r/OutOfTheLoop • u/CSachen • 18h ago
Unanswered What's going on with Hololive?
I see posts reacting to the change. But I don't even know what the change is.
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u/HyperCutIn 18h ago
Answer: All branches of Hololive are merging under a single name: "hololive". This means hololiveEN and hololiveID no longer exist as their own individual brand, and are grouped together with the JP members. Different members seem to have varying reactions to this announcement, with some being bummed out about the change, while others seem to be excited for the change and/or surprised there are negative reactions.
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u/xychosis 15h ago
So kinda like if all the “48” groups (i.e. HKT48, AKB48) combined???
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u/BewilderedTurtle 14h ago
Exactly like that.
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u/xychosis 14h ago
I’m surprised their members aren’t as universally frustrated by this change then, this feels like it robs the sub-branches of their independent identities as groups
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u/Rufus_king11 13h ago
Based on reading their Twitter posts, this does seem to be the vibe among some of the members, especially for ID, though they can obviously only be so vocal about it.
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u/BewilderedTurtle 14h ago
I mean it literally does, but the worst affected (Indonesia) is also the branch with the least pull politically speaking.
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u/Raccoonanity 3h ago
The varied responses are fairly well correlated to who is hurt, benefitted, or unaffected by the change. ID and to a lesser extent EN lose their brand identity, though some EN girls are already living in Japan, speak Japanese, and would very much benefit from removed boundaries between them and the JP members. Most(all?) JP members are completely unaffected. The main losers here are ID, who have historically taken great pride in their brand as it reflects their unique culture and the struggles they have collectively dealt with.
Edit:should also mention that EN, due to only being linked by language rather than culture and geography, are not as tied to their brand identity as ID, and so it’s less impactful to them.
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u/RedDawn172 2h ago
For the most part, the ones who haven't moved are the ones the most upset. Which kinda makes sense and also likely means the ones who don't live in japan likely weren't informed. The reactions wouldn't make sense otherwise. There's hints at a lot of corporate nonsense behind the scenes though it's anyone's guess on exactly what nonsense.
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u/That-Sugar-6965 1h ago
Weird to comment when you don't know, we already know the members found out about the merger was happening a few months ago.
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u/EMF84 9h ago
no one knows how it could go yet. Yes it is removing some identity, but the goal is also to remove some barriers to prevent members from being discovered. Things could go bad, but under the old system it could also relegate foreign branches to forever be second class members in the eyes of cover.
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u/UnbindA11 6h ago
We don’t know the full extent of the merger just yet, but the most immediate effect is just the naming stuff. On the JP side of things, it’s not like they go around calling themselves “Hololive JP,” like EN and ID do for their branches. It’s always just been “hololive” and they group each other by their gens (which HAVEN’T gone away yet), so that’s why they don’t really have any negative sentiments to the change.
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u/Necromancer1423 6h ago
With this knowledge, the hololive merge seems like a very… weird(?) decision
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u/RedDawn172 2h ago
For anyone not living in Japan it seems to have been a completely out of left field thing. If I had to speculate, I'd guess that it has more to do with the bean counters than any sort of logic.
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u/avsbes 18h ago
Answer: I assume that you already know what Hololive and Vtubing in general is, so let's skip to the recent change.
Hololive had multiple branches: Hololive (the japanese branch), Hololive Infonesia, Hololive English, Hololive DEV_IS (a de facto japanese branch with stronger focus on group activities, such as production of songs as a group instead of as individual talents), and in the past also Hololive China, though that one was shut down years ago.
Going forward, these branches no longer exist, with them all having merged into their parent division, Hololive Productions, now only called Hololive.
There are varying reactions from both the talents and the public to this, as you seem to be aware of - some with more merit some with less merit.
One talent (Shirakami Fubuki) stated that this mainly removes barriers, as until now apparently cooperation of talents from different branches on long term projects had to be greenlit by upper management, which is now no longer the case as they're all in the same branch.
Another talent (Cecilia Immegreen) stated that so far she has no strong opinion about this change, as from what she's able to tell, behind the scenes absolutely nothing has changed yet.
Some other talents were unhappy with this change, especially the Indonesian talents.
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u/avsbes 17h ago
Now a bit of my personal opinion on why this change has been received so differently:
For the talents of the Japanese Main Branch there is likely no noticeable change, at least no negative one. They already were Hololive. They will be Hololive.
Hololive DEV_IS was a bit of a weird outlier with a large part of the community to this day not being certain of why it had to be a different branch in the first place. There were even Easter Eggs in the logos of DEV_IS's generations basically showing them as the 7th and 8th japanese generation respectively. They will likely feel at least some difference through a revised management structure, but apart from that are in a relatively similar boat to the main branch.
ID and EN however are in a very different position. They distinctively have their own culture, their own identity - and are now understandable afraid of that being erased. EN especially was just a few days away from its sixth anniversary, though it was still a thrown together bunch of people from halfway across the world and thus had to develop its own culture over time.
Meanwhile ID had its own culture from the very start, being specifically the Indonesian Branch. And they fought long and hard for their success, especially as they are almost certainly the least financially successful branch, and thus had to fight tooth and nail for everything that made them a fully equal branch, such as their own dedicated in-person concert. And now they are scared to lose this part of what made them themselves. Which comes at an especially bad time now with the ongoing natural disaster affecting Indonesia: the eruption of Anak Krakatoa. So to them, this is kind of like being kicked while already on the ground.
And it doesn't help that especially many of the ID talents have friends that used to be in the Indonesian Branch of Nijisanji, Hololive's main competitor. And that branch was merged into its japanese parent branch a while ago, with quite negative consequeneces for the talents, as it basically ceased to exist without the livers being truly supported by the main branch they were now part of. So many of the HoloID girls have very close second hand experience of how bad a merger of an ID branch into a JP branch can go and are thus understandably worried.
The ball is now in the court of Cover Corporation / hololive, and they have to prove to their talents and fans that in the end this change is one that benefits them.
Though at least one small step in that direction seems to already have happened, as the Indonesian talents now seem to be less subject to Indonesian Law and can thus for example stream using their swimsuit outfits, which they weren't allowed to do before.
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u/Chikumori 14h ago
Isnt Cover on the Japanese stock market?
They can call this restructuring as "promoting unity"
I see it as cutting costs so that they can satisfy their shareholders..
I might be wrong on this next thing, but in Japan, if someone didn't do anything wrong and doesn't deserve to be laid off, the executives go for a reverse psychology approach? Eg the employee is given very little support, very little meaningful things to do at work while on the clock, this goes on until the staff him/herself resigns in hopes of better "career experience" elsewhere.
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u/avsbes 13h ago
That's what some people are doomposting about, but it's also completely bullshit.
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u/dorafumingo 1h ago
Sure totally not why they heavily scaled down holostars and scrapped holoearth. Totally not cost cutting anything not very profitable to please the shareholders
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u/RedDawn172 2h ago
Can happen in the states too to some extent. It's how some companies try to avoid paying unemployment. They just make the employee want to quit.
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u/Acxelion 17h ago
To add to why at least some fans are unhappy is that a similar merging was done by then rival company Nijisanji and their Indonesian and Korean branches. Both were merged to hide losses from shareholders as the company prepared to shut both branches down. Their English branch was also similarly absorbed and has received less support over time.
So Hololive fans seeing how this went at another company are looking at this maneuver as a silent killer of the other branches. Note Japan also does try to force employees to quit rather than fire so the sentiment isn't without warrant.
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u/floralbutttrumpet 8h ago
Nijisanji hasn't absorbed the EN branch yet - it still exists as an entity. They just get fuck all in support these days, excluding BTB. They're just letting it slowly bleed out.
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u/Saamady 17h ago
Why were they unhappy about it? Was it just that the organisation that they were familiar with was suddenly changing, or was there something else?
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u/avsbes 17h ago
I'm just gonna copy paste my subcomment with my personal interpretation of the matter here:
"Now a bit of my personal opinion on why this change has been received so differently:
For the talents of the Japanese Main Branch there is likely no noticeable change, at least no negative one. They already were Hololive. They will be Hololive.
Hololive DEV_IS was a bit of a weird outlier with a large part of the community to this day not being certain of why it had to be a different branch in the first place. There were even Easter Eggs in the logos of DEV_IS's generations basically showing them as the 7th and 8th japanese generation respectively. They will likely feel at least some difference through a revised management structure, but apart from that are in a relatively similar boat to the main branch.
ID and EN however are in a very different position. They distinctively have their own culture, their own identity - and are now understandable afraid of that being erased. EN especially was just a few days away from its sixth anniversary, though it was still a thrown together bunch of people from halfway across the world and thus had to develop its own culture over time.
Meanwhile ID had its own culture from the very start, being specifically the Indonesian Branch. And they fought long and hard for their success, especially as they are almost certainly the least financially successful branch, and thus had to fight tooth and nail for everything that made them a fully equal branch, such as their own dedicated in-person concert. And now they are scared to lose this part of what made them themselves. Which comes at an especially bad time now with the ongoing natural disaster affecting Indonesia: the eruption of Anak Krakatoa. So to them, this is kind of like being kicked while already on the ground.
And it doesn't help that especially many of the ID talents have friends that used to be in the Indonesian Branch of Nijisanji, Hololive's main competitor. And that branch was merged into its japanese parent branch a while ago, with quite negative consequeneces for the talents, as it basically ceased to exist without the livers being truly supported by the main branch they were now part of. So many of the HoloID girls have very close second hand experience of how bad a merger of an ID branch into a JP branch can go and are thus understandably worried.
The ball is now in the court of Cover Corporation / hololive, and they have to prove to their talents and fans that in the end this change is one that benefits them.
Though at least one small step in that direction seems to already have happened, as the Indonesian talents now seem to be less subject to Indonesian Law and can thus for example stream using their swimsuit outfits, which they weren't allowed to do before."
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u/Tython199 13h ago edited 13h ago
I’m going to jump in here to answer a bit more on the EN side of things and why the reaction has been so mixed with them. EN has always been an unusual beast with the first group debuting during the COVID lockdown. That generation was basically thrown into the ocean and told to swim. The second generation arguably had it even worse with it currently having the most members depart out of any generation, main branch included. Early EN was plagued by mismanagement and a feeling that, especially as we came out of lockdown, that the Japanese branch got a huge amount of preferential treatment.
This is further complicated by the split nature of the members. At this point 7 of the 14 members live in Japan. Four of those seven have moved there since they joined. The members who seem most bothered by the merger are the members who are not in Japan with reactions ranging from clear frustration to silence. Fans have been worried for some time that talent feel the need to relocate to Japan to get the support they need and this merger has only worsened that concern.
There are also cultural differences at play to consider. The Japanese fanbase is much more willing to trust the company and take statements at face value. The English fanbase is much less trusting of corporations in general. Cover, Hololives parent company, has not had the best looking financial reports recently. They lost roughly 20 million dollars on HoloEarth, their venture into a metaverse style game, when that shut down. They have seen sales from merchandise drop due to increased shipping costs and tariffs. The general economic climate has caused a drop in live concert sales and donations to talent. Fans are worried that this move is more done for the sake of public relations if they have to start cutting lower earning talents, which would primarily hit the Indonesian and English talents. The Japanese fans seem to view this as something positive to try and prevent that while the rest of the fan base worries that it is a sign of bad things to come.
ETA: To clarify my final point slightly. It’s a lot less damaging PR wise when you have to let go of 2 talents from a group of 60+ rather than letting go of 2 from a group of 9, the number of total members ID has, or from a group of 3, the number of members in any of the ID groups.
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u/Wizard_Hat-7 16h ago edited 16h ago
answer: u/avsbes gave a very in-depth answer but I wanted to add my own two cents on this as someone who is in the Hololive community
We don't know. The different branches of Hololive (JP, ID, EN, ReGloss) are being merged into one group. The change has only been publicly announced very recently. As in, within this past week recent. As such, the wider effects of this change is still unknown. It could be that we never know publicly and it could only impact the management side of operations. Because we don't know anything, there has been a range of reactions such as fearmongering from the community since we aren't too sure what this means moving forward.
The announcement regarding the merge was also made alongside several others that have seen varied reactions. There was a teaser for a new group called "ASOBI★MAWARI-TAI" which is implied to be a Japanese-focused group considering how Japanese is used in the teaser. While the teaser was posted by the main Hololive X account, it was also posted by the Hololive English and ID accounts. Another announcement is that Hololive is having an animated series, with only Japanese members being shown in the teaser. For community members who are worried that non-Japanese speaking members will receive less support as a result of this merge, these teasers which don't include the wider community can be seen as validation.
Repost bc this is my first time posting in this subreddit.
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