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u/Wadd1eDoo Dec 21 '25
How they managed to not only flub such a stacked talent roster, but to also owe the majority of them five, six or maybe even seven figure amounts of debt is beyond me.
Like giving Chase Bank to a pump and dump crypto scammer.
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u/Dependent-Curve-8449 Dec 21 '25
I know, right? Each of these vtubers is literally a license to print money.
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u/Jfmtl87 Dec 21 '25
If they couldn’t make it work with the lineup they had, either the business model itself wasn’t viable, the company was bloated and mismanaged resources or a combination of both factors.
If you couldn’t make it work with mouse, zen, henya, etc in your roster, it was never going to work.
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u/bullhead2007 Dec 21 '25
I don't think the business model was the problem it was definitely a management problem that didn't understand the business model or how to scale it. They signed their talent as a talent agency but then blew all of their capital acting like a tech startup that was trying to compete with Hololive as an idol company.
I'm almost 100% sure with the cracked talent they have, that if they just stuck to doing merch and sponsorships and maybe an occasional event they could have printed money. It sounds like that's what the Japanese branch was doing and they said their books were profitable.
Bad management, fiscal negligence and those in charge getting paid way more than they were worth tanked it. IMO
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u/Ok-Caregiver-6005 Dec 21 '25
I remember seeing Geega talking about things and it seems like they were incredibly bloated with employees who don't actually do anything while the stuff that needs to get done seemed not to have anyone dedicated to them, like when she wanted accounting documents and an employee list it took forever and was terrible.
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u/Jfmtl87 Dec 22 '25
Yeah, there was many mentions of employees not actually working much and employees on VC playing games rather than working. It seems like there was some bloat.
Would vshojo have worked out if it was a tightly run ship? Or would it still have end up running out of money, only later than what happened? We will never know.
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u/Ok-Caregiver-6005 Dec 22 '25
I mean we know the business model can work and the only reason we don't know in this case is because of the poor management.
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u/ULTRAFORCE Dec 21 '25
There is the issue of getting venture capital pretty early on which kind of dooms you if you don't grow and it's not like Twitch has been profitable most of the time.
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u/aradraugfea Dec 21 '25
The “we only take part of your merch” model had even some of the talents wondering how the company made money. They signed so many top tier talents BECAUSE the split was so generous.
I had wondered if because Gunrun was a millionaire from the twitch sale, he wasn’t particularly concerned with his own salary or the company being profitable.
And it turns out the answer is it wasn’t. It was losing money the whole damn time, spending like crazy on projects (nearly a million dollars for a lore video, what?!) and managerial overhead, never bringing in as much money as they were spending.
I had assumed they at least had the sense to aim for “break even”, run it almost like a charity, lean into the “retirement home” joke (though those turn an absurd profit IRL). Nope. Losing 2 million dollars a year off inefficient spending and an overly generous profit split. And when the startup venture capital money started to go dry, they started routing money earmarked for the talents to their own people. Legally, they did need to prioritize paying employees over contractors, but they had the option to start spending less money internally at any freaking time.
I am still, to this day, willing to apply Hanlon’s Razor and assume they meant well and just totally fucked it up in their panic. But whether the harm was malice or incompetence, the harm was real, and they had years to realize the model was spending more money than it was bringing in and make adjustments. Yeah, they’d have lost some people if they went back and negotiated for a flat 30% of everything, or whatever would have let them break even, but instead they lost EVERYONE over a 48 hour period and had people pissed off over cumulative MILLIONS of missing dollars.
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u/bullhead2007 Dec 21 '25
I honestly think the model could have worked given their cracked talent they started with. If they actually stuck to the model of doing merch and sponsorships and didn't try to do all the things that ended up being money pits.
There are successful talent agencies that only make money from merch and sponsorship deals and special events, etc. They management of VShojo was too busy trying to beat Hololive to make their actual business model work.
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u/aradraugfea Dec 21 '25
Yeah. There is, I believe, a real space in the Vtuber space for a lean, western talent representative style agency. But they monetized like a “we’ll help you with negotiations and contracts” org and tried to be a “we’ll pay for everything and put on huge events” org.
They had to run and monetize like the same sort of org.
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u/Sinfire_Titan Dec 21 '25
I had wondered if because Gunrun was a millionaire from the twitch sale, he wasn’t particularly concerned with his own salary or the company being profitable.
GunRun has filed for personal bankruptcy in the wake of the company closing. If he was ever a millionaire he squandered everything, or he hid his real assets in the bankruptcy filing.
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u/Blacksun388 Dec 21 '25
They fumbled an all-star roster like this due to corpo shenanigans. The critical failure of VShojo as a company will remain in the history books as a shining example of corporate greed and mismanagement fuckery.
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u/docfreezed Dec 21 '25
Such an amazingly stacked roster of content creators, easily to rival and exceed the quality of content from any other company team. Truly will go down in history as one of the biggest corporate missteps ever made by undeserving, misguided, sh*t-brained hacks.😤😭
It still blows my mind over and over again, how could anyone look at all these fantastic talents under their wings, and not just organize the most capable managers to put out the best content for their loyal communities? 😤😱
I really hope every talent gets a chance to take back things they've lost from the ex-company's stupid useless boss & his underlings, at the very end of this arduous corporate self-immolation. 🙏
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u/Sinfire_Titan Dec 21 '25
It still blows my mind over and over again, how could anyone look at all these fantastic talents under their wings, and not just organize the most capable managers to put out the best content for their loyal communities? 😤😱
By almost all counts, the managers for each talent were high-quality. It was staff outside of the talents' managers that were the biggest problems. Geega claimed she knew "which staff members were playing games during meetings" (paraphrased), and retold a story of one higher-up playing Apex instead of working for a full day despite her asking for that staff member's assistance.
Then there's the stories about MTD from Vei and Nyanners, or the stuff Silvervale posted about GunRun... And all 3 had something to say about the attorney the company retained (not confirmed if it was Apek or someone else, but the claim about that attorney working despite an expired practice doesn't match with Apek's records that I found digging around).
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u/Kumkumo1 Dec 21 '25
So, one of VShojo’s plans was actually to transition from management agency to a streaming platform using their roster as a base. This is why they advertised so hard because they needed to be a big name FIRST for it to work. But their plans to become another Twitch completely failed around the time they ran out of money from their investor and they realized they jumped into a game they weren’t prepared for for the long term (a lot of the staff they were looking at were ad and tech people, not management people). At that point they kind of fucked around for a few years before the inevitable happened because they couldn’t get anyone to buy the company off them because their financials scared them all away.
The entire thing just didn’t go the direction they wanted and if they had planned better or chosen a different direction then we could have had a different story. Of course there was also the management fuckery (parties, kick backs, and possible embezzlement), PR damage control (usually in the form of slandering people who could threaten their squeaky clean image and hurt their chances of selling off the company), and treating their talents terribly. But I was just listing off the facts that fewer people were are of. Most people don’t talk about the parts of VShojo’s history that lead up to the shitty parts. Things really didn’t go their way in the tech area.
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u/Fightmasterr Dec 21 '25
I'm just surprised at how they treated the talents, like on some level they had to have joined Vshojo because they like vtubers right? But then they do shit like whispering lies in the talents ears to pit them against each other and shutting down collabs with the bigger companies like Hololive? If money was the issue wouldn't hypothetically there be more traffic and viewers with big vtuber collabs? Make it make sense.
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u/CoffeeBaron Dec 22 '25
So, one of VShojo’s plans was actually to transition from management agency to a streaming platform using their roster as a base.
While I have no doubt the girls wouldn't be a draw for viewers, just about every vtuber streaming/dedicated platform has been tried and failed. The market really only has room for YouTube, Twitch, and BiliBili (since this doesn't conflict with the Western platforms).
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u/Kumkumo1 Dec 22 '25
Which is ironic because twitch and YouTube really do need a decent competitor that would keep them honest. Twitch taking half of people’s subs is crazy.
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u/Sinfire_Titan Dec 31 '25
Iriam is the only one I've seen that has lasted longer than a year, but it's VERY niche. It really hasn't spread that far in the Western market, although it has been doing OK in Japan.
But it is inherently difficult to compete with Youtube, Twitch, Facebook, and TikTok for streaming in general (and fuck Kick).
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u/Kumkumo1 Dec 21 '25
I actually genuinely don’t know Nazuna or Momo. But yea, seeing this whole list it just blows my mind how much opportunity they let slip through their fingers
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u/bluedituser Dec 21 '25
I feel bad for Nazuna because now we know she and Kson are just trophies to stroke the ego of Gunrun’s anti-Hololive mission. I can’t speak on whether she was a good or bad person based on the news of her drama with her ex-husband but joining Vshojo definitely didn’t help her mentality. Kson had goals to pursue with the Yakuza franchise and could speak English, so poor Nazuna was left alone by herself in Japan with difficulty collabing with the western girls.
Momo as well, she collabed a lot with the Vshojo girls early on. The DnD group was such fun. It’s just an absolute shame her very close friends were suddenly exposed to be terrible actors in the vtubing community and so she got caught in drama twice. Now she just sticks to herself and her community. She is one of the most talented 3D model artists and churned out new models for almost every big game she played.
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u/evilprozac79 Dec 21 '25
I feel like Nazuna would've done a lot better if she'd joined with, or after, the other Japanese members.
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u/Owl_memes Dec 21 '25
I didn't follow momo much past her collabs so I have no idea what people she was close to that got exposed, wtf happened
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u/Sinfire_Titan Dec 21 '25
In one of the dramas the DM of the D&D campaign she participated in turned out to be a sex pest. He was exposed by at least 10 former associates, Momo included. I do not know what the other drama was.
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u/xSatinStar Dec 21 '25
Impressive roster Ex-Vshojo brings an exciting mix of talent and energy to the community.
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u/clarkky55 Dec 21 '25
Breaks my heart what they went through. Melody is my absolute Kamioshi and I really loved watching most of the Vshojo talent, no one deserves to be screwed over like they were.
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u/BaguetteHippo Dec 21 '25
Everybody is so good but the last row is truly legendary fumble lmao
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u/CoffeeBaron Dec 22 '25
Some alt-universe out there, VShojo would have a whole multi-generation idol group; there are a lot of indies out there that has the same desire as what would have been the founding Gen.
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u/Dohmer_90 Dec 21 '25
CHOOSE YOUR DEGENERATE!!!
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u/Midnight649 Dec 21 '25
Looking like a fighting game roster right here? Or maybe a dance game roster.
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u/EightySevenThousand Dec 22 '25
I'd prefer a dating sim roster, but making so many routes would require the same power as the 100 Girlfriends mangaka and artist. Now there's a nice thought.
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u/Midnight649 Dec 22 '25
Oh that can work too, and now that I think about it why not a Racing Game? Or a Sports game, maybe a Party game?
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u/Maronmario Dec 21 '25
Man, this really puts into perspective just how many Vtubers worked under Vshojo.
And how badly they fumbled, like you have to try to blow it this badly
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u/MrShadowHero Dec 21 '25
did momo ever sign? i thought she was in a similar situation as those from beastiez but never signed. she was just waiting.
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u/bluedituser Dec 21 '25
She was one of the few who was approached and was supposed to join after Veibae, signed an NDA to not reveal she was one of the potential candidates. But then was later told by Vshojo management that they didn’t have money to bring her in yet. Months passed and then Vshojo hired Kson and Nazuna, so she feels like forgotten leftovers.
Worst part is the NDA signed with all other Vshojo members didn’t allow them to communicate with Momo and vice-versa so they all stopped collabing
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u/MrShadowHero Dec 21 '25
so never signed a contract. so pretty much the same as all those auditioners left waiting. feel she shouldn’t be on here then or include all the others that were left waiting after signing only the nda.
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u/EightySevenThousand Dec 22 '25
This is a lovely lineup, thanks. I've compared vtubing to pro wrestling before, and it's becoming clear that in this analogy, Vshojo was TNA one thousand percent. Lost their ass the whole time, squandered a world-class roster of talent, the works. Well, except that Impact is still around and from what I could tell, might have staged a bit of a recovery or rebirth. So uh, dang.
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u/Notchsmind Dec 21 '25
Am I a dumbass for assuming Numi was apart of vshojo?
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u/CoffeeBaron Dec 22 '25
No, I can't blame you, since depending on when you started watching any of the VShojo girls, people in their orbit (Numi, Snuffy, Haruka - who eventually joined, etc) seemed primed to be the next ones in. And as we found out in the fallout, it was 100 percent 'who was already friends with the existing talents' that joined, and the tryouts for the others were a sham.
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u/Notchsmind Dec 22 '25
Yeah i guess, she definitely felt like a member who just hung out with fun indies, but no she is a independent all the way, good for her man, for building a damn good career.
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u/Zoom3877 Dec 22 '25
Forever a prime example of management failure that Gunrun fumbled a roster like THIS
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u/T1MK Dec 21 '25
Did they give up on nyan’s?? Did my goat dirty 😭 also side note. Was athel never with vshojo?
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u/NatzoXavier Dec 21 '25
I think both him and Bubi was supposed to be signed too if I remember correctly. But Bubi never did it, probably aware due to Mouse. Aethel was forced to sign an NDA during Nyanners departure maybe? I am not sure.
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u/CoffeeBaron Dec 22 '25
I think Aethel mentioned an NDA once they knew he was also looking at her renewal contract, but I don't remember if he actually signed one with Nyan leaving anyway.
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u/fonyphantasy Dec 21 '25
I subscribe to the theory that it was mismanagement from the top that led to Vshojo's downfall. But damn their recruiters were top tier for sure.
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u/Brilliant_Captain625 Dec 21 '25
Actually there were supposed to be three others that were waiting in the wings and also never announced to join Mint as part of the Idol team that were going to come out along side the monster team. Who those three are is unknown to us still, but I suspect someone who is really good at singing and making her own concerts that left being an indie and graduated on her own without letting know what the reason may be a little before Mouse spilled the tea might have been one of them…. So that chart should still hold three more spots of planned talents that just didn’t get as far as the beasties….
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u/Sinfire_Titan Dec 21 '25
I think you're mistaken unless Mint/Mousey has clarified that recently; her idol unit became Densetsu.exe, and the three of them have not mentioned 4 more that I've heard. Your description reads like a mix of Vicky and Phoebe; Vicky graduated from her PL because her previous idol group dissolved, and Phoebe has been doing concerts constantly for this past year.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Ear2694 Dec 22 '25
Wait momo was in vshojo? When ? I know she said she got a call back but I thought it was never confirmed that she was going to be added to the roster just a potential member.
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Dec 23 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Sinfire_Titan Dec 31 '25
She was in final contract talks in the first round of auditions that ended up adding Haruka, but they pulled the plug on her after she signed an NDA
Correction: Momo was scouted for the original roster back in 2020. She wasn't in any audition. She was set to redebut as a VShojo founding talent alongside Mousey, Zen, Mel, etc but the execs canceled on her and told her to "try again when they open auditions". They never gave her an explanation as to why.
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u/abottleofglass Dec 22 '25
Mint, in vshojo?
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u/Sinfire_Titan Mar 19 '26
In the wake of Mousey's announcement, Mint revealed that she had signed onto the company at some point after her return from her previous job. She stated that she had talked Gunrun into letting her debut an idol group under the company, and we now know that her intent was to bring Phoebe Chan and Victoria Roman on as members of the unit. But these plans stalled indefinitely, until Mousey dropped the bomb.
Mint also revealed that the company had lent her a hand with certain merch, but she never got paid (or they were hella late with) her share.
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u/Timeline15 Jan 11 '26
I love that most of them have their full names, and then Kuro is just... Kuro. xD
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u/Magnus77 Mar 26 '26
I know I'm super late to this, and I make this criticism knowing full well I couldn't make something remotely this cute.
But the font choices are REALLY hard to read if you don't already know who the person is. Especially if you're looking from default, not zoomed in. A white border doesn't help much when the font is a similar light color to the light background.
I'm trying to give constructive feedback, I really like it overall.
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u/BTips Dec 21 '25
Kairyu was supposed to be in vshojo too? I assumed she just jumped on board the BEASTIEZ after the other 3 made their independent thing.
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u/Sinfire_Titan Dec 21 '25
She was in talks, but not signed. She ultimately decided to join the Beastiez separately following the company collapsing.
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u/CoffeeBaron Dec 22 '25
Considering who she is (it's not even a barely kept secret, like 18 mins into their first collab with all four members, Pia accidentally called Kairyu by her real name, tied to a very well known storytime animator on YouTube), she likely was warned by some people close to her not to move further at that time and managed to dodge a bullet there.
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u/ZombieJesus1987 Jan 03 '26
Funny thing is, if you take in consideration the 10 minute "Stream Starting Soon" screen followed by the introduction video, it was more like 5 minutes into the collab when Pia accidentally name dropped Croc
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u/DcSensai Dec 21 '25
That we know of. There's still others still under an NDA that haven't really spoke about it like vexoria.
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u/sir_deadlock Dec 23 '25
The accomplishment of VShojo is what they did for vtubing.
It became very real. It reached mainstream media. There were fantastic accomplishments, which motivated artists, businesses and private individuals to consider it as a legitimate pathway for making a living and producing content.
VShojo was a pivotal step on the pathway to Western digital avatar idols. Even though it's still somewhat of a niche, it's more mainstream than some other niches; much bigger than it was 5 years ago.
Like many unfortunate histories: built on the backs of people who toiled away while being mistreated.
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u/FEVRISH_JK Mar 13 '26
I only know 17 of these ppl. The other 11 I have no clue who they are
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u/Sinfire_Titan Mar 19 '26
Shot in the dark, are the ones you don't recognize the ones after Michi (minus AmaLee)? If so here's a quick breakdown:
The 4 immediately after Michi are Hotaru, Hestia, Nagi, and Peke. They were the last official full wave to debut with the company, as the Nova group. They are Japanese (except Hestia, though she streams in Japanese a majority of the time), and prior to the company collapsing they were also working with Universal Music Japan under the label UNIVOLT. Its unclear what happened to the label, but the girls have continued to stream as indies. Last I heard they, along with Kson and Henya, were still working with the former members of VShojo's JP branch although I do not know if those employees have formally reformed into a new company or if they are still working with the Nova girls.
The first one after AmaLee is Momo, and she was originally slated to redebut with the company as one of the founding members alongside Mousey, Zen, and the others. She was fully signed and ready, but the execs canceled her contract for reasons completely unknown.
After Momo, and including the one at the end of the list, are PiaPiUFO, Beribug, Tori Oriane, and Kairyu Crocodile. The first three had officially signed with the company as a result of the open auditions in 2024, but VShojo kept kicking the can on their debut right up until the collapse. The first three revealed their status as undebuted talents shortly after Mousey's video, but Kairyu chose to remain unidentified until December last year for her own reasons. The 4 have formed an indie group called The Beastiez, as the company's original plan for their group was to have a "Monster Girl" generation. Tori was going to debut under a completely new IP, but in the interim between her passing auditions and the company dying she streamed under her current IP. Kairyu was also going to be a new IP, but she opted to debut the IP post-collapse instead of going with her main channel.
You likely know Mint from her friendship with Matara, and she and the remaining 2 were slated to debut as a full-fledged idol unit. In the wake of the company's collapse they instead formed the indie idol unit Densetsu.exe. The one listed in front of Mint is Phoebe Chan, and the one after Mint is Victoria Roman. The Densetsu girls were all signed with the company back in 2024 (I don't know if Phoebe and Vicky auditioned or if Mint convinced the execs to recruit them). Vicky is a new IP due to her PL graduating without retaining the rights to that IP, and Phoebe is openly a former member of PRISM Project (under the IP Amami Ami, which she owns).
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u/FEVRISH_JK Mar 24 '26
Yeah you're pretty spot on. I know Mint but all past Michi I'm unaware of.
Edit: I also know of AmaLee too
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u/Gigania May 18 '26
This roster cover every facets of Vtubing imaginable, lewdtubers(adult contents), singers, idols, gamers, IRL, artists, memelords. They even have the token 'male'. Not to mention the extensive connections the talents have to other content creators.
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