Well fuck. My favourite EN member... I think Cover has to do some thinking because there have been many graduations this year, especially the latter half, and disagreement with management is a reason we've heard before
this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2024
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Yeah, it's understandable that Cover wants to expand and do new things but if the people who are literally responsible for why your company is successful are leaving over it then maybe you need to take a step back and rethink
Yeah, this doesn't sound great. I wonder if they can change things fast enough to avoid many more graduations at this rate. Cover is no longer a small independent anymore so it might not be that easy to do (and that's IF they see their decisions as problematic).
I'm really curious how the next year is going to look like in that regards.
So an actual graduation this time, not remaining an affiliate.
This is the first graduation to hit a bit harder for me, Fauna has been one of my favourite members.
Ouch…
And the fact that “disagreement with management” is getting listed more and more as a reason is not a good sign, both because there might genuinely be something wrong happening and because even if there isn’t, the vagueness will let rrats spread more and more.
I wish we could get a bit more insight so we could understand their decision, but I guess this is the best we’ll be able to get (unless some serious Dokibird-tier stuff happens but god I hope that’s limited to Niji).
They went public. It's always the death knell of your favorite subculture when it goes mainstream. Happened to video games. Happened to anime.
Cover handled it better then Niji or maybe Niji was always going to have their exodus. Who knows?
Last night Pippa of Phase connect told her chat that she's explained to her boss that she's walking if Phase ever went public or got bought out.
Yeah, that’s definitely a thing to be considered. And apparently Hololive was started with venture capital so going public was bound to happen sooner or later.
I’m not knowledgeable enough about the stock market to say if this is feasible or not, but considering this fandom seems to have many people with A LOT of disposable income, is it not possible for them to pool up money and “make it go private again”?
That's a lot of organizing to try and make a company private again. And there's no guarantee that the fan run org that would buy Holo would even be able to effectively run it. Unless the fans were completely hands off and put the talents in charge of all decisions, it would likely go to shit in a different direction. One of the reasons people join agencies is because they don't know how to manage the business side of things. I'm gonna mention Pippa again, but she's grateful to Phase for managing that stuff. She wouldn't be able to coordinate her mech deals or organize 3D concerts. Nana Asteria has also said that she misses being part of a company for similar reasons.
Well, even now it’s not 100% public, afaik around 40/50% is still owned by Yagoo. Fans would “just” need to buy the rest and say “listen Yagoo, we don’t really care that much about profit, just run the company like you used to and we’re good”.
Though of course, that’s still a lot of organizing and having a bunch of people commit to handling things the same way is definitely not an easy task.
I'm adjacent to enough backroom con drama. Some "fan" will try to become the king of the hill. Honestly, if Hololive nose dives, the talents have plenty of examples to follow on restarting their careers as indies or corpos. I think that's going to be the real legacy of Coco. Before her, no one knew if the fans would follow.
Some “fan” will try to become the king of the hill.
Yeah, I can see that happening unfortunately. My cynical mind says they would probably do better than the average shareholder, but I wouldn’t put my money on it.
Honestly, if Hololive nose dives, the talents have plenty of examples to follow on restarting their careers as indies or corpos. I think that’s going to be the real legacy of Coco. Before her, no one knew if the fans would follow.
We had a small taste with Delutaya but yeah, Kson really paved the way with that. Looking at the bright side though, the fact that 3+ years later so many old talents still choose to stay in holo shows they can’t be doing that badly, at least on the JP side. We’ll see if Doki proving how well that can go on the EN side will cause an uptick in Holo graduations like it happened with Niji, hopefully not because that would be a very red flag about the EN management.
Holo and Niji are still very different beasts. Everyone leaving Holo are still doing it on professional terms. No one's reported abuse, favoritism, or pay being withheld. No one's ended up in a hospital. No talents have dogpiled on anyone leaving. We also had two graduation notices within two days, so there's no enforced queue, although I wouldn't be surprised if the talents are choosing to soften the blow by spacing things out voluntarily.
No one’s reported abuse, favoritism, or pay being withheld. No one’s ended up in a hospital. No talents have dogpiled on anyone leaving.
Well, iirc that was the situation for Niji as well up to Zaion’s termination… and then in less than a year everything came crumbling down, revealing things were going terribly even before then.
Now I wholeheartedly hope that’s not the case in Holo, but we can never know for sure. Though yeah, before any of that gets public it’s no use being paranoid. Let’s just see what the future brings.
It's never as simple as "They went public, everything is shit now". Kiara talked about that at length in todays stream. Those things don't just happen over night because a company goes public, it happens over years and affects each talent differently.
I know it feels like people are graduating left and right but the golden age of vtubing is simply coming to an end. People retire not because 'every is shit now', they retire simply because they have been doing this for years and wanna move on to different stuff.
And for corporate Vtubers, that often just means graduating
Every video game company and every anime company would disagree. Kiara is still in the company, so her opinion of the company is going to have a bias, even considering she's been the most outspoken member of Myth. Many of the members who have left have flat out said that they're leaving because of disagreements with management. Not because they don't like Idol stuff or streaming. Yuuki Sakana flat out released a cover song when everyone thought she was going to focus on gaming.
Every video game company and every anime company would disagree.
Afaik the large majority of anime companies aren’t publicly traded… the issue in that field is usually within production committees (which can, and often do, include public companies).
Apparently that applies to a lot of gaming companies I like too… but that made me realize pretty much all of the publicly traded companies I know are shit and now I’m more afraid than before.
I'm actually referring to the monstrosity that is Sony-Funimation-Crunchyroll-Rightstuf.
The actual production companies are hit or miss on toxic work culture. I'm limited in my exposure, but Kyoto Animation seems to be a good one and A-1 Pictures is shit(oh, it's a subsidiary of Sony). Generally, the smaller the better. Smaller gap between the executives and the animators and smaller teams means they have to keep the workers happy because if a few leave, the whole production grounds to a halt. I'm afraid I'm seeing the slow decline of Gainax all over again.
Generally, the smaller the better. Smaller gap between the executives and the animators and smaller teams means they have to keep the workers happy because if a few leave, the whole production grounds to a halt.
Ehh… nowadays most studios outsource a LOT, so losing talent isn’t really that threatening. Afaik KyoAni and Ghibli are the only studios who barely outsource anything, other ones may have some “regular” director or animator but most of them are just freelancers.
Their bank account is much more important than talent retention, sadly (and most studios do pretty badly under that aspect as well, as most of the money goes to committees).
Anime industry is just a mess in general, it’s a miracle they even manage to release great products from time to time.
don't just happen over night because a company goes public
I mean, it didn't. They went public 1,5 years ago didn't they? Not saying that's the cause, but disagreement with management seems to rhyme pretty well with that
And the fact that “disagreement with management” is getting listed more and more as a reason is not a good sign, both because there might genuinely be something wrong happening and because even if there isn’t, the vagueness will let rrats spread more and more.
Grandpa Vesper talked about it with his other persona. The root cause is upper management being extremely risk averse, they shoot down 99% of all proposals and don't really let the talents be creative anymore. They want everyone to only chase what's already popular over and over. The Hololive of today would never hire a Subaru, or let a Hachaama arc happen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyMKVDzlvh8
And as the other commenter said, they went public. That's always the first step to enshittification.
That could be the cause for some talents (I’m pretty confident it was for Ame), but from other clips (another from Randon/Vesper and especially Laplus talking about Chloe’s decision), to me it looks like behind-the-scenes workload might be a more widespread cause.
Either way, in both cases it seems like something not worth losing talents over, so addressing this issue should be a no-brainer for Cover, imo (unless there’s a different issue we’re not aware of, hopefully not tied to the good old fucking LineGoUp™).
This is sad news to wake up to.
I think history is going to see Ame leaving as the turning point of Hololive. Where it's meteoric rise and "golden age" came to an end.
Hopefully it's not the beginning of the end, but it's certainly the end of the beginning.
I think I'd point to Aqua leaving as a turning point, but maybe that's just me
This is the first graduation that has hit me hard. I've been a long time fan of Fauna, but last year I was going through an extremely stressful time. Fauna and Ironmouse were a source of a lot of comfort for me during that time.
This is actually devastating for me. I hope she makes another debut in some capacity, but her model was one of my favorites in Hololive.
I would have expected this from Gura, but Fauna just came out of nowhere.
Fuck, this hurts.
I watched LemonLeaf/Fauna before she joined Hololive and will continue to do so now that she's out again. While I'm sad for her as she genuinely seemed to enjoy her time there and was sad to leave, I'm also excited to see what she will cook up without the corporate oversight hanging over her head at all times.
No black text on a white background. This is concerning because there could be bad news now associated with any correspondence from Cover.
I almost fear Dokibirds success after graduation is almost encouraging streamers to leave hoping they will grow more or something. This is also a concerning potential development.
I mean if Doki’s success encourages people to go indie, I’d personally see that as a positive. Especially if they feel their agency isn’t providing the same value as when they first joined. What concerns you about this?
Dokibirds success was kinda lightning in a bottle. A talent that greatly benefits from an agency might leave thinking they can repeat Dokis success, only to fail and end up worse off than when they were still with the agency. That is my concern.
I see where you’re coming from, but when I also see Mint, Sakuna, Sunnysplosion, and Dooby sharing similar or greater levels of success compared to their PLs, I feel less worried. Not all of them get a shoutout in their YouTube recap like Doki, but they do seem to be thriving.
I almost fear Dokibirds success after graduation is almost encouraging streamers to leave
That doesn't seem to be relevant here though. Fauna clearly said her reason was she disagreed with management. Doki's situation was also unique due to the Kurosanji shenanigans, which caused a lot more traffic to her PL than most others. I think most are well aware.
I didn't see that one coming.
o7