“Regular” artists/bands are different, there’s singers who drop an album, make a round of concerts for a year, and then disappear for multiple years before publishing the next one. Being a corporate vtuber means you can’t just do that.

The comparison could be better with regular streamers, and a lot of them definitely drop after 4/5 years. And being a corporate vtuber is even more stressful because you have multiple obligations that a “freelancer” streamer doesn’t have. I doubt most of them have to fly back and forth between US and Japan multiple times a year, for example.

The company owns the whole characters but yes, they usually reach a level of popularity where, even without explicitly stating it before leaving, they can just start streaming independently with a different character and a good chunk of the fanbase will still find and follow them again.

The company doesn’t even seem to be against it actually, and afaik one time where they had to terminate a talent for breach of contract, they pretty much encouraged her to start streaming again as an indie and wished her good luck.

Idk, most don’t seem to like the direction Cover is going towards and that’s fine. We don’t know anything else like we do with Nijisanji, so sweeping statements like:

the company’s direction is not good for the talents.

Isn’t really something you can say just based on that. We know the company is shifting direction, and that usually results in things like this. Happens with regular companies too.

I feel like if there was anything like Nijisanji going on, we’d know.

Still worrying, but not that bad imo.

I’m guessing some people don’t want to be forced to fly to Japan multiple times a year (which they pay out of their own pockets) to do idol concerts and whatever else Cover has them do. A few EN talents have moved to Japan because it’s easier.

I’m not so sure about it necessarily being bad for the talents. It seems more like Cover is doubling down on the “idol” side of things and trying to reinforce the brand image they’ve always said they want.

The shift in focus means music and concerts seem to be more prioritized. Which means more travel for the talents in order to get studio time, and fewer opportunities for non-music oriented talents.

The pattern I’ve noticed is that the talents who are leaving (and don’t have chronic health issues) are the talents who have more of a focus on streaming and less of a focus on singing and dancing.

There’s also been a shift in “vtuber culture” where discussion of “past lives” has less of a stigma around it meaning it’s now pretty easy for talents to retain their audience when they go indie or move to another corporation.

Combine that with the general success vtubers as a whole are seeing and it’s pretty easy to come go the conclusion that a lot of the less music focused talents will graduate and then go indie or join a less music focused corporation.

Streaming/vtubing is a job and just like most people who work a regular 9-5 will change companies from time to time, I think it’s only natural for vtubers to do the same. Especially now that it’s much easier for whatever success they’ve already had to follow them.

I think these graduations are a result of vtubing as a whole seeing broad success, Cover trying to get their brand image to align with what they’ve always stated it to be, and the talents deciding whether or not that fits with what they want to do. While I don’t think this pattern is particularly great for Cover in the short-term, I do ultimately think that in the long-term this is a good thing for both Cover and, more importantly the talents.

We can’t really know anything about the company’s direction, just assuming that “it’s not good for the talents” is a bit much, especially considering that “this has happened enough” with:

-Mumei, who has throat issues and irl things to sort out

-Gura, who has been on the verge of graduating for the past 2 years and was very clearly dealing with burnout

-and Ame, who also was close to burnout issues, and is still struggling with them even as an indie.

I could understand the narrative 4 months ago, when Fauna graduated seemingly out of nowhere and it looked like Ame would start streaming regularly as an indie, but those two recent EN graduations were really nothing too surprising, and with Ame’s recent post it’s clear that her issue wasn’t with Hololive specifically either.

Of course again, we don’t know anything for sure so it could definitely be true that the company had a massive shift, talents are pissed and the ones still left are just bearing with it for one reason or another, but acting like it’s clear that Cover is 100% in the wrong brings nothing useful to the table.

No, she’s still pretty big. But she hasn’t been streaming often and it’s all but explicitly stated that she’s dealing with a ton of burnout and pressure from being so big.

Out of all recent graduations, I think this one was the one that people saw coming the most