State of The VTuber World - November 2024

 Intro

I guess we can call this Level 2.

I don't know if you can find me here, but if people do, then all the better.

First of all, yeah, I disabled comments. If you want to respond, you can do so privately with my old account. I still use it, so I will likely respond.

Second of all, I really did wanted to leave. But I knew I couldn't, so I tried anything else, but quickly found that I wasn't really good at anything other than this, so I had to come back.

I didn't want to go back completely, though. I felt I made my words clear. So, instead, I guess I went even farther, back before I used Reddit or Tumblr. I used to write here for various things. In fact, the title and the URL is a reference to a different blog I had where I talked deeply about another silly Asian topic.

The reason I decided to open this blog was that I wrote something pretty good, and I wanted to share. It relates to Vivi's graduation, and I think it's my best attempt at explaining how Nijisanji works.

TTT Anniversary - What Went Wrong?

Sometime back a year ago, two groups debuted from Nijisanji - Both consisted of two girls and one guy, they had very little debut support and little official support afterward. Their team relationship was more awkward than your standard debut groups and they both suffered relatively slow growth (well, except one...)

Yet one group had two of the people leave within a year, while the other seemed to be doing great, mostly.

So, what's the difference?

To understand what went wrong with TTT and conversely what went 'right' with Mitarashi-dan, we must take into consideration how Nijisanji actually works in practice. In the process, not only will we answer the question posed by above, but also understand how this Niji-hate comes from a place of misunderstanding, or perhaps a fundamental disagreement of principle between the two groups.

As almost any ex-EN people would tell you, Nijisanji is quite hands off. For some, like Hex, that's too much freedom - Hex is a baby boy and he needs directions but Nijisanji is a lazy bum ass. For others, like Kyo, that's too little freedom, since one has basically run your projects yourself, because well Nijisanji is a lazy bum ass.

Since that's been the case since the very beginning, the JP group established a kind of support network themselves, which means to succeed in Nijisanji, you have to go through connections.

Any good veteran of Nijisanji would tell you that to enjoy Nijisanji, you first need to know what are the connections each person has and understand the dynamics of those connections. At first you might find someone interesting in Nijisanji, but the interest will fall off unless you also find the dynamics of that person interesting, and you start watching people around them as well. You kind of grow your understanding of the place, so to speak.

This actually stunts Nijisanji's growth, because people usually are looking for a specific person - it's harder to get into a group that has a lot of in-jokes instead someone who we can know in an instant.

A very good example is none other than Hyakumantenbara Salome - Salome was a very distinctive character, someone that we can know in an instant, which is rather rare in Nijisanji. Distinctive character is more of a thing for Hololive, hence some people simply thought Salome was in Hololive at the time.

Salome could have continued to push her distinctive nature and simply moved away from Nijisanji completely - she would have grown a lot farther than what she actually ended up doing.

Salome didn't want to be in her first Koshien, but she got entered through a mistake. From that Koshien, Desuwa battery was created and Salome had a connection to the greater Nijisanji world - Leos and Deron, whose relationship Salome continues to develop to this day. Salome found more relationships, Idios was Salome's first female kouhai and therefore Salome developed a quite close relationship with them, especially with Sophia and Nozomi. A Spain collab with Ngo gave another connection and so on...

Ironically, it's around that same time where her numbers start to take a dive - more connections Salome developed, more that Salome was not this face of an image that was easy to consume, but part of a tapestry of the greater Nijisanji universe, and people weren't really interested in that.

Most people who would make a video about these kinds of subjects would see development as a tragedy and another example in the failure of the Nijisanji method... But what did Salome want? Salome was a loner who was shunned by her classmates. She was living alone in a cramped Tokyo apartment wanting to find someone who she can relate to. And with the Nijisanji process... she did! Like she has people who understands her for who she is and shares her passions. She has... friends! And personally, I think that's a more valuable outcome than simply fame.

So what does all that tangent tell us? And how is it related to our question about TTT? Well, the difference between TTT and Mitarashi-dan was the connective structure. Kunai never really made an effort to be with someone from EN, Aia maybe?, and Vivi's connections all came outside of Nijisanji, partially because they left or were kicked out. In both cases, it's pretty clear that Nijisanji is just not a place for them. For Mitarashi-dan, however, not only did Ruri have that initial bump, but she immediately found connection in Lize and Mito and subsequently found connection in Roco and the rest of Idios. Toto grinded her way through a bunch of senpais and appearing on official programs (another advantage JP has over EN) eventually finding her way through ViVOS, which netted her an incredibly early 3D performance, and with someone like Tamanoi Nana, even with the slowest group of any active JP Livers.

Sidenote - Here is the growth rate of all 2023 Livers in the last two months.

Igarashi Rika - 18,000

Koshimizu Toru - 12,000

Ishigami Nozomi - 23,000

Sophia Valentine - 15,000

Kuramochi Meruto - 19,000

Kaburaki Roco - 17,000

Shishido Akari - 17,000

Akagi Wen - 16,000

Usami Rito - 17,000

Hibachi Mana - 19,000

Saiki Ittetsu - 18,000

Murakumo Kagetsu - 20,000

Hoshirube Sho - 20,000

Koyanagi Rou - 25,000

Imami Rai - 20,000

Tachitsute Toto - 6,000

Shioriha Ruri - 18,000

Milan Kestrel - 12,000

Everyone is in the range between 25K and 15K with two at 12K and then there’s Toto, whose growth is half of the next slowest. What’s wrong with Toto, I don’t freaking know.

Ironically it was the male of the group who had opposite experiences. Claude immediately found himself buddies with Krisis and quickly tried to reach JP senpais. It's what he wanted from Nijisanji, after all. Milan actually had a hard time finding people until 3SKM came along and NijiGTA was the impetus for his current growth.

So TTT was left with one and Mitarashi-dan is still three.

And we are left with a bigger question - Why did EN not develop the same structure that JP did?

1. EN is separated by distance, both from each other and from the main company. This is the main reason any foreign expansion is going to run into troubles. HoloEN only worked because individuals, by themselves, can succeed in an Hololive environment and the benefit of the world being in COVID. Isolation was the norm.

2. Nijisanji Method is not really a thing in the west. Do people like OfflineTV because of the connections, or because they like certain people from there? Sure something like Smosh or Dropout could be similar, but I think there is a cordial distance, especially in Dropout, that is not much true in Nijisanji.

3. EN fans and EN talent simply do not want connections. And that's kind of my sticking point. JP fans are fine with people hanging out with people - Nijisanji worked incredibly hard to make sure that was the case. EN fans are more possessive of their talents, and they are more isolated.

There was a quote I read about Nijisanji that sticks out to me - The beauty of Nijisanji is that two unrelated groups of people can easily find themselves being right next to each other due to sheer circumstance. Whether it would be through Koshien or something like NijiGTA, there inevitably is a time of mix-up in Nijisanji.

I think for EN this does not sit well. As for the talents, let's go back to the beginning. What does Nijisanji provide? They provide models and equipment, but they expect the money-handling and personnel to be handled by oneself. They provide the basics of the individual and the brand recognition, but they want the Livers to develop the connections themselves. I think many EN Livers want the opposite - they want the company to deal with the connections while they want to develop their own personas and their own fandom. It's this instinctive individualism of the West that clashes with the somewhat collective approach of Nijisanji.

Hololive fits more in line with the concerns of The West, hence the difference in attachment. There are very few fan characters in NijiJP (at least to my knowledge) because developing one's fandom is lower on Nijisanji's priority list. There is a recognition of the streamer as a performer and the viewers as audience. Think about Nornis's approach to marketing - they want an audience that is not as attached to the personalities as to their music. Hence, Nornis members barely show up in Nornis M/Vs. Meanwhile, most of HoloJP has a fandom character, because developing an individual fandom matters more to Hololive.

Through 2024, I have been trying to write a thesis - Nijisanji Will Always Be Black. My thesis is that the spat between EN fans and Nijisanji is due to a fundamental ideological difference regarding fame and celebrity. Here’s the fact - friendship is not a good business model.

Friendship is hard to create and due to our brain’s limits, it’s not very scalable, which gives business very little advantage. Narratives and images, however, are scalable, and that’s what the entertainment industry wants to sell you. The Western fans have accepted this without realizing the consequences - they want narratives and images. They want parasociality, they want an easy character that they could devote to. They want… an idol.

Nijisanji does not make idols. They make talents. They make artisans. They know that talent’s future could lie elsewhere, and they say farewell to those who realize this. People who stay aren’t talents, but more teachers and guides to the entertainment world as new people pop up to the stand. That is the Nijisanji method. If you cannot vibe with that, Nijisanji does not want you.

And that kind of stance makes some people angry. And that's why I'm here today.

Outro

I think the bottom part still needs more work, but that's the basic gist.

Nijisanji adheres to the realities of VTubers, how people will leave and go, both in terms of audience and in terms of talents, while Hololive adheres to the fantasies of VTubers, what people want VTubers to be like. Hololive is certainly the one who is going to be popular, but Nijisanji is the company who would likely stay. Ever since Nijisanji came on to our screen, there has been a backlash, and many tried to step up to that backlash like Game-bu and .LIVE, but it was Hololive who managed to get lucky.

I will write this in my annual write up (which for newcomers, I never finish and therefore I never post) but writing is on the wall for both Group A and B. The downfall of many, many EN agencies this year bode to a failure of the B model in general, while Nanashi's 180 degree turn in the last two years and the relative success of agencies like Aogiri make it seem like Group B is doing better, but I personally think it's a turn towards Nijisanji rather than something like an EN agency.

Whatever it is, the last two months of the year is going to be interesting.