Discussing Kiryu Coco''s graduation

[Specter Von Baren]

If you aren't someone that knows who Coco is then please feel free to not comment in this thread, just consider this "Fucking weeb shit" and move on.

Several hours ago Kiryu Coco, one of the biggest talents from Hololive announced that she will be graduating in the 1st of July.

Apparently this has been something the other talents have been aware of for a while, I've heard that Miko and Choco actually tried to talk her out of it and from the language of Cover's official message it's clear that they also tried to talk her out of it.

I myself was just about to go to sleep last night when I saw the news and ended up staying up two more hours because of how shocked I was, just reading all the reactions from fans and other vtubers to this.

Given all the other details I know, it's evident that this is for two reasons. One, stress, Coco has always worked really hard to make good content and we know how Japan has an almost "work until you die" attitude. Two, the Chinese harassment campaign, not only how it's targeted her but how it's now spilling over to the streams of other talents due to them not being able to effectively attack Coco's streams with her experimental YouTube protections.

All in all, it's devastating news for people in the community and I'm still unsure what'll happen because of this.

 

[Asita]

...Ok, I'm confused. Why am I detecting this overtone of "it's horrible that she's graduating"? Doesn't graduation usually err more towards the congratulations than condolences end of the scale? What am I missing here?

 

[SilentPony]

...Ok, I'm confused. Why am I detecting this overtone of "it's horrible that she's graduating"? Doesn't graduation usually err more towards the congratulations than condolences end of the scale? What am I missing here?

Its really creepy weeb shit.

 

[09philj]

Please have fucking normal relationships with content creators I'm fucking begging you

...Ok, I'm confused. Why am I detecting this overtone of "it's horrible that she's graduating"? Doesn't graduation usually err more towards the congratulations than condolences end of the scale? What am I missing here?

Oh for some inane reason they've decided to use that instead of the correct word "resigning".

 

[Chimpzy]

...Ok, I'm confused. Why am I detecting this overtone of "it's horrible that she's graduating"? Doesn't graduation usually err more towards the congratulations than condolences end of the scale? What am I missing here?

"Graduation" is a euphemistic term from Japanese idol culture that means a performer is leaving whatever group and/or agency she is part of.

This can be for many reasons, like (mental) health, studies, better or different career opportunities, going freelance, getting married (Japanese women are expected to quit working, become housewives and eventually mothers upon marriage) and so on. Or because her agency fired her over internal conflicts, she got caught in some kind of controversy, isn't popular enough to warrant continued investment, was part of of a group made up of (pre)teens and got too old. And that's before we get into the really creepy shit like casting couch stuff or worse (the Japanese entertainment industry and Yakuza are highly intertwined).

In short, it means her career as a v-tuber is over.

 

[Asita]

Oh for some inane reason they've decided to use that instead of the correct word "resigning".

"Graduation" is a euphemistic term from Japanese idol culture that means a performer is leaving whatever group and/or agency she is part of.

This can be for many reasons, like (mental) health, studies, better or different career opportunities, going freelance, getting married (Japanese women are expected to quit working and become housewives and eventually mothers upon marriage) and so on. Or because her agency fired her over internal conflicts, she got caught in some kind of controversy, isn't popular enough to warrant continued investment, was part of of a group made up of (pre)teens and got too old. And that's before we get into the creepy shit like casting couch stuff or worse (the Japanese entertainment industry and Yakuza are highly intertwined).

In short, it means her career as a v-tuber is over.

Thank you for the clarification. That does wonders for contextualizing the OP.

 

[SilentPony]

In short, it means her career as a v-tuber is over.

It can mean that, but can also mean this individual character is going away, and the actress is taking a break and will come back with a new character later. I mean these are voice actresses and singers, its not hard for them to just create a new voice and get an art team to make a new character.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Given how sudden it was it's almost certainly a personal rather than professional issue.
Which, not gonna pry for obvious reasons.

That said, nationalism is cancer

 

[wings012]

I'm incredibly bummed, but at the same time I'm not really subscribing to a lot of the narratives floating around trying to paint a villain in all of this. Maybe there's inklings of truth here and there, but what difference does it make? She's still graduating. Can't really do shit about it.

The whole Hololive House thing was a big part of my Hololive experience, and seeing Coco go does suck. I'm quite fond of Kanata, I enjoy their long-married-couple banter and the constant friendly dissing of the other they do on their own solo streams. Coco overall is a huge fixture within Hololive, you'll find streams where she's basically counseling some of the other members. She's also the one to come up with crazy shows like Asacoco. The Reddit Meme Review was one of the few ways overseas fans could have a more direct interaction. Her mocking idol culture and teaching the others foul English was pretty great.

It's at least not as abrupt like what happened to Aloe, there's a fair bit of advance notice and she's going out with a bang with a final live.

This is also the first major graduation Hololive is facing so I wonder how they will weather this out. It was always going to happen eventually, just judging from the casualty rate from places like Nijisanji - it's quite a volatile career, potentially very short and can end abruptly. But I always thought the bigger players in Hololive like Coco had at least one or two years more going for them.

A small consolation is that her 'roommate's' channel is basically an open secret. It's seen a massive influx of subs since the announcement. I'm not sure if she intends to return to being a solo indie and it won't be the same since a big part of what makes Hololive ticks is all the collabs. But still, better than nothing and it might help people ease their way out of this whole situation. Whereas if some other Hololive members graduated, I think that would basically be the end of it.

And well, she's still living with Kanata so we might get some updates. Granted that living situation might not persist. We shall see.

I kinda wish I got off my arse earlier when it came to making memes in an attempt to get onto Coco's Meme Review. I only gave it a go a few months back. And I've been slacking off for the past two weeks. I did make it on the show twice at least, but I thought I'd have more attempts from here on out. There's still a few meme reviews left to go but I'm definitely not in the mood to do anything.

I think the last time I felt this awful was when Yahtzee was moving to the States and ending Let's Drown Out. Though I recall them actually touching on the nature of parasocial relationships, and not wanting to be bothered by fans. I definitely need to take a step back from all this and engage with my own actual friendships.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

I'm incredibly bummed, but at the same time I'm not really subscribing to a lot of the narratives floating around trying to paint a villain in all of this. Maybe there's inklings of truth here and there, but what difference does it make? She's still graduating. Can't really do shit about it.

The whole Hololive House thing was a big part of my Hololive experience, and seeing Coco go does suck. I'm quite fond of Kanata, I enjoy their long-married-couple banter and the constant friendly dissing of the other they do on their own solo streams. Coco overall is a huge fixture within Hololive, you'll find streams where she's basically counseling some of the other members. She's also the one to come up with crazy shows like Asacoco. The Reddit Meme Review was one of the few ways overseas fans could have a more direct interaction. Her mocking idol culture and teaching the others foul English was pretty great.

It's at least not as abrupt like what happened to Aloe, there's a fair bit of advance notice and she's going out with a bang with a final live.

This is also the first major graduation Hololive is facing so I wonder how they will weather this out. It was always going to happen eventually, just judging from the casualty rate from places like Nijisanji - it's quite a volatile career, potentially very short and can end abruptly. But I always thought the bigger players in Hololive like Coco had at least one or two years more going for them.

A small consolation is that her 'roommate's' channel is basically an open secret. It's seen a massive influx of subs since the announcement. I'm not sure if she intends to return to being a solo indie and it won't be the same since a big part of what makes Hololive ticks is all the collabs. But still, better than nothing and it might help people ease their way out of this whole situation. Whereas if some other Hololive members graduated, I think that would basically be the end of it.

And well, she's still living with Kanata so we might get some updates. Granted that living situation might not persist. We shall see.

I kinda wish I got off my arse earlier when it came to making memes in an attempt to get onto Coco's Meme Review. I only gave it a go a few months back. And I've been slacking off for the past two weeks. I did make it on the show twice at least, but I thought I'd have more attempts from here on out. There's still a few meme reviews left to go but I'm definitely not in the mood to do anything.

I think the last time I felt this awful was when Yahtzee was moving to the States and ending Let's Drown Out. Though I recall them actually touching on the nature of parasocial relationships, and not wanting to be bothered by fans. I definitely need to take a step back from all this and engage with my own actual friendships.

If there is a positive slant to this, it's seeing all the content creators and other vtubers talking about how much Coco inspired them to start creating. Seeing the other talents like Towa and Watame holding be tears while talking about it probably hurts the most though.

 

[wings012]

And that was the final meme review. It is truly the end of an era.

I'm glad to have been able to make it onto the final one.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Hearing her talk more about it, it seems that the primary reason for leaving Hololive was a lack of confidence in her singing.

Which, considering Hololive is nominally an idol company, makes sense. Hopefully she takes some time off and maybe hooks up with a less singing focused group (or at least goes independent, if she can get moderation under control). I sincerely hope it wasn't weird nerds chasing her off, she seems decent.

 

[wings012]

Hearing her talk more about it, it seems that the primary reason for leaving Hololive was a lack of confidence in her singing.

Which, considering Hololive is nominally an idol company, makes sense. Hopefully she takes some time off and maybe hooks up with a less singing focused group (or at least goes independent, if she can get moderation under control). I sincerely hope it wasn't weird nerds chasing her off, she seems decent.

Seems like a strange thing to be graduating over, when many of the members barely have a singing focus and some can barely even sing. Also unless the company itself does things like Bloom, they gotta fund and produce their own original songs if they want any. Hololive likes to play up the whole 'idol' image, but I feel like that's really not the appeal of the group, and the company's own actions seem quite contrary to the image they try to build. And it's often mocked by the streamers and fans anyway. It's really all the un-idol-like content that really spiked their popularity.

I know she did talk about having confidence issues with her voice, but she also talked about how she's been feeling better about it.

Not sure if true, but I've heard that she talked about the increasing restrictions management has been imposing during her membership streams. A lot of people seem to believe this is the issue, and I think there's enough reason to believe so just looking at some incidents across some of the other streamers.

But well, at the end of the day, she's still graduating and there's bugger all we can do about it so not much sense mulling too much over the reason. At least it looks like it's happening on relatively good terms anyway. And the channel's going to remain, though the membership content will be lost after monetization is discontinued.

The graduation live should be a banger and I feel like the doors are still open to a return if she chooses to, but I'm not expecting or counting on it happening.

 

[bluegate]

Please have fucking normal relationships with content creators I'm fucking begging you

Seems about the best answer one could have to this weeb shit.

 

[wings012]

Well it's done. Almost 500k concurrent viewers while it was live. Youtube held up pretty well, I just had a few very short buffering hiccups. I've seen far worse from YT on less busy streams. It was 14 hours ago and is approaching 5 million total views. Probably more money and views than some streamers will ever see in their lives.

I think some records were broken and won't be matched for quite a while. As expected of the world's number one most superchatted person.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Pekora crying in her singing stream before the graduation video as well as Towa and Kanata breaking down while reading their letters to Coco really got the tears falling again for me. Though I am glad to say that most of the video was a positive and happy one for me.

I also may have seen someone shouting in chat for everyone to break Youtube's back with their support, said person may have been me, though this is unconfirmed.

 

[happyninja42]

It can mean that, but can also mean this individual character is going away, and the actress is taking a break and will come back with a new character later. I mean these are voice actresses and singers, its not hard for them to just create a new voice and get an art team to make a new character.

That's what I was wondering, I mean the fact that she isn't part of that label anymore, I don't see why she couldn't just go independent with another persona. If she's quitting because she wants to do other things, that's one thing. But if it's something like she's aged out of the market demographic, or they chose to not renew a contract. Ok...well...just get your own setup and go solo? If she's as popular as it seems, given how many fucking meme's and thumbnails about her leaving that equate to Barbara Streisand on a farewell tour, then, I see no reason she couldn't do just fine with a new setup and profile.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

That's what I was wondering, I mean the fact that she isn't part of that label anymore, I don't see why she couldn't just go independent with another persona. If she's quitting because she wants to do other things, that's one thing. But if it's something like she's aged out of the market demographic, or they chose to not renew a contract. Ok...well...just get your own setup and go solo? If she's as popular as it seems, given how many fucking meme's and thumbnails about her leaving that equate to Barbara Streisand on a farewell tour, then, I see no reason she couldn't do just fine with a new setup and profile.

She's returned to her old Twitter account from before she joined Hololive and did two live streams on her old YouTube channel a few months ago as well. She isn't very active yet but she's probably thinking about what direction she wants to go in next.

 

[SilentPony]

That's what I was wondering, I mean the fact that she isn't part of that label anymore, I don't see why she couldn't just go independent with another persona. If she's quitting because she wants to do other things, that's one thing. But if it's something like she's aged out of the market demographic, or they chose to not renew a contract. Ok...well...just get your own setup and go solo? If she's as popular as it seems, given how many fucking meme's and thumbnails about her leaving that equate to Barbara Streisand on a farewell tour, then, I see no reason she couldn't do just fine with a new setup and profile.

From what I've gathered, a weird loli pedo-bait shark girl Gura is like the second or third vtube character that actress has played.

 

[happyninja42]

From what I've gathered, a weird loli pedo-bait shark girl Gura is like the second or third vtube character that actress has played.

wait, Gura and Coco are the same human being?