On March 6th 2025, Hololive 2nd Generation VTuber Murasaki Shion announced her graduation from Hololive. Out of respect for her wishes and in the interest of not missing any context, I implore you to listen to the full stream here and read a full fanmade English translated transcript here before you read on.
Seriously. Don’t read ahead until you’ve heard what she said in full.
Done? Great!
Shion stated that her reason for leaving Hololive was, and I quote, “会社の方向性の違い”, which translates simply to “difference in the company’s direction”. She broadly talks of changes in rules and expectations, the ongoing physical and mental health issues which prompted a lengthy hiatus last year, and generally feeling that for the sake of her own wellbeing it was best for her to graduate. That’s a very brief paraphrasing, and again I insist that you hear from her in full to make sure you’re not missing anything crucial. In any case, I feel that these are the main points of what she said.
It’s been hard to miss the patterns in recent exits. It’s clear that the Hololive of 2025 is very different from the Hololive of 2020, let alone before that. The honeymoon period for the VTuber industry is over. VTubers are a fact of life, and their expansion has seen growing pains in every corner of the community.
So what does that mean going forward?
First off, I don’t want to be a doomer about the state of things. I don’t think the sky is falling, or that every agency is a black company, or that everyone working for them is secretly miserable. I think there are many people who are happy where they are, and graduations are as inevitable as anyone leaving any job is. I don’t wish to put words in the mouths of any single talent, and I don’t have any interest in comparisons of which company is better or worse. However, I think Hololive’s issues have been an especially bitter pill to swallow due to their perception in the western fandom. They’ve presented themselves as the place for VTubers to be, the place where dreams come true and everyone is having a great time.
That shiny image has been central to their PR and to how fans talk about them. Also central to their recent direction has been their rapid expansion. Hololive isn’t just a VTuber company any more. They’re an entertainment juggernaut with ambitions of global expansion. That means more concerts, more international promotion, more commercial endeavours and collaborations, and a shiny new international base in California.
Commercially, it’s been a resounding success. I can also say with zero hesitation that I enjoy their output a lot. They offer a polished and joyful presentation that nobody else in the VTuber industry can match. However, more content requires more work from the talents themselves. The core business of VTubers is streaming, something that every talent in the company is exceptionally good at. But now they’re not just streaming. They’re doing more music than ever, more concerts, more intensive rehearsals for those concerts, more visits to the office for miscellaneous work, more PR appearances, and more projects in general. All the while, they have to maintain their health and the most valuable asset to this job of all: their voice. All of this is especially true for the Japan based talents.
Though I don’t know exactly what’s voluntary and what’s mandatory, it’s hard to miss the change. You see a noticeably larger output than you did even two or three years ago, something which talents talk about fairly frankly at times. In theory, you can say no to some of these things. However, in a Japanese corporate environment you can only say no so many times before people start considering you to be a liability. Even without anything being said or directly intended, there’s likely always going to be a coercive element like that. All in all, it’s a lot to take on.
There’s also the issue of maintaining fans. As it stands, I see no mass exodus of fans from Hololive. Even though fans have come to acknowledge many of the issues, Hololive has created an attachment with a lot of VTuber fans that has no equal. To give up watching Hololive for many would be to give up being a VTuber fan. But that’s not to say there’s no chance of losing fans. A vast output of content not only risks burning out the talents but also the fans. An argument can be made that they don’t really expect you to buy a ticket for all four 3 hour concerts that just happened this past HoloFes weekend. But if you’re like me and every single concert has at least one of your oshis, you feel like you’re missing out if you don’t. Every brand and streaming service and social media site is fighting for your attention. Putting out bottomless pits of content in hopes of monopolising your eyes and draining your wallet. It’s the way things are made nowadays, but it always comes with a risk of overwhelming people. When you add on mounting criticism of the perceived issues between talents and the company, the risk of alienating fans is definitely present.
There are incredible talents who’ve thrived. I have immense respect for people like Baelz and Marine who have seemingly endless passion and energy and will proudly wave the flag of Hololive into the future. It’s a dream come true for many talents. But more and more it seems that to live out that dream you have to be willing to give almost every waking moment to it. Sure, you can take time off. But eventually you have to come back and get back on that grind. A dream job is still a job.
Hololive are far from the only people going through growing pains. This is a precarious industry where numerous miracles and a LOT of work are required to even have an inkling of a chance at being noticed. If you’re insanely lucky, maybe you’ll get the golden ticket from a major agency. But when you do, there’s the day after. And the day after that. Almost every single corpo will still have you paying out of pocket to some extent for personal projects, or making things yourself. If you’re in a Japanese agency, you also have to deal with permissions. Soooo many permissions. On top of that, the VTuber industry is still extremely young. Nobody in the world can even say they’ve been a VTuber for 10 years. Let alone with one single company. We’ve seen how companies shift, how audiences change and grow and shrink, how rules and expectations evolve. Suffice to say, it’s a rough grind.
Shion was granted a lengthy hiatus for health issues last year. The ability to take time off as needed is undeniably a good thing that HoloPro offers its talents. However, you’re never going to get better going back to the place that got you sick in the first place. The current expectations of Hololive’s VTubers are very different from what Shion and other earlier generation talents signed up for. Upon returning, she was dropped straight back into that same situation. If the expectations and circumstances were enough to burn her out once, it’s sadly not surprising it happened again. Without functional changes in the workload and in the way things operate, people who are going through hardships won’t find a magical cure. That’s true of any job, but especially public facing jobs in the entertainment industry.
I don’t think there’s an easy way forward. Even with the best intentions from management, parent company Cover Corp. faces pressures from shareholders. Just this last quarter, they were scrutinised by shareholders for not meeting expectations. It’s not enough for a company to make profits. They need to be generating infinitely increasing profits. This is the fantasy world that many shareholders live in, and the forces that loom over these matters. There are most definitely more factors involved than that. Things like managers generally not being creatively minded people, and more stake in covering their own asses than in seeing out your creative vision. As an armchair observer, I can only speculate. But everything I’ve heard both publicly and privately confirms to me that there are mounting issues being felt that deserve to be addressed.
The VTuber industry will continue to be difficult, with a lot of egos and financial interests involved. It’s clear that the major agencies aren’t blind to these issues. It may take a long time to see improvements, and you’re never going to see a day where people stop having problems and nobody ever graduates again. Despite that, it can’t be ignored. The wellbeing of talents is something that deserves to be considered above all. Without the VTubers themselves, VTuber companies are nothing. As long as there are VTubers, that will always be true.
People have often characterised me as a “hater” of Hololive. To anyone who knows me and especially those who’ve seen my merch collection, they know that’s comically false. Rest assured that if there are any errors or misunderstandings, it’s not coming from a place of malice. I love what Hololive does. It’s not the only flavour of VTubing I like, but it’s most certainly one I enjoy. It’s what got me in the door to this hobby, and I want to continue to see the talents thrive. There will be tough times ahead for Hololive and beyond. But I hope we can come out the other end with lessons learned.
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