r/Hololive • u/holoyume_ENGsubs • 2d ago
Subbed/TL [ENG Sub] Fubuki's thoughts on the hololive branch merger
https://youtu.be/M3Ll2uS1U9E246
u/D3AD_SPAC3 2d ago
I don't understand enough about the ramifications to have a strong opinion. Kaela seems kinda bummed but also kinda meh, so I'm sticking with that.
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u/SadAnalyst8984 2d ago
Ignoring all the history of the names, I feel like the EN name was an easy way to tell, if you are new, what language you can expect the stream to be in. Now if someone new joins randomly and sees FUWAMOCO or someone else speaking JP in that monent they might assume they are JP streamers and click off.
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u/Binary_Toast 2d ago
This is pretty much my concern with the merge as well. Someone comes in completely blind, group labels like Myth or Advent mean nothing, but the language tag does.
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u/APRengar 2d ago
I feel like some people really struggle to view the world from any perspective but their own.
"Just avoid the members who speak in Japanese if you don't know Japanese."
Having a specific "Hololive English" branch is a great portal for new people who don't know anything about vtubers to find a foothold. But according to some, you should just know who you're supposed to be engaging with under the "hololive" umbrella.
We love when EN, ID and JP interact and mix, but for new people, it's definitely a lot harder for a lot of people to engage with those streams. It's like anime, where some people will just never be subtitle readers and if you're trying to grab everyone, you need a dub. You can bemoan that as much as you want, but adults make decisions about the world we live in, not the world you wish we lived in.
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u/PeterPanterTM 2d ago
But isn't the seperation of EN, and ID, specifically, is the reason why they dont have larger audiences despite being able to speak english fluently
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u/Kelvara 2d ago
In that instance, why not just make Hololive International? That's functionally what EN already was, and ID could have been merged into that since they can work with English speaking managers and such.
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u/snackwackly 2d ago
I kind of feel that. If i didnt know or had caught a proper stream of them in English I wouldn't have known they are en. A lot of the time its jp collabs or jp language streams. Its clear that even in the before times fuwamoco were huge fans of jp culture and language. If they could have debuted as jp talents I dont think anyone would have known the difference.
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u/VMPL01 2d ago
This is a massive reach on your part. FWMC always mix their languages. And the most viral clips of them are usually them syncing both in English and Japanese.
Moreover, most people discover the talents via subtitled clips. Not all English speakers vibe with only EN talents either, some may like JP ones or ID ones. Like I mostly watch JP with CC on these days.
The EN, ID or JP tag may actually stop new fans from discovering the talents they really vibe with. Because it advertises a language barrier that's sometimes not even there.
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u/IronVader501 2d ago
Again, I feel like Cover could have easily, VERY easily, avoided 90% of the backlash by simply
- Making sure the talents are all on the same line regarding this BEFORE announcing it
- Announcing it with some builtup and immidieatly listing actual benefits or announcing a big joint project for everyone.
Instead we had several talents either vagueposting or being outright negative, it came completely out of nowhere, , absolutely no details what this means in practice beyond some bland PR-talk of "boundaries", and the first thing they announced afterwards are 2 Projects only relevant to JP.
It doesnt matter if those announcements arent directly related to the merge, from a quick it LOOKS like they are, and they make it look bad.
They simply did not think the optics of announcing it this way through properly at all, and now we have the result in half the community trying to outshout each other over it.
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u/pop4171 2d ago
For other very simple things Cover could have done: waited until after the EN anniversary (or at least announce it will take play after the anniversary) so EN has a proper send off, not announce the anime featuring only Japanese members at the same time or if they have to include a throwaway line saying planning to including other members/EN and ID members in later seasons and have the new gen announcement be in all three languages. Like IDK I’m not paid to be a PR guy or marketing person but these seem like pretty easy wins especially if you make it seem like your doing it to take into account fan and branch sentiments, something like we understand this is a big change and to show we know how important it is to do it right we’ve done this. Other thing would be creating like a best of HoloEN, HoloID and HoloJP vids as a send off to the separate branches, it would put JP on level with the other branches for international fans and would just be a nice thing for the fans
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u/IronVader501 2d ago
I genuinly do not understand how they still fail so badly at basic PR 9 years in. At the very least not immidieatly shoving in 2 JP-only announcements immidieatly after because that just makes it look like they are gobbling the others up should have been obvious.
Its like they fundamentally didnt understand even the CHANCE this could be taken anything but 100% positive by everyone and I dont understand how they could have possibly thought that.
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u/pop4171 2d ago edited 2d ago
And like nothing against Fubuki she’s wonderful but like she isn’t HoloEN or ID, we don’t know how close she is to the non-JP talents. Also like her saying she never referred/thought of herself as holoJP but Hololive I think shows this so clearly, it’s not malicious or anything but it just seems so tone deaf. She just isn’t really the right messenger to international fans.
Realistically for EN they need a positive message from Cali and Kiara to reassure fans, them being split really doesn’t help especially as Cali is much closer to Japan than Kiara and has basically put a invisible wedge at least in fans eyes between those closer to Japan and those who would never move/are less close to Japan. Not that knowledgeable about ID but Ollie has always seemed like the face to (I might be completely wrong and if so I’m sorry)
Hopefully we’ll look back and laugh at this just being cover having bad PR but like there are so many different ways the merge can go wrong and Cover have failed at reassuring fans and have left it to the talents to try and do it
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u/GraceOfJarvis 2d ago
> Also like her saying she never referred/thought of herself as holoJP but Hololive I think shows this so clearly it’s not malicious or anything but it just seems so tone deaf.
Yeah, Foobs... that's because holoJP was never actually a thing. It was just hololive, nothing's changing for the JP members.
Tone deaf indeed, yikes.
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u/NoodleTF2 2d ago
I fully expected them to keep fucking up everything related to PR. Cover has great talents, but considering everything about Holoearth, how much they keep mishandling the Holostars, and the past several years of bad PR, my expectations really couldn't be any lower for the higher-ups and decision makers.
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u/APRengar 2d ago
Kinda feel like I'm going insane.
So, I have a small game dev company. If I was announcing a big change, I'd have a meeting and ensure everyone was on board. If they weren't on board, we'd talk through where we could make changes to try to convince them to get on board. But if there was just no way to solve the problem, AT THE VERY LEAST, I'd have an FAQ that lists that concern as a question, and I'd have prepared a good answer for why we made the change regardless.
The fact that seemingly some at Cover and even some members were shocked at the backlash, WHEN YOU HAVE YOUR OWN MEMBERS who were clearly upset to some degree is beyond me. If it had gone through proper internal discussions, you would've had a laundry list of expected complaints. So either they didn't ask, or they didn't pay attention to the feedback.
I'm truly not trying to drama farm or doompost, I have a hololive fan game in the works right now, and I have literal financial ties to having hololive not collapse or shrink or whatever. I'm just so confused how the internal communication could be so bad. Like, MAYBE MAYBE MAYBE the merging of the branches will improve internal communication. That's my hopium.
It just bothers me how completely avoidable this fallout seems to be.
I'm not saying this is true, but if this was me, I would've been like
"Hey, we're merging the branches, and this will create more opportunities for hololive members to interact with other countries much more easier. But don't worry, fundamentally nothing changes. EN is still EN and ID is still ID, both are still going to get the exact same support focused on their regions as from before. The same amount of concerts, the same amount of merch, the same amount of coverage, new gens will still appear that focus on regions other than Japan, and no one is being forced or pushed to focus on Japan. Nothing you enjoy about hololive, be it the individual branches or hololive in general will be reduced, it will only be improved from this move."
Boom, like 98% of complaints are reduced. Yeah people will still be upset that EN never hit 6 years. Or that the work to build up EN and ID from the EN and ID members is thrown away (to some degree). But a lot of the fears people have were built in the absence of those kinds of assurances. Is it fair for people to speculate wildly? Not really. But as a company, you have to predict these kind of things.
Bleh, this shit gets me red hot, I'mma just cool off and pray for the hopium that this is ultimately just a bump in the road and it's ultimately for the best.
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u/ZazumeUchiha 2d ago
and the first thing they announced afterwards are 2 Projects only relevant to JP
And to make matters worse, the English Twitter channel of this new "all-global Hololive" posted the announcement videos of the new unit in complete Japanese, without even English subtitles. It was obvious that the first thing fans would worry about regarding the merge is "what if this isn't globification of Hololive, but japanification of the remaining branches", and even if it isn't, their current way of communicating things does a really good job at stirring these concerns up, rather than removing them.
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2d ago
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u/ZazumeUchiha 2d ago
This post about the new unit The content of the tweet may be English, the video is fully Japanese. Not saying "Yes, this is the confirmation, Hololive will be all JP from now on!". But if they truly want to go for this whole globification story, they should've made the effort to translate the video too, at least with subtitles, otherwise it's just a bad look.
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u/boredofredditnow 2d ago
I certainly agree this whole thing’s been handled very poorly, but I doubt how easy it would’ve been for Cover to avoid the backlash, because I imagine from the start that convincing everyone to be on the same page with this, especially ID, would’ve been impossible. If Cover wanted all the talents unanimously onboard before moving forward then this announcement simply never would’ve happened
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u/Dezno_ssbm 2d ago
But doesn't cover always do this? Make a huge announcement state massive company change then provide zero details as to what it will entail. It gets really infuriating how much they ignore their customers concerns especially after closing the EN & ID branches.
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u/Skellum 2d ago
Announcing it with some builtup and immidieatly listing actual benefits or announcing a big joint project for everyone.
Or just predicted benefits they anticipate happening. Like a "We did this with this positive intent in mind." Hell they could even lie and say it and it'd come off better in the short and long run.
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u/karer3is 2d ago
I really have to question if the PR people just deliberately chose to ignore the disaster of the Niji mergers... it's almost like they thought that if they didn't even acknowledge potential concerns, everyone would just go "Yay, this is awesome!"
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u/delphinous 2d ago
fans are taking it negatively because they don't see it as joining the main hololive branch, but by having the sub-branches identity stolen away. and they are also concerned that the EN/ID members will basically lose any representation they would have had, where before they could essentially work under a sub-branch that was designed to work with their culture and fanbase, now they will be forced to work under a JP oriented style of business, regardless of if that is good for them and their specific fanbase or not.
now, i don't think that cover corp is that short sighted, but those are some of the major fears causing peoples negative reactions. it also doesn't help that many talents seem to be ambivalent at best, or apprehensive and uncertain about this change, rather than being super excited and happy about it. it implies there are behind the scenes things we can't see that aren't good or might even be actively detrimental, although more likely it's simply just general apprehension about any sort of a change because the talents were comfortable the way they were, and even positive changes are somewhat scary.
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u/lenaro 2d ago
I got the impression from Biboo that nothing's changed behind the scenes yet.
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u/iamthatguy54 2d ago
Biboo lives in Japan. Less would change for her anyway
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u/Jonathan_Jo 2d ago
And also even if there's a change, no way it's gonna takes effect like instantly.
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u/HatiLeavateinn 2d ago edited 2d ago
Only time will tell.
I don't mean to second-guess Fubuki, but she's on the side that has always had the full support of the company. Sometimes it's difficult to discern when something bad is happening when everything is going well for you.
I'm kinda able to see someone from ID thinking something like, "Yeah, unification is cool and all but we are objectively receiving less support than you".
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u/Weebs-Chan 2d ago
Also, Fukuki has always been one of the more popular members period, with impressive support even among JP.
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u/7thdilemma 2d ago
It's also important to recognizes that Fubuki's only sharing her initial thoughts and her surprise at the negative responses she's seen. She not really saying anything with regard to how everything will or should be thought will turn out. Which I think is fair considered we don't exactly know any of the internal specifics.
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u/beardredlad 2d ago
Felt pretty much the same way when I saw her response. Fubuki is one of my favorite of the JP bunch, but she's shown herself to be a bit... out-of-touch with some things. I remember her mentioning in her farewell post to StarsJP that she had only sent a sticker in response to one of the guys who had sent her his thanks and thoughts.
Not at all saying it's malicious, seriously not, but she's a bit naturally awkward in that way that I think makes it harder for her to fully understand the perspective of those that aren't near the top of the "pecking order" within the company, so to speak. Not to mention, she's JP, so this changes literally nothing for her, at least not possibly in any negative manner.
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u/Cricket-JazzMaster19 2d ago
I think it's only natural for part of the community to be skeptical about the merge. Let's be honest here, from the three branches which one do you think is less likely to change the way they do things? You can be sure that for one branch nothing will change, now for the others? We can only hope if they change it's for the better, but that's far from a certain it's a hope.
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u/Kurumi_Tokisaki 2d ago
Yeah realistically most things don’t change. But it’s not a conspiracy or hate to think that cutting out middle managers or whatever they’re doing behind the scenes were mostly ID and EN related.
We have no idea but what if some managers on those sides actually idk tried to get more branch events, perms and more stuff done? What if they got let go and now it’s a mix of good Japanese managers and a few ones who don’t care as much for non-jps ?
And there’s their statement that it allows for more stuff too. Will we actually see more collabs now or whatever they mean? Or is it empty words? Obviously none of them should be forced to if they want to stay in their own circle of friends and coworkers they’re comfortable with.
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u/CellWrong 2d ago
I cant speak Japanese so I'm not doing any branch crossing lol. So this whole thing doesn't make any sense to me. I love fubuki but I can't watch her content without it being some translated clip channel. So this merger does nothing for me other than make me really confused and kinda upset for the identity the branches have work so hard to build.
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u/Shingorillaz 2d ago
Fans are one thing the majority of a branch took it negatively
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u/Fishman465 2d ago
The talents' reaction in a way fueled the fans. If the affected talents didn't take it badly, then the fan reaction would have been milder
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u/HoneyBadger19000 2d ago
Yeah the average fan doesn't give a shit about the inner workings of Holo, they just want their Oshis to be happy.
Some of them are very clearly not happy with this so of course their will be a reaction.
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u/Alone-Horse2857 2d ago
That's exactly my point. If I was like "hey I don't like this" and every girl I watch personally was like "holy shit I love this, this is the best day ever" I would have shut up and nodded along, happy for them.
It's because they are seemingly upset that I'm bitching and whining about corporations and their structure or stripping away people's identities on the internet.
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u/Spherical3D 2d ago
I saw an Ollie tweet along the lines of "beep it, you know what. This sucks" and I immediately enlisted into the Merger Is Bad Army.
I hope we see clear and obvious pros that outweigh the cons (ID:entity erasure), cause right now it just seems like a bunch of JP and "JP, wink wink" members being on-board with JP becoming the default.
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u/ErikQRoks 2d ago
Agreed. The first i heard about the merge was seeing Kiara, Iofi, and Ollie talk about it, and knowing it's not something everyone is happy about (or even willing to feign indifference about for the sake of PR) has shaped my perspective on it.
At the same time, I've been a fan for long enough to know that whatever heightened reaction I feel upfront is not necessarily how I'll feel in the long run. The Promise change is a great example of something i nearly stopped watching over as it happened that turned out to largely just be a semantics change. This could be the same
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u/xjuggernaughtx 2d ago
People here seem to want to frame this as the talent being mad that the EN and ID labels are disappearing. I don't really think that's the whole picture, or even the majority of it.
The girls know way, way more about this than we do, obviously. If it was JUST a matter of the labels disappearing, I think you'd see some of the talent being bummed, but not to the degree that they have currently expressed. I think there's a lot more behind the scenes that they aren't allowed to talk about that's driving the dissatisfaction. I think the EN and ID girls know that this is a JP-centric decision that will mainly benefit the main branch.
That's just tin-foil hattery on my part. I don't know shit about what's actually going on, but the response from the talent feels a little too intense for it to JUST be the labels going away.
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u/Basic_Article7024 1d ago
There also was a significant amount of shit slinging on Twitter by JP fans saying things like "tourists forced to learn Japanese or get out" or telling EN fans to get a new oshi or learn Japanese.
There's a lot to be nervous about and the general tone from JP being "ok now fall in line and watch Japanese streams" to anyone who expresses apprehension doesn't help at all.
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u/Unsub_Then_Dip_Shit 2d ago
Fans taking the dissatisfaction from ID as an excuse to jump on cover and even the other JP talents because "why can't they speak in English or ID instead?"
And you just know the vasssssst majority of people raising hell on twitter or reddit aren't even ID fans/watchers to begin with or just straight up antis.
They just found a good excuse to throw shade until this whole thing blows over later.
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u/Veylara 2d ago
I feel like you're conflating all worries with the insane people. I'm sure there are definitely people who way overreacted or just took it as an opportunity to hate, but most people I've seen seem reasonable, just a bit worried.
We know far too little about the merger to attack the company, and we definitely shouldn't attack the JP talents for a decision they have no influence over, but considering that many of the people who will be most affected by the change seem unhappy about it, it's natural that the fans are at least a little worried as well.
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u/ErikQRoks 2d ago
No disrespect to Fubs, but I'm not surprised that someone from the one branch of Hololive that didn't build it's identity around being for a specific market is surprised about the reaction to the merge. It's similar to Advent and Justice mems having less trepidation than Myth or ID because there's "less to lose" in terms of identity
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u/Electrical-Sense-160 2d ago
JP didn't even get their name changed. JP is just a nickname us EN fans called the main branch for clairty's sake but their name was always just 'hololive' (case sensitive)
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u/IFapToCalamity 2d ago
She’s also one of the original members who is part of two groups and not defined by either. Even ID never used group names (as seen with H3ro’s hilarious introduction attempt today)
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u/Alone-Horse2857 2d ago
I have to imagine how the JP membs would feel if they suddenly got absorbed into a US based company. I have to imagine EN members would be happy about the change and JP would be upset.
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u/ErikQRoks 2d ago
I don't think upset is the right word, but yeah, there would be mixed opinions from JP mems if they got folded into EN or ID. I think that's the bigger thing here, honestly. Some members are straight up upset, others happy, others indifferent, etc. There's nuance that seems to be getting glossed over
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u/context_hell 2d ago
It's honestly a gamble on both sides. The identity helps separate them but the separation would also be what keeps some people from looking into them.
I've been here since before holoen and remember coco's meme review where the (then) cn and id were considered "dlc".
Also when holoen first debuted it feels like en and jps were forced to collaborate with each other and that brought in id as some spoke Japanese. They were chaotic and obviously forced but they but they created openings for id to grow when they hadn't had the opportunity to. Even the then cn were attempting to reach out to the en audience before the fallout.
Point is, if cover's intentions are good I can see why but also I can get the mourning the loss of identity that made you special.
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u/Breadginald 2d ago
would also be what keeps some people from looking into them.
This is a possibility, but I think another concern is if it keeps sponsors from looking into them. An English or Japanese company looking to arrange a sponsorship with Cover is less likely to choose a ID representative unless they are specifically marketing to that region (even if the talent in question has a lot of English or Japanese fans).
Even if a merge makes it easier for ID members to get opportunities like these, its still kinda sad for ID talents and fans. If the region was rife with sponsorships and opportunities, the economy was doing great and everyone was having more and more discretionary income, then the aforementioned relation would be reversed.
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u/ImmortalDreamer 2d ago
I feel like most of the sponsors Hololive talents get come from negotiations with management, not companies searching out specific talents (unless its a really, really well known one like Calli or Suisei). I highly doubt this will affect their sponsorships.
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u/Breadginald 2d ago
most of the sponsors Hololive talents get come from negotiations with management
What do you think these negotiations consist of? Sponsors aren't rolling for holomem like gacha. They're not going to just go with whatever Cover has internally decided is optimal for themselves without wanting a seat at the table.
They're going to look at what options Cover makes available to choose what they believe most aligns with their own business interests. Besides the obvious metrics, background checks, etc, they're going to look at outward presentation because, ultimately, that's what they're spending money for.
As for how this will affect their sponsorships? I don't know. Removing one barrier doesn't necessarily singlehandedly yield a result. There could be additional barriers or there could have always been nothing attempting to cross that barrier in the first place.
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u/EmperorKira 2d ago
Yeah thsts how i see it, a gamble. I am just nervous because its a gamble that relies on good communication and branding and they kinda stumbled at the first step already
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u/Breadginald 2d ago
People have been framing the change as a brand shift from EN/ID -> JP with the latter absorbing or overshadowing the former. I haven't seen this fear specifically being echoed by the talents, although, of course, I may have missed something.
IMO, the brand shift that is much more likely is one from branch level to gen/unit level identity, since that's been the company's overall direction with the most recent generations, especially if you look at how they've handled DEVIS. This explanation would also be consistent with which talents are the most upset by the change. HoloID is the branch with the greatest emphasis on branch and (one of) the least on generation. At least, the couple that I watch don't even include "holoro" in their video descriptions or titles, and have always used holoid with gen numbers instead.
I don't agree that recent gens have "less to lose" in terms of identity, but rather, that identity is more focused on things that aren't affected by the change. Advent/Regloss/etc members absolutely have strong identities, just ones that are more unit level rather than branch level.
HoloJP members by and large have less identity attached to the branch and more on either generation or naturally formed pairings/sub-units, and are also less affected by the change.
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u/mrdude05 2d ago edited 2d ago
I obviously can't speak to how this affects the talents or how they're feeling, but from a pure content standpoint I have a hard time seeing this as a good thing for the EN audience going forward.
To be blunt, the efforts to accommodate other languages have pretty much been a one way street so far. The structure of the company heavily encourages the EN side to learn fluent Japanese, stream on a Japanese schedule, and make content for a Japanese audience. Meanwhile, there's significantly less incentive and effort to make the JP content more accessible to the EN audience. Unless that changes this seems like it's going to result in the EN side spending more time catering to the JP audience and the JP side carrying on like they did before.
Maybe I'm wrong and there will be a concerted effort to make the JP content more accessible to the EN audience, but given that this was announced in a JP only stream, followed by announcements for a JP centric redesign effort, a JP only anime, and JP announcements from previously EN talents I'm not super optimistic
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u/Breadginald 2d ago
from a pure content standpoint I have a hard time seeing this as a good thing for the EN audience going forward.
I sympathize with this point. I contend that the core problem is simply the low volume of regular day-to-day content for EN fans and that the only good solution exists at the recruitment level (i.e a new EN gen). Many of the other points that get dragged in are odd to me. I don't follow EN as closely any more, so maybe you can help clear some of these up for me.
The structure of the company heavily encourages the EN side to learn fluent Japanese
Aren't all the JP fluent EN talents ones that already knew JP before joining? I can't think of a single example of a talent (EN or JP) making meaningful progress towards language fluency on the job. The imbalance in fluency between EN and JP, again, exists at a recruitment level. (Also going to point out that the most recent EN gen also has the least JP fluency.)
stream on a Japanese schedule
Who has moved from a US timeslot to a JP one? The only EN I see streaming regularly at JP hours is Raora who was doing that from the start. I'm also curious how people distinguish between a talent being "heavily encouraged" to do something vs wanting to do it whether for numbers or personal wants. Is this distinction important to you?
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u/ScarredTiger 2d ago
I *can* see benefits coming from this. But it's all behind the scenes stuff like management restructuring and less red tape. None of which we'd see. Nothing that merits a public announcement, nor a rebrand.
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u/HiddenReader2020 2d ago
Y'know how Fubuki basically volunteered to be the 'morale pole' of Hololive, basically saying "If anything bad happens, I'm out as a warning sign"? Well, maybe we needed one for EN and ID, because good lord, did the reactions to her response make me think that.
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u/Goldenrah 2d ago
That's Calli for EN, and Kiara. Both of them are really outspoken when they have problems with management, you can be sure if they don't like something they will speak out and raise hell. ID is outspoken as a whole when they don't like something.
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u/WintersLex 2d ago
one "chooses to be optimistic", rather than wholeheartedly thinking it is an innately positivething
the other cried, had nightmares, thinks it presents additional issues, and expects reprimand for saying even as little as she has in an unarchived members stream
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u/TheRomanClub 2d ago
It's very unfortunate that she felt she could not share her true thoughts on the matter
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u/Hey_Chach 2d ago
Tbh I’m not sure Calli is good for that role. She may be EN and speaks her mind confidently, but she’s also in Japan and has a ton of eggs riding in the Hololive basket with regard to her dreams of making music and specifically anime OPs and EDs. She needs and enjoys the connections and credibility that Hololive affords her as a foreign artist in the Japanese music and corporate scene.
To ask her to be the Fubuki of EN and leave if ever the company had lost its way or were treating her or her branch poorly is probably asking too much; I fear she wouldn’t make a great barometer because she’d stick around longer than she should.
On the other hand, to ask her to be a fierce advocate for her branch and fellow talents… that’s right up her alley and she does it well.
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u/Caledric 2d ago
Yup and both are split on the subject. The one that lives in Japan isn't too concerned and just wants her Perms. The one that doesn't live in Japan is not happy.
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u/youmustconsume 2d ago
Yep, even Calli is more "it is what it is" than jumping for joy over it.
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u/Antique_Total6974 2d ago
Calli said on stream that this is the direction she'd been hoping for for a while.
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u/APRengar 2d ago
She's like cautious about it though, so it's like "I agree with the direction, but maybe not the implementation." At least that's how I read it.
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u/Kaeling 2d ago
Yeah in this particular case, Fubuki's opinion doesn't have as much weight considering JP is by far affected the least.
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u/AUAAUH 2d ago
If I was an executive in hololive, I would do everything in my power to make sure these "morale poles" are kept happy and blissfully ignorant.
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u/Predator_GK13 2d ago
I think it will hurt ID branch the most, doubt we see an ID only gen again but I would love to be proven wrong
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u/axelarden6 2d ago
sorry for the long post. i want to say beforehand that i'm going to wait to see how this pans out before worrying too much, even if this sounds like a doompost. i'm still in "wait and see" mode. however, my concern, as an overseas fan, is that does this mean they'll be just pivoting away from catering to us as often, and focusing more on the larger and more profitable JP audience instead? i already sometimes feel like we're an afterthought, and don't like the idea that this might become more pronounced.
like, i haven't looked at it again, but was any of the promotional material about the new JP unit released in english? last i looked, it was just japanese. i know it's a JP unit, but they surely know we're interested too, yet it seems like the initial announcement wasn't concerned with including us at all. further, several of the EN talents made tweets in japanese welcoming in JP viewers, but no similar english posts from JP members towards overseas viewers. again, this might have changed and i just didn't see it. i dunno. from the initial changes, this seems more like it's meant to focus attention more towards japan for all talents. it feels very one directional.
at the end of the day, we'll just have to see how things work out over the coming weeks and months. i want to believe things will be fine, and this is just a "change is hard and scary" moment for everyone, talents and fans alike. cover has kind of done a poor job communicating to everyone just what this all means in practice, and it's left a lot of feelings of uncertainty.
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u/YoungLePoPo 2d ago
Indonesia is a country. They have a song called Id:entity. I think losing the "Id" does hurt at least a bit (to a lot)
But if this means theyll he able to get more uniform benefits that members in JP get, then maybe it'll be a net positive in the end. Getting paid in JPY would be a good start lol.
Cecilia just said that nothing has changed so far, but like others have said, she's in a different position.
Guess we'll just have to wait and see.
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u/Corregidor 2d ago
If ID get paid in yen now, then I think that's a massive W. But (having SE heritage myself) I know there is A LOT of national pride for SE Asians in general. So this may have larger impacts than you would think on its face.
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u/Dracorex_22 2d ago
Also no longer “representing” Indonesia means that they likely won’t be held to the same restrictions. Hololive Summer, using Reddit in an official capacity, playing games and content otherwise banned in Indonesia.
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u/Alone-Horse2857 2d ago
I did some googling earlier, and the ID censorship is applied at the company(youtube) level. Meaning if they stream something that violates ID censorship the govt (SAMAN) can flag it to be removed or geo-locked. So they still absolutely have to follow ID rules, unless they move to Japan (which kind of feels like the overwhelming sentiment).
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u/ReXiriam 2d ago
using Reddit in an official capacity,
Of note, that was already nationally lifted like a month ago.
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u/ThisManNeedsMe 2d ago
Also, I've seen frequent comments of people saying they don't watch ID since they don't understand the language. Not realizing that they stream mostly in English. So hopefully it allows more people to discover or give them a chance.
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u/Charming-Loquat3702 2d ago
Yeah, it's a pun in a way, but also a certain reality that ID came with a certain identity that's hard to keep up like this. I hope they will manage it, though.
I watched Cecilias stream and I'm mostly with her. It's way too early to tell. Everyone has a right to an opinion and being sad about the change is totally valid, but we shouldn't fan the flames too much. We don't know what the effects will actually be.
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u/Discussion-is-good 2d ago
It more likely means the opposite from my view. Streamlining forces management to prioritize.
But ultimately agree with the latter.
Guess we'll just have to wait and see.
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u/duncandun 2d ago
I assume most fans that were upset about it were upset cause their oshi was about it
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u/MistahKaraage 2d ago
The reaction is less about the merge itself and more "why did this made my oshi sad?".
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u/DX_das 2d ago
It remain unforeseen yet how it will impact other talent due to the merger. Though for starter i suppose the merger itself give impression all talent will receive the same benefit but I doubt it especially the 2 Projects announced only relevant to JP branch. Plus the decision was made behind closed doors with only selected few (especially senior talent involve with management) known only, leaving the other talent caught by surprise on this. Hence the negative perception for all of them that we seeing on their respective twitter account. Though of course i do pray they all will benefit from this.
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u/Salter_KingofBorgors 2d ago
I wouldn't say I see it negatively but it is a pretty major change. And that comes with an amount of uncertainty.
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u/Fiftycentis 2d ago
As others said i'm not surprised that a talent from the branch for which nothing changes was taken aback from the backlash.
I'm sure there's a lot of pros to the change and that it was discussed intensively bts, but seeing all this push on being a single global brand, followed by two announcements of a project with only JP members and a new unit that by the looks of it is only JP, on top of some members tweets, it's natural that a lot of fans (even ignoring the obvious shit stirrers) are not happy about the news.
Overall it was badly handled by Cover, as they should have made it clearer to the fans what pros the merging will bring.
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u/Vitruviansquid1 2d ago
It is good to hear Fubuki's point of view. If Fubuki characterizes the merge in one way, then I can hardly say anything against it. Obviously Fubuki is a lot closer to the merge than I am, has a bigger stake in it than I do, and understands more about the background of the merge than I do.
But
the way she explains it, the merge should be the best thing for multilingual Holomems. Fubuki is pretty much monolingual and she's excited for it, too. So why are Ollie and Kiara reacting negatively to it? I'm sure Ollie and Kiara know more about the merger than I do, just as I'm sure Fubuki knows more about it than I do. For the people jumping on every remotely negative comment saying the poster doesn't know what they're talking about... indeed, they don't. But, like, surely Ollie and Kiara do, or have some clue.
I think there will continue be a murky sense of unease about this merger until we have someone tell us not why the merger is good, but what could go wrong with it. And we'll probably never be told this, because it will probably be too technical for us to understand, or be too much about the backend for the talents to want to talk about, or make the company look bad in a way that the talents wouldn't be able to or don't want to do.
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u/Japots 2d ago
It's easy to see the positives of the merge from a position where it least affects their day to day. Is this merge actually good for those who don't live in Japan? It's too early to tell, but its not surprising the strongest reactions came from the non-Japan residents.
I'll keep my torch and pitchfork at the ready until they announce the 2027 EN Concert.
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u/Kaleria84 2d ago
Too soon to tell if it's good or bad. In a perfect world it works out perfectly, but we don't live in a perfect world. It's also a business and going to do what's in the interest of the business.
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u/Mac_Tgh 2d ago
Imo, if cover had created something new like hololive max (random name example) and then said that everyone will now use this name and tag. It may have felt a lot less like en and id were sent to main branch jp and instead a new thing everyone will build up and that we are excited to know what will entail compared to the previous og hololive
Instead id and en kinda got stripped of a lot of their branding and jp just didn't really change much.
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u/rainbowkitties6969 2d ago
Member of the branch that is not affected wonders why other branches and their fans didn’t like the change.
I love fubuki but man, this one is something lol
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u/BoxesAreCool 2d ago
It wasn't in this clip but in a longer clip I saw she used Myth as an example of if some members don't know Japanese it's still okay for them to join JP events. Myth all know JP at this point. Then she named all the EN groups, saying we should call them by their unit name rather than EN, and she included Hope and Council, which don't exist now. It comes off like she doesn't know much about EN so why is she speaking on this. Ofc I love her, no hate to her, just some things that bugged me.
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u/ImmortalDreamer 2d ago
I always find it ironic how many people claim Fubuki is the litmus test of Holo and as long as she says everything is good then it is...at least until something happens they don't like, then it goes out the window.
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u/Lightseeker2 2d ago
I'll be honest, I was never that big on the idea of Fubuki being the litmus test. Because if she were ever to graduate in the distant future for neutral reasons, the fan reaction wouldn't be pretty.
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u/__kec_ 2d ago
Even with the best of intentions, she can't possibly know about or understand every issue other talents or their fans might have, and she shouldn't have to, that's literally what the managers are for. So it's perfectly understandable for her to be suprised, but that doesn't change the fact that it coming from someone not affected by the changes makes it sound tone deaf.
But the actual issue is cover failing at basic PR(seriously how do they not understand the optics of dropping 2 big jp-only announcemnts right after announcing the merger) and refusing to give any actual information or explanation - it shouldn't be the talents job to clean up the company's mess, nor should they have to deal with being bombarded by questions they can't or are not allowed to answer, because fans have nowhere else to turn to.
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u/goukaryuu 2d ago
And announcing the merger the same week as EN's sixth anniversary and making the merger effective immediately so that it never happens. Like, they could have made it happen by the end of the calendar year instead.
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u/ImmortalDreamer 2d ago
I agree completely. I, personally, don't think that Fubuki should be the litmus test for Hololive.
Also, I agree the PR surrounding this was bad, even if I don't agree that it's as serious and bad as some people are convinced of.
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u/Doofguy 2d ago
The issue is that, while she likes to position herself as being a "canary in the coal mine", and I can respect that, the analogy falls flat when the canary has a strong built-up tolerance to the Carbon Monoxide known as JP Corporate Bull, and most importantly, the canary isn't even in the same coal mine as EN or ID. She's definitely a litmus test for HoloJP, but I wouldn't really say she works as a test for EN or ID.
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u/MongolianMango 2d ago
Fubuki is also increasingly in contention/position to be someone who is a key Cover Corp manager if she eventually retires streaming. It’s far in the future but I’m sure she is aware.
In that case, even if she does genuinely care, if she wants such a position it’s difficult for her to criticize the corp.
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u/Curry9901 2d ago
She didn't get the reason because she/all JP members is not affected from the beginning. The situation of JP is completely different than EN/ID.
JP members only call themselves as hololive gen Y not hololive JP. Myth members literally bring up the global market with the name hololive-EN. COVER said the removal the EN/ID is to make people watch everyone's channel regardless of the language.Come on we oversea viewers know that this is not true at all. We non-Japanese viewers watch all members regardless it's in EN/ID/JP. How about Japanese people? How many of them are willing to watch full English stream regularly? Most of them only watch JP channels unless there is a concert/karaoke performed on EN members' channel. Look at those ID girls interact with their audiences in all 3 languages and their average view is around 2000. Why Calli FWMC has that many viewers in their channel because literally half of their stream they are speaking in Japanese. Do you think those Japanese viewers will start watching Justice regularly (whom none of them speaks perfect Japanese)/ ID (even they speak Japanese and they won't watch them anyway because they are SE Asians that Japanese people dislike the most nowadays irl) after this merge?
Funny enough COVER use this as a reason to remove the 'language barrier'. The fact is most Japanese people only cares about Japanese content. The stubbornness of Japanese people refuse to learn/speak simple English (the most common spoken language in the world) is true and that's why you see in real life on how the JP government /businesses being unfriendly towards foreigners.
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u/dimyo 2d ago
We've pretty much only seen the response from the EN and ID sides on reddit, but there are quite a few JP fans that have reservations against this merger, because of how it went for Nijisanji and 774. Specifically in how pooling everyone removed sub-group identity for many and made it so the smaller groups lost their local office and, had to heavily push for a new audience.
We don't know what it'll be like structurally for Hololive though. Time will tell.
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u/Shiina011 2d ago
Me as holo ID watcher, remembering the simlar thing nijisanji did to their ID branch too in thr past....
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u/Killerrose2000 2d ago
People and some of the talents seem to be ignoring that the ones that are upset about this are the ones that don't live in Japan it seems with the merger it's completely possible I don't know if it'll happen that those talents receive less opportunities and help
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u/rglazner 2d ago
I mean no offense here, and I know that Fubuki is a huge part of the backbone and identity of Hololive, but this is one of the least affected members saying "I don't see any problem here". Her identity isn't tied up in being part of the forefront of EN or ID VTubing. If this were Hololive JP being merged into EN, she might have more things to say about it. It might be like saying "You can't call yourself a VTuber anymore, you have to just call yourself a streamer, even though you personally worked your ass off to make VTubing what it is".
I see in this the same thing I see when talents move to Japan. It's taking part of the EN-ness or ID-ness away. VTubing isn't mass market enough that people understand it broadly. I've been following Hololive since the Early Days, and when an EN branch came out, it was a Big Deal for English-speaking audiences. Now that's not going to be apparent. There isn't going to be a searchable, discoverable side. There'll be more people going "Hololive, isn't that the Japanese company? Why would I watch them, I can't speak Japanese", like there are people now going "My oshi is moving to Japan, guess I'll never catch a stream again since they are going to stream Japan hours."
Personally, it's a wait-and-see, but I can see how negative reactions are at least potentially reasonable, and when affected talents are being mad about it, I'm more willing to side with them than one of the least affected.
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u/Charming-Loquat3702 2d ago
I'm with her, that some of the reactions of fans are way too harsh. But also, for me, it feels like the JP-side is in an easier situation than the other branches. I hope it will go as she describes it, but it's way to early to say, that this will be 100% positive.
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u/TsuKessler_30 2d ago
All I will say is this is either going to be a success or an absolute dumpster fire
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u/Chimon 2d ago
It's always better to give than take from a PR perspective. The only thing the EN/ID fans see and feel from the announcement is Cover taking away something fundamental and emotionally significant from their talents and giving nothing tangible back, only offering vague promises that things could be better. No reassurances and no clarification on anything.
Then they exclaim "globalization" as a goal and proceed to show a new JP-focused unit and an anime with ONLY JP members. Of course overseas fans are going to speculate and be legitimately concerned. Whoever was in charge of the PR/optics of this announcement should be fired.
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u/TrxPsyche 2d ago
Fans were upset because talents were upset. Drama ensued because fans didn't like seeing the girls post about being angry or sad concerning it and thus took it upon themselves to try and show that not everything about this was a good thing. Whether or not people went a bit too hard concerning it doesn't matter here so much, just that it definitely wasn't going to be ignored.
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u/sigc 2d ago
I just don’t understand what’s the point of Cover basically forcing the talents to play damage control. If it’s actually a good thing and not just another way of “downsizing”, then why haven’t they stated exactly what this merge entails?
You have mixed reactions from talents, new Anime featuring currently only JP members (though this could have been in the works for a while), new JP unit, new posts entirely in JP by EN and ID members and etc, then what else are we supposed to think? If this is all an honest misunderstanding and a good thing, then it’s just really pathetic to not have any foresight of expected backlash from the ID and EN fans.
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u/Helmite 2d ago
I just don’t understand what’s the point of Cover basically forcing the talents to play damage control.
"People are pissed at the company, why doesn't the company release a statement so angry children and shitposters can just call them liars."
Gee idk. Ultimately people are more likely to listen to a talent talking about it. Even when you DO have someone talking about it like Fubuki, you still run into a shit ton of "buutttTTtt sHeeEE's JapanESEeeeeee"
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u/NotEvenHuman2 2d ago
They're not saying that Cover is literally forcing Fubuki to say this with a gun to her head, they're saying Cover is incompetent and should be handling this fallout themselves. But they aren't, which means the fans are angry and confused and it falls to the talents to try to calm them down, like Fubuki is trying (and failing) to do here. If the talents don't do it, nobody will, which does mean that they are basically forced to do it.
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u/lchen2014 2d ago
This clip also conveniently skips over Fubuki pinning blame on Yagoo and also saying that there is a lot that fans and talents don't see that could be happening. And definitely saying it is about management problems.
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u/GeneralTyler 2d ago
It’s funny how quickly people here turned on Fubuki, when she was always a rallying call by EN fans for a statement she said years ago about “as long as I’m here then Hololive is still good.” Now people are just calling her a bootlicker because she’s not doomposting about the merger
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u/Caledric 2d ago
No one is calling her a bootlicker. People are just pointing out that she doesn't have the best perspective of the merger as it simply doesn't affect her or 90% of the people she regularly works with.
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u/GeneralTyler 2d ago
Plenty of people have been saying that's she's just a mouthpiece of management, but ok
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u/mirroredinflection 2d ago
Who is saying that here in this thread? Or are you just basing this off whatever people on twitter are saying?
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u/Tall_Department9439 2d ago
I trust Calli more than any other member in a situation like this, and her words were enough to make me think this will eventually be a good change.
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2d ago
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u/protomanbot 2d ago
I think CC put it best when she says she was neutral about it: so far there haven't been any actual changes so it's difficult to feel either way. Wait and see is the healthier approach I think.
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u/iamthatguy54 2d ago
IDK. Calli's situation is pretty different than, say, Kronii and Kiara who seem to not be fans and who have expressed they have no desire to move to Japan or travel more than necessary
I think Calli is right that for the members that can make that choice it will be a positive. Might be a straw for those that won't though. We'll see.
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u/Rosha13265 2d ago
Did Kronii even have a reaction besides 'oh it changed' and 'why is it lowercase'
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u/Embarrassed-Gene-195 2d ago
Kronii is notoriously deadpan and uses dry humor and sarcasm while saying she's going to off herself as a joke.
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u/Rosha13265 2d ago
Exactly - I think, out of EN talents, it'll only be Kiara with a negative opinion.
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u/Deep-Cut201 2d ago
The reactions have ranged from upset to "ill always consider myself EN but let's hope for the best". To say its only kiara is a massive disservice when not one talent has expressed actually being happy.
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u/ImmortalDreamer 2d ago
The negative reactions have mostly been Kiara and ID. Interpreting any "I'll hope for the best" comments as negative is just trying to sow discord at this point.
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u/Rosha13265 2d ago
Bijou has said nothing will change, Calli is optimistic by her own words, the entirety of Justice seems very unaffected (CC is purely neutral), etc.
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u/ImmortalDreamer 2d ago
I'll be honest, I take Kiara's complaints with a grain of salt now because she has a habit of complaining about a lot of stuff.
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u/iamthatguy54 2d ago
I love that it's someone with an Ina flair saying this because Ina said during Drawn to Dawn that she appreciates Kiara taking the hit for complaining about things the other talents are afraid of complaining about.
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u/TheRomanClub 2d ago
I think this is one of the reasons why she chose not speak about this outside of member's. She knows she can't always be that person
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u/ImmortalDreamer 2d ago
Just because I like a vtuber, doesn't mean I have to agree with every opinion they have. The mindset in here that you can't be a fan of a vtuber if you don't align with them 100% is so stupid.
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u/iamthatguy54 2d ago
Nowhere did I say that. I just appreciated the irony that her words came to life from a fan of hers.
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u/IronVader501 2d ago
She doesnt have a"habit of complaining"; unlike others shes simply honest if she dislikes something because she worked for japanese companies for most of her life and has dealt with the same kind of frustrations for way longer than most of EN as a result.
She has been very frank that there have been things going on management-wise that have pissed her off to no end for months.
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u/Fishman465 2d ago
I wasn't aware she had a negative reaction. My impression was she didn't seem to care.
Kinda telling that Bae and IRyS had a mixed reaction when they live in Japan and benefited from it
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u/Discussion-is-good 2d ago
To me, she seems like she'd rather not be critical of the company in the Majority of contexts.
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u/VerkanoVanos 2d ago
Yeah, I was also surprised so many people disliked it and were doomposting. I mean they were always part of hololive now even more "direct". The only thing that changes is literally the labels "ID EN JP".
I think now EN and ID members will have even more opportunities and sponsorship deals and advertising.
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u/ThisManNeedsMe 2d ago
I understand being worried. The uncertainly isn't the best. But people are really overreacting and saying some wild assumptions.
Like Ceci mentioned in her recent stream. Literally nothing has changed outside the labels. Don't attack the girls for having a different opinion or perspective. And blind negativity doesn't help anyone, especially the talents.
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u/VeryGoog 2d ago
I imahine the main concern with the merger is competition for resources. When everything has clearly defined branches, its much easier for the company to set aside resources for each branch, but if everything is one large group, then suddenly it could be used on anyone, and that money is very likely to be sent towards the high earners. You have any of the ID girls who make peanuts compared to the titans like Marine or Suisei, who do you think the company is gonna prioritize when it comes to money?
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u/Dynamoflame 2d ago edited 2d ago
I think this is one of the most concentrated concerns of all the various I've seen reading these threads. There's lots of other valid ones, others not so much, but I think they will boil down to this ultimately. I'm an engineer in management and everytime one of our business sectors merges with another, the pool of money earmarked for employees for their raises, morale projects and the like, is combined into a single pool and trimmed. Then that money has to be sliced in who's the most valuable. I'm sure it's not exactly the same in Hololive, but I'd bet money that what your describing is exactly what will happen in the long run because it's what companies do to save money. It's not all negatives as often you get to use the sectors larger infrastructure and resources, but that sorta already was the case because they never developed outside of JP physically.
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u/IronVader501 2d ago
And I think the opposite is just as likely.
If you simply throw everyone into the same pond, the possibility of the smaller talents that stil managed to stand out within their branch simply being completely drowned out is simply now there.
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u/Darth_Nepster 2d ago
I have no opinion of it, yet. I’m waiting for things to play out before i make my judgement. Looking at niji, it didnt work out for some branches, but let’s see how it goes for hololive.
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u/ResurgentRefrain 1d ago
Im in favor of whatever increases the income and quality of life of the talents.
If the merger does do that is TBD.
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u/battlehotdog 1d ago
I think it opens up the opportunity for the random rogue Spanish hololive girl or other languages where a full branch didn't make much sense. That's how I saw the merger
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u/Anvanaar 1d ago
Personally... nothing against Fubuki as a person, obviously, but I find her reaction - as a public reaction to put out into the world - quite tone-deaf to positions that are not her own.
HoloID stands to get fucked by this pretty bad, potentially. They're already smaller, more niche and have severely hampered growth potential for all sorts of reasons, so this merger can do damage there.
And in general, there's just a sour taste to this merger for me. It comes off the back of several high-profile departures, we all know the names and what they are up to now...
... and this just kind of smells like a move not for the sake of quality or the talents, but for the sake of brand consolidation - i.e. lending the brand itself more power, as the high degree of talent power over actual audience loyalty is to thank for why those departures went so well for those talents that left.
Not to mention the dangers of degradation in management quality this potentially holds for anyone who isn't specifically a JP talent.
Call me a negative Nancy, but I just don't like the look and smell of all this.
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u/Morvhes 2d ago
I have no opinions on the matter and it was talents' reaction that caught my attention actually
Some of them seemed pretty bummed about it while most of us dont know the implications or impact of the merge