#nijisanji korea

[vtuberconfessions]

Like at least Idol and Phase make attempts to do everything they can for their jp and Hebrew livers respectively, but I've never seen a foreign branch so poorly managed by a corpo as badly as Anycolor has the ex-korean and ex-indonesian ones.

[welcometomy20s]

September 29, 2022

Japan is Not Otaku

I think one of the biggest drivers of success between Korea and Japan is the level of transparency in our media.

In Korea, K-Pop is pretty much our culture and other parts of our culture is pretty much accessible from K-Pop. I mean many K-pop idols will put out a trot album or a sing a trot song, for example.

Which means that people who get into K-Pop or Korean movies or television can easily appreciate and breathe in the Korean mindset.

While Japan sells anime and video games, and these anime and video games might reference other parts of Japanese culture, Japanese culture as a whole is still relatively distinct from Otaku.

There was an interview with a top executive of ANYCOLOR about the future direction of the company, and the main theme was running away from the otaku culture which Nijisanji comes from. Perhaps this is a good reason for someone like Mayuzumi Kai to bail out... and he is absolutely correct, as he is in most things.

This running away reminds me of the Fine Brothers, who always wanted to run away from the internet which gave them fame, but found themselves bewildered in a culture that was getting old and haggard, and re-found love in the internet culture, and the lesson I came away from their experience is that you need to sell the culture.

Japan still has a big 'ick'-response to otaku stuff, even though they know it sells and it's popular. They really don't like the open and diverse aspects of otaku culture. That unbridled enthusiasm? And while otaku culture might seep into regular culture, it hasn't really been established as mainstream or really have been unified at all.

The internet was when the unification started, Vtuber is a crystalization of that unification, and maybe ANYCOLOR should realize that this factor, the otaku factor, is their biggest strength. But if they did, they would have gone the other way... years ago.

But they could still run back, there is always time. Always time to embrace and repackage the otaku culture to the world which will (and is) gladly accepting, and that the well won't dry out.

[godza]

vtubers i recommend!

tried my best to eliminate the freaks, let me know if theres something i missed out on!

shu yamino! nijisanji, does jp and eng streams. a sorcerer who has a sick design. he doesnt swear and is pretty family friendly except for omnipresent deez nuts jokes. entertaining and funny, good singer too!

millie parfait! nijisanji, witch of calamity with the humor of a eleven year old boy. does eng and tagalog streams. has really creative stream ideas, shes always up to something new. her humor is a bit gross and sexual so maybe watch a few clips of her to get a feel. shes so hilarious though. does a bunch of good asmr!

enna allouette! nijisanji, eng mostly. a bird(?) with the darkest humor ever. shes an acquired taste bc some jokes can be out there. shes not bigoted at all btw, those arent her thing. more morbid! her deadpan deliveries are funny, and shes been friends with millie for ages. joins in on millies gross humor when theyre together. does some cute arts and crafts handcam streams!

selen tatsuki, nijisanji. a dragon racing dragon. i love her. she loves fps games and plays a lot of apex. she laughs so much, and its infectious. she has a bit of "gap moe" she shows when she goes gaga over cute things or makes bentos. i will love her till my last breath

rosemi lovelock! nijisanji, a rose maiden. id die for her any day. she does creative streams a lot, and asmr! her whisper knocks me out. shes very "pure" if you wanna use that word, and is a little out of touch. shes incredibly silly and funny!

finana ryugu! nijisanji, a mermaid! she isnt afraid to talk about sexual content, she embraces it. shes super funny, and entertaining, likes childe a lot for some reason.

quick nijisanji indonesia/korea vtubers that i dont watch as much but theyre still great: taka radjiman, hana macchia (first vtuber i ever watched), suha, han chiho (graduated :(), mika melatika!!!!!!!, and ban hada.

aza from virtuareal, nijisanjis chinese branch. mandarin streams, with some english here and there. great singer, and funny. cute model too! you guys love guys with ears. his genmate roi sings too, and they have funny 3d moments together.

prince ryu shiro, an independent vtuber. ok this plug is completely personal since i want this guy to get more viewers. funny and posts a lot of youtube shorts, streaming on both yt and twitch. english, and very responsive with his audience since its so small. used to to do tierlist tuesdays and plays a lot of retro games. please go watch him. my dragon man.

[khrysos-karnifex]

KR was struggling with pulling views, but this feels like a dumb move. Why combine just Indonesia and Korea? Why not just drop all of the country indicators? Or even keep Nijisanji JP but combine EN KR and ID since they’re basically separated that way already? i feel like KR keeps getting done so dirty for no reason

wish they had done this for Nijisanji IN tho :/

[welcometomy20s]

April 15, 2022

A Little Ditty About the Merger

So, the merger has officially occured. All the KR and ID members are now part of the Nijisanji proper. Once again, I ask myself if the endeavor would be all right. I wrote way too much on the reddit post, although the forum is somewhat self-selecting so it would be okay.

But back to the subject at hand - what might happen? I actually did some data analysis looking back at the '19 Merger and HoloEN and I will do a 'full' write-up when I get the next month's data. But let's say this is a preview.

The language problem is ascendant. The reason HoloEN had trouble transfer subs but Luxiem did not was that barrier. Unlike the '19 merger, there is that barrier for ID/EN... of course most people in ID can speak English and quite a few speak Japanese, while the opposite is true for KR. And language situation has been somewhat accommodated although ID still has time for Bahasa Indonesian and KR with Korean. New language ultimately requires a new base.

I have an unofficial four to five part series about the Next Hololive, the first part was a long tortured post about the Five English Sisters, second was a comment that was supposed to be a ground to a post about VSpo, but that was one of worse post I have ever received, and I still don't know why, because when I say VSpo seems to be the next Hololive, people usually like the assertion, but when I explain why VSpo could be the next Hololive, people think I am off-base.

I went into an argument (out of boredom) regarding musical ability of VSpo. I say musical abilities in VSpo are good (I was being gracious, but using Ichinose as an example was akin to using Luna as an example for Hololive. Ichinose is clearly the weaker member of VSpo in terms of singing.) but I don't think most of the downvotes were from that. There were a bit of complaint about clipping structure...

I did add a note regarding that VSpo actually did not want a quick clipping culture precisely to create an everlasting atmosphere. When the threat of trying to keep up to date on the player's activities is gone, the clippers usually present a narrative, which is what VSpo does want. Hololive also has this, but by going the opposite way. Since the market is overcrowded, there is already enough clipping news and so others would market towards narrative making.

(Ooh, I have a topic I want to talk about but I'll save it for tomorrow)

And this is also me transitioning out of a pretty long tangent. The destination I was going for in that section was that I had a post about Isegye Idols and why they were able to breakthrough the Korean market. To simply put, there are several correlating factors.

A transparent process done by a trusted YouTuber, which means we already have a baked in audience, and a laser focus on music/entertainment went a really long way in building the grounds for a successful market. Along things like Revolution Heart and of course the whole host of utaite/streamers turned VTubers meant Korea is kind of reinventing the wheel... but it was necessary because the culture couldn't have been transplanted.

That was a biggest downfall in NijiKR, and indeed in everything in society. Poor management. GOVERNING IS HARD, PEOPLE! It takes time and effort to argue and think up a good solution and work out actual compromises and present different priority plans.

Management ultimately is a trial and error effort, and one must be graceful with error, but not to the point leaders will start to slack.

Okay, that's too much tangent. I'll get to the conclusion and... crap, I forgot the thing I wanted to write about tomorrow, and the recovery is partial, and I have become run out of time. Conclusion is two good news. First is that Gamers and SEEDs overwhelming rose, paving the way for 2019 being the Year of Nijisanji and that Luxiem surge did saw a tiny uptick in JP liver's growth, which meant there was much more crossover... this makes a tiny bit of sense since Luxiem tapped in the Asian market, which means they are already jumping hoops.

So, it will probably be the case that ID and KR will grow substantially in the next couple of years. May's APEX tourney will be another one, because I'm pretty sure Gwelu will invite international members.

[welcometomy20s]

October 27, 2021

Millie’s Collab Ban makes me worried.

Primer is that Mille was supposed on a DnD campaign with Reza and she got denied. While the facts of the case seem pretty routine, this event crystalized my fears.

My experience with Ethyria was the exact opposite of the kind with HoloCouncil. When I first saw the PV for the Council, I felt that this was way out of line with Hololive and that, as they do, they bit too much and Council might become isolated… but by the time they were basically hired as busibodies to build the EN side of the Portal, I was convinced they were very good hires, and that Hololive did a great job with integration.

There was something special in that really only game that all of HoloCouncil enjoyed was Minecraft, in that Minecraft always kind of been the hub of Hololive happenings. And Council shenanigans basically cemented that fact. It also made for a really quick integration with JP members as well, because EN effectively now shares a place with JP, in a sense. Meanwhile, ID has been more separate, which actually works a bit, since there is a feeling that ID members might become assimilated too much locally.

Compared to this upward spiral, Ethyria has gotten a downward shift. Nijisanji was very cautious about EN. While Hololive tends to go all in on experiments, Nijisanji is usually very considerate. ID and KR was a curious approach, and while Hana ensured ID’s survival… KR was doing just enough that ANYCOLOR went autopilot, putting out new people because it’s their thing more than giving actual interest.

But EN and Koshien changed things. Nijisanji made the bold move of tapping people straight from the thicket of the booming indie EN scene, instead of picking people around that hubbub as in Hololive’s strategy, which meant they were met with people with a different mindset, one who makes their bread with collabs and generally throwing meme at people. I guess ID should have been their vaccine, but EN is more fearless about doing this to anyone around them. But these fears were almost secondary.

As I wrote before, Nijisanji did not only fear EN will go kaput, as IN did, but that they will overshadow their main branch, similar to HoloMyth’s rise in fall of 2020. While HoloMyth was basically the one shining light, in midst of many problems happening around the same time, Nijisanji didn’t need light, they were already doing fine for themselves. And a takeover would be more of a nuisance than a godsend. But LazuLight was as good as HoloMyth (I should talk about how Pomu essentially rebranded herself and yet not only she was able to thrive in the environment, but her prior friendship only strengthened) and they were big, but not too big, exactly in the goldilock zone ANYCOLOR wanted.

So, they quickly put on OBSYDIA, which worked out fine, a little less, but still big and distinctive, with Selen’s off-road ways paying off big time, almost akin to Mito. And held a second audition, with a special section for male VTubers.

Then came Koshien. The decision was logistical, which was why I was able to predict it. There weren't enough JP members to fill 8 teams, but adding ID/KR/EN would have worked. But the knock-on effect was not anticipated. Belmond ‘swatch-along stream was the beginning of the promise long held by viewers. Nijisanji becoming a truly international affair. Something ANYCOLOR was wary about, but had to come to face that it was inevitable in the face of success regarding EN and Koshien.

The result has been mixed. JP members have mostly aligned with KR members, which meant that ANYCOLOR now had to actually care about KR as a whole, also the fact that the VTuber boom finally arrived in Korea after so long. The key landmark was the opening of NijiArk overseas. This moment would probably mirror the opening of HoloSaba to ID members. And Nagi’s yandere moment to Ange would be their ‘lapis lazuli’ in regards to PekoMoona and the Construction Arc that followed them.

And that’s the state of Nijisanji when Ethyria arrived. Ethyria was an extension of what they were doing previously. In the end, they basically hired a chunk of the indie EN VTuber scene, and transplanted them to a Nijisanji setting. Which is why I felt something was off during the first few streams… apparently ANYCOLOR did not know that was what they did when they hired the four livers, and they started to believe that they might have gotten too greedy. It wasn’t like they hired someone big before, in the form of honorary KR member Chigusa, but Chigusa came from a 1st gen company, while Millie and the rest came from the indie EN/SEA scene, which is very different.

Much like Rosemi carelessly eating the spicy hot noodles from her 100K stream, they did not realize how spicy they were ordering and are now doing haphazard damage control, which would only serve to destroy creativity and comity in Nijisanji EN.

Ninisani joke is very funny, but it’s very much a shadow of the fact that they are in a different place to what Nijisanji expect from their livers. Mille’s Collab Ban stroked old fears when Millie’s past life decided to retire and everyone knew she was going to a new place very soon, and that it was probably Nijisanji. Millie is known to be a fangirl and impresario to many people around her, and that was her greatest strength. Millie is great on her own, but she truly shines when she is with others. Nijisanji would probably limit her in terms of collabs and interactions, would that hurt her or can she overcome it?

The answer seems to be more negative by the day, and I feel worried for them.

[welcometomy20s]

February 18, 2022

Where are the Novelty?

This is a continuation of an adaptation of a post I trashed.

Back in 2012, when I talked about Gangnam Style, I think I didn't really portray what was going on. See, a response I got was... it's popular because it's weird! And that is true, what is the truth here?

As in, not all weird stuff get a massive hit like Gangnam Style, what's the difference? The answer I gave is that there's method in the madness. As someone who I used to watched a long time ago, and with a good degree of knowledge about Korea said when Gangnam Style got big... It's odd that it got popular because it's very Korean.

Indeed the song is incredibly Korean. Not much in the musicality, but in the themes and the lyrics. Each line requires about an hour of study if you are not intimately familiar with Korean culture.

So, if you do not know this, you would think it's brazenly odd, but you can understand they are coming from somewhere, so it's intriguing.

This is why things that are more Otherly will make virality. To get to the point, Hololive became popular because it was more Japanese than Nijisanji. Nijisanji feels like your typical streamer group. It's understandable. It's familiar. Hololive are (it's a joke, but it really is important) idols, which brings another layer of complexity.

That's all I would say for here. I will go on in that trash post.

[welcometomy20s]

November 13, 2021

I will write an eulogy, but not right now.

Two odd things happened in NijiKR that lead me to a hypothesis, more of a hot take.

Let’s give a little background, shall we? Koshien was a testing time for ANYCOLOR, and that was especially true for NijiKR, which have been the red-headed stepchild of the family since basically the beginning. But since Korea is close by, both physically and culturally, JP members have been increasingly sharing time with KR members.

That means suddenly NijiKR was a thing again, and that led to some instability… First time I saw something was off was not the bombshell news which is the reason I am writing this post, but fact that some of the covers have been made private. For JP, it was back number’s Christmas Song, and a bunch of Ara’s translated songs have also been privated. I was confused, but fortunately (maybe too fortunately) Ara had a cover song stream, where she explained what was going on. And her words are basically the framework for which I am basing my very hot take for this week.

Now, both Yuya and Bora have cited education reasons as for their decision to graduate. This is a code, since there are many in JP who have taken various approaches to accommodating their education, and none have retired as a result.

Unless there was something that was making things hard to accommodate… and that’s where I am at with this news. Basically, Bora is running away rather than retiring.

This is usually the case, especially in this day and age. Most retirements are due to some upper shenanigans rather than actual retirement and therefore the reincarnation rate is pretty high. Everyone in Nijisanji has resumed streaming, and the words from others certainly feels like Bora is going to appear somewhere else in a month.

Even if my hunch doesn’t come to fruition, this feels like an indictment to Nijisanji. Nijisanji had tons of retirements, but none of them really mattered that much, with the possible exception of Chitose and Kasumi. But then came this year, and four of their top talents have suddenly decided to hang up their avatars.

More on that in my actual eulogy at the end of the month.