

>>12858937
>>12859000
My timeline reps are officially screwed. For some reason I thought holoID was older than it actually is. A lot happened in 2020, it seems.

[Anonymous No.]

>>12859066
And what about Gen1?

[Anonymous No.]

>>12858378
The ones that became martyrs. The meme fox friend's Scatman clip. Aloe, Coco, and Haato they kept the spotlight on Hololive through publicity. Now, that they're gone Hololive is sort of coasting through the remains of the hype that those three built.

[Anonymous No.]

ASMR from Choco and Roboco were relatively big draws back in 2019. The majority of asmr archives from that era got scrubbed from the channels thanks to youtube policy changes. The asmr days aren't as important as other moments on the list, but they did contribute to overall growth.

[Anonymous No.]

>>12859138
Mel held out with early ASMR, but she has always treated her Hololive career as a side thing.
Fubuki, see Scatman. She's also more of a "solid ground" kind of streamer. Unironically the "face" of Hololive, if you ask me; Sora's a bit too "clean" and idol-focused for that.
Haachama... well, see overseas arc. Admittedly her early days are what I'm sketchiest on.
Aki, unfortunately, missed most of the incline moments and got left behind for the most part.
Matsuri, besides the clips... well, her unorthodox content was a pretty big draw.
>>12859279
I forgot that Roboco did a lot of ASMR (and still does, mind). Ugh, my mind's going at this rate.

[Anonymous No.]

>>12859353
> Admittedly her early days are what I'm sketchiest on.
What do you mean?

[Anonymous No.]

Nigga moment wasn't as relevant as people make it out to be.
That happened in early 2019 and while it got Miko a bunch of EOP fans that watched all her GTA streams it didn't really affect anyone else. Most of those people probably didn't know Miko was even part of Hololive.
The actual growth in the West started much later.

[Anonymous No.]

>>12859383
I don't really have accurate memory of what she did back in 2019, let alone 2018. Gonna have to ask older anons, but I doubt you'd find much luck here. Unironically, you'd have a better chance asking in the remaining Hololive general on /jp/.

[Anonymous No.]

>>12859497
Eh, I might as well take it as she didn’t really do anything notable besides bringing in an english speaking audience along with coco, which is still an insane feat.

[Anonymous No.]

>>12859910
I think Haachama got her notoriety when she started doing crazy things, particularly that Feet Review.

[Anonymous No.]

>>12860101
But that was much later on, wasn’t it? Hololive was still pretty big by then

[Anonymous No.]

>>12858873
Sora was easily the most important and also the most popular member until like the start of 2019. After that is when other girls like Fubuki, Aqua and the rest of Hololive in general started to take the spotlight instead.

[Anonymous No.]

-Christmas Miracle, that is, all four Heavenly Kings had their computers/internet break down on Christmas and the last one of them, Siro, directed her viewers which by now was basically everyone to watch Sora. (Actually probably not all that important in the greater scheme of things since Sora's success had already made Cover think about expanding their marketing department, but the sudden influx of viewers for Sora made the decision to found Hololive happen sooner rather than later.)

-Fubuki was relatively popular in her previous life and managed to bring her fans from NND over and was able to draw Top 20 crowds right when Sora's star fell. She also did a lot of low-effort high-viewership shitpost clips like Scatman. Roboco and Choco were also able to draw good crowds with their ASMR even when Nijisanji dominated otherwise.

-Entum, Brave Group, Upd8 and .Live all managed to self-destruct leaving their viewers look for new chuubas and a lot seemed to end up with Hololive instead of Nijisanji. In hindsight, 774's decision to split their chuubas into different groups by their focus (ASMR, variety streamers, musicians etc.) that might as well have been from a different company probably crippled their ability to grow. As to why people ended up with Hololive instead of Niji, well, first of all it's important to remember not all of them did. However, Hololive's smaller pool of chuubas seem to have been more approachable than Nijisanji and the "happy family" image they cultivated seem to have made new viewers become quickly invested in the whole group as opposed to Niji or 774 where people would watch the chuubas they like not care about the rest. Fubuki and Matsuri seem to have been the locker room leaders creating this company culture. Somewhere, somehow, Hololive was also able to establish a superchat culture that landed almost all of them on top 50 most superchatted worldwide, but I'm not sure when this actually happened. Might've come with Rushia and Coco.

-Aqua became "the Niji-killer". She was the first Holo to hit top 10 monthly average viewers with any consistency. (I read once a claim that she was boosted by constant doomposting of Nijinumberfags which is probably not true, but I mention it here because it would be hilarious if it was.)

-Gen 3 (Initially Marine and Noel were the biggest, later Pekora and Marine with Rushia the eternal third, but also the Supacha Queen) was a huge success and streamed consistently when Niji's old guard was too busy with offline events and practice to stream whereas the new hires were streaming inconsistently. There was also an offline party (early 2020?) with the new people that was, horror of horrors, co-ed and afterwards the girls kept quiet whereas the dudes were trolling fans about being jealous. This seems to have been something of a final straw and it sent a surprisingly sizable portion of Nijifans into a fit. Not just unicorns, although that appears to be when Nijigirls tanked their viewerships, but also numberfags who seethed hard about their streamers just fooling around offline while Gen 3 was working their asses off. I've seen some claims that Hololive's most annoying unicorns and numberfags came from Nijisanji, actually. Nijifags of course will deny this and are probably at least somewhat right in pointing at .Live as the source of Holocorn. But Nijicorn were once very real.

-Curry Meshi sponsorship seems to have been really big both as a deal and as a success, and convinced sponsors that Hololive is worth investing in. This set up future sponsorships.

[Anonymous No.]

>>12860987
-The Azur Line collab was huge and brought in Chinese viewerbase and Chinese clippers who also uploaded English translations on Youtube, this set the ball rolling for Holo dominating the algorithm for non-Japanese viewers. However, by and large, Nijisanji actually got more clips until after Hololive's breakout success and clippers simply jumped ship after they saw which clips got views. That does mean the Chinese clippers were very important for Hololive early on and they worked hard at translating as much stuff as they could. Also, for whatever reason some Hololive clips went very viral: Lots of stuff by Pekora and Aqua, those aforementioned Fubuki shitposts and some other clips, Miko saying nigger, Matsuri band-aids, Rushia's boing-boing, and Suisei getting discovered by her parents had a lot of views early on and it's probably not a coincidence that Suisei and Miko have "always" had a huge foreign following. As a sidenote, there were and are a lot of messages on 4chan and elsewhere complaining about overseas Nijifans being elitist in the clip comment sections and forums; it does seem that the behaviour of the fanbase made quite a few people turn away from Niji and embrace Holo, whose fans were at least seen as being happy to answer dumb newfag questions and shill their oshis. (Also, it seems that /hlg/'s Bullysanji meme got some legitimate traction amongst lurking Redditors and Twittertards and they spread it making clueless audiences further shirk away from Nijisanji. The funny thing here is that I remember there was a schizo Nijifag on /vyt/ who bragged about "trolling" /hlg/ by posting it and watching them swallow the narrative hook, line and sinker. Again, maybe not that big of a deal, but it would be absolutely hilarious if a single deranged Nijifag in his misguided attempts to own Holofags caused major problem for his true oshi, Anykara.)

-Also, Nijisanji got foreign interest earlier, but for whatever reason they didn't feel that it was worth pursuing and some of their chuubas may or may not have outright tried to expel English-speaking viewers. However, Haachama went all in on the eigo pandering (also Haachama Cooking) and Korone to a lesser extent (Eekum Bookum and other clips were very big); eventually Coco kinda sorta followed suit by translating Asacoco and doing Reddit Meme Reviews. However, initially Holos were kinda like Nijis in that they didn't seem to know what to do with the foreigners and tried to ignore them and this included Coco. After she did, Coco was extremely important in introducing audiences to Hololive through those two programmes. Her inspiring Hololive to play ARK seems to have also been one of those not-immediately obvious boosts as whole-company collabs boosted everyone. (Some other collab games like Project Winter and 2019 Mario Kart Tournament may have also given small boosts) Also, Artia was the first to engage with Reddit and one of the firsts to pander to English-speakers.

-First Holofes seems to have gotten some attention; Suisei's first live was free on Youtube and apparently convinced a lot of people on the fence that this might actually be an idol group worth keeping eye on; at the very least it convinced people to watch Suisei who went from 3k average viewers to 10k almost overnight. It may have helped that the concert happened right at the beginning of the viewership boom. As a sidenote it seems like Suisei was almost single-handedly responsible for attracting Arte Refact which is pretty much the biggest nerd music company in Japan and wrote most of the Bloom songs, but who knows what exactly went on behind the scenes. This probably set up further music industry contacts, but those might have happened anyway. Also maybe Arte Refact was already looking for a Holo and would have just settled on someone else in the absence of Suisei; but if they were just looking for a chuuba then it might have been a non-Holo they went with were it not for Suisei and she did have to browbeat the (INNK?) management into realizing what they had.

-The viewership boom wasn't because of corona, by the way, Hololive started to incline late 2019 and the big boom happened in the month before any restrictions came out; however, the restrictions may have boosted further the already existing boom.

-Finally Hololive English ended up happening at the exact right moment and the algorithm fell in love with Gura somehow. Evidently the design and her voice are cute, but she's gotta be doing something right with the content be it "a" or whatever. Mori's nerd rap was also something new and exciting to the weeb audience and was a breakaway hit.

I probably forgot something, misremembered everything, and none of this is in order.

[Anonymous No.]

Why are newfags so lazy, just search Hololive on Youtube filtered through highest views and you will see the clips and reasons on why they got so popular.

[Anonymous No.]

literally azurlame collab and chinese clippers called hololive moments

[Anonymous No.]

Hololive will get lazy and one of the EN startups will incline and knock them off the top. Screencap this.

[Anonymous No.]

>>12858378
Clips

[Anonymous No.]

>>12862089
>hololive moments
ironic that the ones who helped hololive get popular ended up being turbochink antis

[Anonymous No.]

>>12862184
It would be Niji if anything. Or maybe Cyberlive. I don't see Phase Connect being mainstream, and Tsunderia has no momentum. And vshojo is a self-contained niche.

[Anonymous No.]

>>12860987
>>12861015
though it's alot harder to review more recent events like 1st Holofes to HoloEN (with the exception of Gura).
Seems pretty solid: the older companies' blunder after blunder (some not the company's fault kek); anykarahs clippers jumping ship (apparantly something similiar is happening in reverse today?); haachama, matsuri and fubuki were pretty good at drawing attention to non-JPs consistently; korone was and later coco would more attract people to actually watch streams - there was a trend of celebrities/companies noticing korone, and coco made meme review/ark was important too.

All in all Cover had been handed quite a few opportunities that wasn't entirely their doing but for the most part they had the talent (actually interesting streamers to watch) to exploit those opportunities: the diversity of people's retelling of their fall into the hololive rabbit hole shows this.

[Anonymous No.]

>>12862572
Kawaii, screenshot this when they overtake Cyberlive.

[Anonymous No.]

The current fan base is probably mostly people who came in from Coco and EN.

[Anonymous No.]

>>12860987
>>12861015
I appreciate the summary Anon. I only just started watching Gura and I'm still thinking about diving deeper into Hololive.

[Anonymous No.]

>>12858378
Most of the points were already covered in this thread but I do want to add something. Aside from the very very early days Hololive was never a 2view company. Even in 2018 they got higher viewership than most of 774, Re:Act, and groups like those do today. 2018 Hololive would be the 2nd biggest vtuber group in Japan today. Of course they blew up and 2021 Hololive is on a totally different level.

[Anonymous No.]

>>12870163
Just a reminder man, take it with a grain of salt.