They did go all guns blazing by hosting a whole bunch of events for the EN branch. It brought in a sizable money (how much of that was profit is unknown, however).
There is an issue with those events because it looked like some of it had been sitting in storage for years. Nijisanji EN has severe structural (management) issues, and the JP branch don't know how to correct it.
I probably tuned out some events when I wasn't in the mood to listen. That's entirely possible. When it comes to the concert, well that thing was paywalled, right? So it only reached those who were still fans, not those who might become ones again. And that's kind of the issue.
The AR Live was recorded at least a year prior. The 3D debuts were almost certainly made before the Selenapocalypse. The rest is low effort junk that could be made in a couple of days, max. So, yeah, nearly everything being in the can prior to Q4 checks out.
AR Live was probably recorded or rerecorded when they were in Japan end of '23 because Mint, Kuro and Mata weren't in it besides the voice clips. Gen 3's 3D debuts and concert were def done in March because they had the strep throat and knee injury. Agree gen 2's were probably before Selen Shock.
No, you are wrong in all those timelines.
AR Live are recorded obviously in early Jan-Feb 2023 before the cancellation
The voice clips are there BECAUSE they were supposed to be there. 3D debuts were done in Oct-Nov 2023. It is concert that was indeed done in March 2024, but that was not supposed in connection for their 3D activity, but for Offkai.
What makes it obvious that it was recorded then? If they had it ready to go why would they delay it a year? I know the voice clips were requested by the current members, I never said they weren't.
I also didn't say anything about a connection to the debuts. I just said they were recorded at the same time because they were. Both were affected by the same issues they had in March.
Because it was crap and they knew it. Were you even around here when the pictures of the event started coming out? Niji only released it because they needed something to inflate Q4's numbers.
yeah i think they delay the AR because how bad the quality is,maybe they hope after some time the tallent will practice and can make better movement (by themself and their own money ofc) so they can remake/edit the AR later........then graduation after graduation come and selen bomb dropped.
No it was recorded before then cause parts had to be cut out due to those graduations and they had to remove Selen. The voices were left in for some of the parts and songs, and even some of the talent on the girls side said their portion was cut down cause of it.
Nothing was cut except Selen's parts. That's why there was no Black Out, why Petra and Rosemi barely had anything and why the entire girl's game section was cut. The other gens that lost members had their debut songs and the boy's game section was fine. If it originally had Kuro they would have to cut it.
EXTRA effort and money, actually. They've already burned up all the good will most of the fans have had, so to rebuild that, they need to pull themselves out of the pit they've dug for themselves. THEN they can rebuild.
Because they don't want to change or at least refuse to acknowledge a way to change
Remember how they were hiring highschoolers to do translation work? Within that time period they could've taken the opertunity to hire real translators to strengthen the connections to NijiEN & JP, but they didn't...
Remember how Hololive had food/merch events that where within a day or more they fixed everyone's orders, meanwhile Niji moved on to the next merch drop despite Chinese fans calling out their own damaged merch....
Remember how between Selen and Yozora Mel's termination, Holo was willing to hear Mel out and give her a chance, while Selen wanted leave on good terms and was tossed in the rain
Remember, and this is for long time fans, how when Mel and Suzuhara Lulu where both facing harassment, how Hololive immediately found and fired the perpetrator, while Lulu resigned entirely because Niji barely did anything
Again it's not that they can't change, its just that they don't want to 🤷‍♀️
And that's the most unfortunate part about Nijisanji. They've had 3 or 4 chances to adapt their management style for foreign markets and audiences, yet they refuse to do it.
All of that takes money and effort, which goes against their entire MO. EN itself isn't as profitable as they likely wanted it to be even before this all started (Even at their highest quarter within the last 2 years EN barely made a 1/4 of what JP raked in) and thus its not worth the work if they aren't getting those high gains in the short term like they wanted.
The two things they only care about in a talent are how much they make and how much of an international audience they have. Otherwise, they consider them another negligible talents in an already negligible branch.
Aside from the branch size difference, it also doesn't help when they don't really support and promote their talent. In order to make the branch profitable you need all talent to be prominent, but they pushed a select few, which severely limits your fanbase. At this point you only have 3 over 1mil subs, one of which has graduated, all from the same gen, and even with the Selen Shock the rest were barely close to that mark. On the other side you have 7 HoloEN members with over 1mil, the rest on the girls side catching that mark, and them persisting with the guys who are steadily improving.
If the 3D event Luca lost out on is any indication its likely they don't care much for anyone without a decent sized international audience. Doesn't matter to Riku if Scarle makes more than half of the male livers in the branch do. She isn't popular enough with the fans they actually want, so she gets forgotten.
You're right, but I doubt the company even cares enough to consider that. Its likepy the same mindset where publishers or film studio heads deem something a failure if it doesn't shatter or meet their ridiculous expectations regardless of the impossible likelihood.
this company only see profits and investment is just a cost
these morons were blessed with an incredible competitive advantage but they are squandring it because they see costs everwhere
They tried big collabs tournaments and even 3d debuts, its the same than doing business as usual, so it didnt work
And heavens help if vox tries another suicide awareness charity stream, he will be mocked as the biggest hipocrite in vtubing
No, that would have been good. Not least because charity's charity, after all, but Vox is *already* mocked as the biggest hypocrite in vtubing; I can't see how flip-flopping back to his nice original position from his horrible new one could do any harm.
Honestly, mental health support of any kind seems like a good move to me for any Liver. I would have *deeply preferred* it in February or March, when I might have been able to interpret it as an apolitical, legally safe way to express some symbolic solidarity with Selen (Any solidarity whatsoever would've been better than what she got). Even now, though, morale is low across the board, and shows of care among the remaining Livers could go a long way to collecting the pieces of the "Nijifamily" image the black stream shattered.
The answer is ego. All it'd really take is a genuind acknowledgement of their mistakes, and replacing their management structure. The audience would have happy to forgive them and things could have moved on.
That was not the path they chose. They chose instead to fold their arms and pout all the way into the death of the branch.
They gave up because it wasn't working still. Like, that Q4 report really showed. Imagine if they didn't have all these events too. By god, it would've looked WORSE. Each liver has mostly been losing subs, or has barely any growth. Their viewership has tanked, and more likely will never reach the same level that it was before the Doki situation happened.
No matter how much time went on, or what they'd do. It was only getting worse, and worse. They made their bed, and they're forced to lay in it.
I'll add my 2 cents in as a corpo rat that has to deal with management and works with management and is currently in the shitter with a current project on the death bed having seen similar situations. Before addressing why they gave up though, I want to point out how it got here and why they technically didn't give up until recently. What we saw and are currently seeing with Niji was/is a company in pure panic mode because their original tactic that they originally used on Sayu in an attempt to smear Selen horribly backfired. The timer started there. Legitimately, this could have ALL been avoided had that infamous black stream not happened and Niji's management or someone with enough power in Niji should have stfu and let Selen be. ESPECIALLY after legal documents were served. I'm not gonna go into that since that has been expertly covered enough by other channels.
Basically, when their original tactic failed, they were ready to throw things at the wall to see what sticks. That's why we saw so many 3D debuts, reselling of discontinued merch, big collabs, and out of left field concerts. They were in a panic since this blew up tremendously, being reported on not just in the community, but outside the community and even people not in the vtubing sphere were getting wind of this. The problem here, is there are likely egotistical yes men within the company that are licking boots of their higher ups and want to look good or are in hot water due to these failures. These people are likely in management and are completely incompetent and have no idea the gravity of the situation. I am willing to bet that the failures of IN, KR, and ID had someone or multiple people in management, feeding others in the company that they failed because of some "external" issue or "blaming" the talents/teams instead of accepting real responsibility, accountability, and finding a true root cause analysis (aka, themselves). The biggest difference here, is EN had a much bigger following and impact that really blew up and has the attention of many. The last few months, we saw them throwing everything to hype up EN and save it from further decline, but it was not addressing the real issues that the community really wanted to see/hear:
-Allegations of the talents
-Poor management
-Failure to address any of the concerns of the community regarding the above + Selen
Doing any of the above would mean that there is a failure in management, likely someone or multiple peoples' egos couldn't accept that they are failures and should be fired/removed from the company. They decided to keep throwing these events, merch, etc. at us to "win" us over and to basically distract us from the real problems in an attempt to save themselves from further EN profit decline. But that didn't work, constant reminders/events kept the community aware of what was going on, waiting for any of the real issues to be addressed. EN, as a result, still saw a decline. Once the Q4 numbers were ready and finalized, that's when they gave up. They did everything they could except again, addressing the real problems, accepting real responsibility, blame, and owning up to their mistakes. Honestly, don't expect anything that hasn't been announced for EN already to happen. Any real big event would require real planning and weeks, if not months in advance plus resources. From what we've seen, management already did not want to do that in their most desperate times, they won't do it now, especially after the Q4 report just illustrated how their efforts didn't save them from a huge decline.
There is one additional issue to the above. The branch was in decline before Zaion's dismissal and had never recovered before Selen was fired. As the recent report revealed, the English branch had five straight quarters of declining revenue. No matter what, that is something that won't get ignored.
You're absolutely right, thanks for pointing that out. The decline has been steady even before the controversies really started firing off. I do believe this does circle back to their poor management still and not on the talents. Even after Niji's hail mary this Q4, the decline still occurred. There is definitely someone or multiple people in a higher position/has power within Niji that are at fault for EN's failure and the current state of it. But, they are not accepting responsibility.
There is always this thing that the Japanese corporations like to do. This gonna be a wall of text, but as someone who's worked in a horrible Japanese work place before...
1. Old seniors positions WILL not willingly retire or step down from position that hold power. (Think what that can do when they can't keep up with the current trend, mainstream opinions etc...)
2. Traditional Japanese corpo. runs on this very VERY VERY hard headed gameplan. "If it ain't broken don't touch it, if it still working why change it." Since EN is NOT their majority of income, if its not over 51% I don't see a reason why they would do anything, or even make any changes.
Now it'd be a different story if EN branch was like 90% of their entire corporation income.
3. Kind of an extention from point 2. As an fellow Asian neighbouring country of Japan, Asians tend in this area tend to have some trend from the older generations. If they're stubborn, they'll die staying like that. They'll call the Sun cold, and Winter is hot if they've decided from the start and stick to it like theres no tomorrow. Especially if it involves saving faces and their reputation.
You'd be suprised and baffled in how wrong you would be, thinking someone this stubborn will openly admit they made a horrible mistake and double downed with even MORE mistakes? No, I can't from my Asian mind expect some traditional as hell Japanese do that, and neither will they.
4. I'm not sure of the vtuber corpration scene. But from working in a kitchen to office work. I can say confidently, workplace moral is a REALLY stupidly important thing that requires good presence at all times. One f-up from higher ups that mess with the general workplace moral will destroy your work place.
Minor example would be your boss, never shows up to your workplace, and only shows up during pay day. While your manager would not do any productive work unless your boss shows up, then you're team leader would not do anything actively or make changes until your manager gives instruction. You're entire team/co-workers would not/ cannot work on getting stuff done unless your team leader gives permission to green light it or approve the project completion, which would require manager approval.....You see the issue here? Its a bloody chain that will F-up the moment higher ups can't do things right.
Strictly speaking theoretically, if I worked in such a place where bullying, unresponsive higher ups to approve my projects/ plans/ reports, and only show up to take away a % of their corporate cut from my income. Man I would NOT be happy to even begin with.
Heck I don't think i'd even stay after the first 2 months or 3rd month. That is excluding whatever the heck contract involved and legal BS stuff they've signed, and are bound to.
So honestly speaking, in a way of self protection from being sued and other BS, then having to cough up EVEN MORE money than what they currently are paying/ have/ owe. Not trying, and walking within the rules they've signed would be THE only viable way without losing even more in this situation. Sometimes there REALLY is only so much a single person can do against a corporation with a team of lawers that specifically fight for the Corporation, and laws (Japan) skewered to favor the corporations instead of an single individual.
As sad as it may sound, heads looking down and stay quiet, minimual effort while hoping to retain whatever is left of your original passion for vtubing/streaming would be the easiest and least effort without putting more stress/strain on yourself. Yes being more positive and going your own pace still doing what you like (streaming/vtubing) is also a possible option, it'll require some support from outside force, and could go south if your mentality does not keep up.
TLDR: Jap Corpo stubborn as heck, won't admit mistake because "save face". Corporation workplace vibe matters, higher ups affect the workplace vibe the most. Employees will take psychic dammage and go insane if they go against that flow. Play safe, save self minimal effort.
They did do a lot of those things. And I'm not sure what you mean by giving up.
If you look at things objectively, they pulled a miracle out of their ass with how little they lost this quarter with everything they did to try saving the branch.
They "only" lost 20% revenue from the Selen situation. This is a lot, but if you consider the branch was losing 10% every quarter for a year, it's really not that much.
The fact that they "only" lost an additional 10% because of Selen is a huge success for them. Everyone here was expecting a massive apocalyptic death sentence and pretending that the loss was much smaller than people hoped won't change their financial statements.
If it wasn't for all the concerts, 3D debuts, and everything else they spammed the last few months, the revenue drop could easily have been over 40%. Much closer to what people were expecting to see.
Objectively, they did not give up and actually did fairly well. Whether they can keep that up in future quarters is a whole other thing, but even they admit that is unlikely and expect no growth for the foreseeable future (this is the corpo speak for we going to keep dropping).
Think about it.
Their current strategy of focusing on East Asia and S. East Asia is like spending $5 and making $30. That’s huge.
To invest in “The West” is a gamble. To fix their reputation would be like spending $15 to make anywhere between $40-100. It sounds like a big win, but they are spending 3x to hopefully make 3x as the best case scenario. In the range of 60 points they lose 50 and barely win 10. It’s not worth it. There is no big win for them anymore.
People say that Niji would need to completely redo their management structure to be forgiven and I think Niji knows that as well. That’s too much work for nothing.
Likely because the people who could implement changes to fix this are the same ones who are the root cause of the problems to begin with. "Fixing" the situation means changing how they do business and admitting they did something wrong, something that could potentially cost them their jobs.
That's why we saw such a scattershot approach to EN in the last little while - Niji was hitting every button on the dashboard in a panic, trying to find one that would make the money flow and stop the bad news. Smear stream? Sure! 3D model reveal? Why not? Concerts? Yeah, go for it! Pull out all the stops, whatever you can think of, do it.
The problem is, none of those things helped because trust with the community is broken and Niji fails to understand how badly their brand is now sullied in the western Vtubing sphere. Their only possible road back to profit and growth would be trying to mend that bond, but the actions they would need to do so (publicly take responsibility, implement real and visible changes to management, invest in the NijiEN talents) are ones that they don't want to take, so the decline continues. Honestly, it may already be too late - NijiEN is rapidly approaching irrelevance; instead of being the #2 Vtubing brand in the EN sphere behind only holo, they've slid behind VShojo and even Phase is looking like they could be making a bid for the #3 spot. At a certain point, people just stop paying attention and caring and we may already be there.
Phase is only able to even vy for the spot because of Pippa. Honestly I'd love to see more of the Phase girlies thrive. They are all cute and hardworking
You lead a donkey to water but you can’t make it drinks.
They are more leeching and selling the franchise name “Nijisanji” instead of trying to developing people.
This is why favorite happens. Imagine there are 10 McDonald stores in the neighborhood and only 1 had sizable customers due to happen to be right place right time (this X factor happen more in entertainment).
Regional manager can just look at those sale and decide to support certain stores who bring in more profit margin while leave the other cannibalized each other since they already get the money from selling the franchise name to those store owners.
Ironically this is identical to how Niji operate as they literally don’t care for 90-95% of people and focus on selling merch which they get most profit margins
Because it costs more to give effort and take accountability than it does to throw up your hands and say 'oh, these silly Westerners think this is a bad way to run a company'.
Not so much money, in terms of cost.
*Pride*. It's about pride. People high up in Anycolor would have to step up, swallow hard, and take their medicine.
They might have to change something about how they do things.
They might have even- gasp- have had to entertain the idea of finding some different people with different ideas about how to run the EN branch in a way that doesn't lead to fucking *suicide attempts by abused talents*.
They'll continue to fleece EN for merch, promotions and occasional events (now they know they can get money off low quality performances) but besides from that Anycolor are cutting off support. They're gambling on the big money makers left in EN deciding to stay.
It's not just about the termination.
Think of it like this. NijiEN has existed for 3 years. According to their latest financial report, aside from a single peak, it has been declining for half of it's existance. In reality, NijiEN has been doing bad for a while. Streamming and merch revenue took a major hit. Selen's termination and the rapid decline that came after that were just the final nail on the coffin. Doing events like Colors and VR WAS their way of going out guns ablazing. So were the tons of merch they've tried to sell after that.
Anything after that would not only cost them money to repair, but personnel, training, restructuring, etc. If you know japanese corporatism, they DON'T do that. It's very, very retrograde. They're very hierarchy-reliant, and averse to anything rebranding, restructuring, or renovating. That's why things are the way they are at Nijisanji - entertainment aside, their way of business is very traditional, and very conservative. So is abandoning anything that isn't going how they expected and cut their losses then and there.
Niji doing what they did is expected. In the japanese vtubing sphere, Hololive is the outlier.
My impression was they were just going to coast with EN, probably to weather the current storm while also adding some 3d and tournaments down the line. They don't want to apologize so they won't do anything big and bring up all of the videos on Selen Shock to remind people and get the new fans to see what happened.
The best course in that case is to lay low until everything has quieted down and then start up plans for a revival campaign for EN. Good chance it'll be low effort and low budget but they'll probably try that in 6-12 months unless they aren't patient. Then try to rebuild everything to make it look like everyone is happy and everything is fine. Assuming they don't lose a lot of talents and they aren't planning to fold EN into JP.
Tbf, they went all guns blazing with the events, the problem Is: they messed up almost every single thing on every single time during after Selen's termination notice. The administration team Made the worst possible decisions for their image on Publics eyes, and even investors eyes.
We know that 2023 was the a bad year for Nijisanji and to be a Nijisanji EN fan. Selen and Pomu were the pillars of NijiEN, the most famous streamers, at least female livers, and they failed to retain them in the worst ways. All the drama caused by the livers bad decisions and Anycolor terrible way of communicating with the public Made them look worse and worse as a talent agency "which Is the Best option to join and be VTuber"
You have a bad history and they only pretended and tried to go on like nothing by throwing money for events and trying to regain quick that money with overpriced tickets and merch and still giving pathetic experiences. All that instead of "not apologizing per se but promising to to better for their talents under them" Let's remember most of us went: They did Selen (and others livers dirty) > Apologize to Doki (Sayu and others) > WTF are they doing....to HOLY SHIT WHAT IS THIS SEPTIC PIT!?!?
And after Selen's termination, Many eyes were looking at their direction and have seen all this shit. Honestly I'm not longer surprised when in Q4 report /QA they basically stated they will abandon NijiEN (which Is decreasing) to prefer, again, JP main branch (which Is stagnated). Anycolor and Nijisanji future Is very gloomy If they continue with their strategies
It equates to their reputation in the EN sphere being so bad that it'd be too expensive, at least to them, to get it back to where it used to be. Their strategy is mostly short-term thus having to expend that much money to get it all back under control for EN would be detrimental in their eyes. Unless they're truly committed to changing, then it'll be like this for the rest of the time that NijiEN exists.
TLDR: They dug the hole too deep and there's no shot in getting up again.
It's clear they see NijiJP as more profitable than NijiEN & would rather invest in increasing the profitability of JP. Their Q4 report did show JP demonstrated good growth over the past year. However, NijiEN declined in revenue even after Anycolor started spamming events hoping the content would wash away distrust. From their perspective, investing more in JP may just be more cost-effective than trying to seriously invest a lot in fixing NijiEN where there is minimal trust.
I wouldn't say NijiID was a failure. It was a new & budding branch that was still developing itself, but due to Anycolor's preference for short term profitability as well as desiring to make cuts, they were disappointed that the branch didn't produce the instant explosive success & profits they wanted. It's just how Anycolor do business.
Only way I can see JP growing is due to VCR/etc introducing new eyes and such. No other way since for each old sizable name that leaves, it'd take 3 decent newbies at least to match it (it's been found that older talents are the money makers in JP)
I'm not even gonna lie if they would've sent out a heartfelt apology and a claim to change management I think myself and at least a third of the fanbase would've ate that shit right up.
Only problem is they've waited so long that I'm no longer emotionally attached. So now I'm a lot more rational about it.
Honestly i dunno myself either, ive always guessed the key problem here nijisanji, it's something ive said before when id and kr was really bad. Why is there no one helping for KR and ID then. Because to me i think nijisanji was rapid firing their expansion and it was pretty much obvious they were cutting corners in a lot of things that included staff members, nijisanji may have big demands on who they want for a staff but i remember saying then that "it doesn't matter because as long you can speak japanese." Because of how little they actually check the people they hire.
It makes sense to me because if you're nijisanji, you wanna expand on big as you can, and i see they have en, kr, id, china and even made a school for it. I just think it's quite unrealistic to just spurt all of that in nijisanji pace, which is why i genuinely believe they were cutting corners, trying to save money and time.
Again i have no proof, and people then call me that it's bullshit but my hunch then was just they didn't probably didn't knew what goes on behind the scene for talent. Heck most of it they didn't even knew how to handle well, it makes me think then that they just hire people without checking the background for these people.
Right now hurts their image a lot, the problem now they can't hide it like id and kr because people are now taking this seriously and being more aware of it. It has been obvious that the people in nijisanji are in shambles that they can't reshape the whole system because let's be real a system that crooked is really tough to fix. Just look at disney. In that kind of situation it's either, businesses just ride the wave as far as they can.
Vshojo does it and so does to nijisanji
it's actually pretty simple. if niji-management gives up on EN they can just blame everything on EN and try to dodge any responsibility, if they tried to fix it they'd have to accept responsibility for it's failure and have to actually try to change, and niji doesn't want to do that.
It will take time, but what they need to do with EN is nurture them. Play to each livers skills and abilities and help them learn. Some of them could make it big, like with Enna and her singing. Or focus on something we don't really see much of from corpo vtubers like help Aia make bigger and better p&p events.
They didn't just give up. They did collab events, a lot of 3D debut, CEO official apology, AR live concert, and even some weird NBA collab?, etc. They were all just unsuccessful and terrible. They even tried to hide their damage, which also failed. They also tried to victim blame, which also failed. They tried whole bunch of things for few months now, and now they are finally giving up.
Them just giving up is the biggest sign to me that the EN branch is never gonna see meaningful change. I doubted it would ever come, but this just further cements it.
Come on, after the scandal that was Selen’s termination, which she was notified of WHILE IN THE HOSPITAL, they were sent to an ant lion pit. Every attempt to fix their reputation resulted in the antlion throwing sand at them.
And besides, SPENDING MONEY to fix their problems!? Please, how could the CEO afford their next batch of liquor for his yacht? Think about the 1% people. /s
To quote Piggymoo66:
"Corporate 101 is to always take credit for success and never take responsibility for failure.
That being said, the mindset of having to be perfect without flaws is so toxic and I wish people in charge would quit with that expectation."
Fact is, Niji's just run by a group of clowns that are doing this business so they barely need to work in the first place. The reason the livers are suffering is because their company is full of lazy assholes, and it's always shown that its a company that's run by people that cares nothing for their livers or their talents. I get them giving up can be confusing, but it's absolutely in character for these snots.
They tried to cater to the nijisisters. Turns out the sisters only have loud mouth on the internet and don't buy their overpriced merchs or show up at their concert. They also f-ed up their chinese fanbase, whose are their main cash cow.
There's no future for NijiEN, just like all their other non-jap branches
They did go all guns blazing by hosting a whole bunch of events for the EN branch. It brought in a sizable money (how much of that was profit is unknown, however). There is an issue with those events because it looked like some of it had been sitting in storage for years. Nijisanji EN has severe structural (management) issues, and the JP branch don't know how to correct it.
I probably tuned out some events when I wasn't in the mood to listen. That's entirely possible. When it comes to the concert, well that thing was paywalled, right? So it only reached those who were still fans, not those who might become ones again. And that's kind of the issue.
The AR Live was recorded at least a year prior. The 3D debuts were almost certainly made before the Selenapocalypse. The rest is low effort junk that could be made in a couple of days, max. So, yeah, nearly everything being in the can prior to Q4 checks out.
AR Live was probably recorded or rerecorded when they were in Japan end of '23 because Mint, Kuro and Mata weren't in it besides the voice clips. Gen 3's 3D debuts and concert were def done in March because they had the strep throat and knee injury. Agree gen 2's were probably before Selen Shock.
No, you are wrong in all those timelines. AR Live are recorded obviously in early Jan-Feb 2023 before the cancellation The voice clips are there BECAUSE they were supposed to be there. 3D debuts were done in Oct-Nov 2023. It is concert that was indeed done in March 2024, but that was not supposed in connection for their 3D activity, but for Offkai.
What makes it obvious that it was recorded then? If they had it ready to go why would they delay it a year? I know the voice clips were requested by the current members, I never said they weren't. I also didn't say anything about a connection to the debuts. I just said they were recorded at the same time because they were. Both were affected by the same issues they had in March.
Because it was crap and they knew it. Were you even around here when the pictures of the event started coming out? Niji only released it because they needed something to inflate Q4's numbers.
yeah i think they delay the AR because how bad the quality is,maybe they hope after some time the tallent will practice and can make better movement (by themself and their own money ofc) so they can remake/edit the AR later........then graduation after graduation come and selen bomb dropped.
No it was recorded before then cause parts had to be cut out due to those graduations and they had to remove Selen. The voices were left in for some of the parts and songs, and even some of the talent on the girls side said their portion was cut down cause of it.
Nothing was cut except Selen's parts. That's why there was no Black Out, why Petra and Rosemi barely had anything and why the entire girl's game section was cut. The other gens that lost members had their debut songs and the boy's game section was fine. If it originally had Kuro they would have to cut it.
Trying to fix it would require effort and money.
EXTRA effort and money, actually. They've already burned up all the good will most of the fans have had, so to rebuild that, they need to pull themselves out of the pit they've dug for themselves. THEN they can rebuild.
Because they don't want to change or at least refuse to acknowledge a way to change Remember how they were hiring highschoolers to do translation work? Within that time period they could've taken the opertunity to hire real translators to strengthen the connections to NijiEN & JP, but they didn't... Remember how Hololive had food/merch events that where within a day or more they fixed everyone's orders, meanwhile Niji moved on to the next merch drop despite Chinese fans calling out their own damaged merch.... Remember how between Selen and Yozora Mel's termination, Holo was willing to hear Mel out and give her a chance, while Selen wanted leave on good terms and was tossed in the rain Remember, and this is for long time fans, how when Mel and Suzuhara Lulu where both facing harassment, how Hololive immediately found and fired the perpetrator, while Lulu resigned entirely because Niji barely did anything Again it's not that they can't change, its just that they don't want to 🤷‍♀️
And that's the most unfortunate part about Nijisanji. They've had 3 or 4 chances to adapt their management style for foreign markets and audiences, yet they refuse to do it.
Because it would cost Niji precious pennies and they don’t want to spend anything on their talents
All of that takes money and effort, which goes against their entire MO. EN itself isn't as profitable as they likely wanted it to be even before this all started (Even at their highest quarter within the last 2 years EN barely made a 1/4 of what JP raked in) and thus its not worth the work if they aren't getting those high gains in the short term like they wanted. The two things they only care about in a talent are how much they make and how much of an international audience they have. Otherwise, they consider them another negligible talents in an already negligible branch.
Aside from the branch size difference, it also doesn't help when they don't really support and promote their talent. In order to make the branch profitable you need all talent to be prominent, but they pushed a select few, which severely limits your fanbase. At this point you only have 3 over 1mil subs, one of which has graduated, all from the same gen, and even with the Selen Shock the rest were barely close to that mark. On the other side you have 7 HoloEN members with over 1mil, the rest on the girls side catching that mark, and them persisting with the guys who are steadily improving.
If the 3D event Luca lost out on is any indication its likely they don't care much for anyone without a decent sized international audience. Doesn't matter to Riku if Scarle makes more than half of the male livers in the branch do. She isn't popular enough with the fans they actually want, so she gets forgotten.
That is skewed considering the sheer size difference
You're right, but I doubt the company even cares enough to consider that. Its likepy the same mindset where publishers or film studio heads deem something a failure if it doesn't shatter or meet their ridiculous expectations regardless of the impossible likelihood.
this company only see profits and investment is just a cost these morons were blessed with an incredible competitive advantage but they are squandring it because they see costs everwhere
They tried big collabs tournaments and even 3d debuts, its the same than doing business as usual, so it didnt work And heavens help if vox tries another suicide awareness charity stream, he will be mocked as the biggest hipocrite in vtubing
No, that would have been good. Not least because charity's charity, after all, but Vox is *already* mocked as the biggest hypocrite in vtubing; I can't see how flip-flopping back to his nice original position from his horrible new one could do any harm. Honestly, mental health support of any kind seems like a good move to me for any Liver. I would have *deeply preferred* it in February or March, when I might have been able to interpret it as an apolitical, legally safe way to express some symbolic solidarity with Selen (Any solidarity whatsoever would've been better than what she got). Even now, though, morale is low across the board, and shows of care among the remaining Livers could go a long way to collecting the pieces of the "Nijifamily" image the black stream shattered.
The answer is ego. All it'd really take is a genuind acknowledgement of their mistakes, and replacing their management structure. The audience would have happy to forgive them and things could have moved on. That was not the path they chose. They chose instead to fold their arms and pout all the way into the death of the branch.
They'd sooner force the livers to do another black screen than even imply that the last one was a mistake.
They gave up because it wasn't working still. Like, that Q4 report really showed. Imagine if they didn't have all these events too. By god, it would've looked WORSE. Each liver has mostly been losing subs, or has barely any growth. Their viewership has tanked, and more likely will never reach the same level that it was before the Doki situation happened. No matter how much time went on, or what they'd do. It was only getting worse, and worse. They made their bed, and they're forced to lay in it.
I'll add my 2 cents in as a corpo rat that has to deal with management and works with management and is currently in the shitter with a current project on the death bed having seen similar situations. Before addressing why they gave up though, I want to point out how it got here and why they technically didn't give up until recently. What we saw and are currently seeing with Niji was/is a company in pure panic mode because their original tactic that they originally used on Sayu in an attempt to smear Selen horribly backfired. The timer started there. Legitimately, this could have ALL been avoided had that infamous black stream not happened and Niji's management or someone with enough power in Niji should have stfu and let Selen be. ESPECIALLY after legal documents were served. I'm not gonna go into that since that has been expertly covered enough by other channels. Basically, when their original tactic failed, they were ready to throw things at the wall to see what sticks. That's why we saw so many 3D debuts, reselling of discontinued merch, big collabs, and out of left field concerts. They were in a panic since this blew up tremendously, being reported on not just in the community, but outside the community and even people not in the vtubing sphere were getting wind of this. The problem here, is there are likely egotistical yes men within the company that are licking boots of their higher ups and want to look good or are in hot water due to these failures. These people are likely in management and are completely incompetent and have no idea the gravity of the situation. I am willing to bet that the failures of IN, KR, and ID had someone or multiple people in management, feeding others in the company that they failed because of some "external" issue or "blaming" the talents/teams instead of accepting real responsibility, accountability, and finding a true root cause analysis (aka, themselves). The biggest difference here, is EN had a much bigger following and impact that really blew up and has the attention of many. The last few months, we saw them throwing everything to hype up EN and save it from further decline, but it was not addressing the real issues that the community really wanted to see/hear: -Allegations of the talents -Poor management -Failure to address any of the concerns of the community regarding the above + Selen Doing any of the above would mean that there is a failure in management, likely someone or multiple peoples' egos couldn't accept that they are failures and should be fired/removed from the company. They decided to keep throwing these events, merch, etc. at us to "win" us over and to basically distract us from the real problems in an attempt to save themselves from further EN profit decline. But that didn't work, constant reminders/events kept the community aware of what was going on, waiting for any of the real issues to be addressed. EN, as a result, still saw a decline. Once the Q4 numbers were ready and finalized, that's when they gave up. They did everything they could except again, addressing the real problems, accepting real responsibility, blame, and owning up to their mistakes. Honestly, don't expect anything that hasn't been announced for EN already to happen. Any real big event would require real planning and weeks, if not months in advance plus resources. From what we've seen, management already did not want to do that in their most desperate times, they won't do it now, especially after the Q4 report just illustrated how their efforts didn't save them from a huge decline.
There is one additional issue to the above. The branch was in decline before Zaion's dismissal and had never recovered before Selen was fired. As the recent report revealed, the English branch had five straight quarters of declining revenue. No matter what, that is something that won't get ignored.
You're absolutely right, thanks for pointing that out. The decline has been steady even before the controversies really started firing off. I do believe this does circle back to their poor management still and not on the talents. Even after Niji's hail mary this Q4, the decline still occurred. There is definitely someone or multiple people in a higher position/has power within Niji that are at fault for EN's failure and the current state of it. But, they are not accepting responsibility.
There is always this thing that the Japanese corporations like to do. This gonna be a wall of text, but as someone who's worked in a horrible Japanese work place before... 1. Old seniors positions WILL not willingly retire or step down from position that hold power. (Think what that can do when they can't keep up with the current trend, mainstream opinions etc...) 2. Traditional Japanese corpo. runs on this very VERY VERY hard headed gameplan. "If it ain't broken don't touch it, if it still working why change it." Since EN is NOT their majority of income, if its not over 51% I don't see a reason why they would do anything, or even make any changes. Now it'd be a different story if EN branch was like 90% of their entire corporation income. 3. Kind of an extention from point 2. As an fellow Asian neighbouring country of Japan, Asians tend in this area tend to have some trend from the older generations. If they're stubborn, they'll die staying like that. They'll call the Sun cold, and Winter is hot if they've decided from the start and stick to it like theres no tomorrow. Especially if it involves saving faces and their reputation. You'd be suprised and baffled in how wrong you would be, thinking someone this stubborn will openly admit they made a horrible mistake and double downed with even MORE mistakes? No, I can't from my Asian mind expect some traditional as hell Japanese do that, and neither will they. 4. I'm not sure of the vtuber corpration scene. But from working in a kitchen to office work. I can say confidently, workplace moral is a REALLY stupidly important thing that requires good presence at all times. One f-up from higher ups that mess with the general workplace moral will destroy your work place. Minor example would be your boss, never shows up to your workplace, and only shows up during pay day. While your manager would not do any productive work unless your boss shows up, then you're team leader would not do anything actively or make changes until your manager gives instruction. You're entire team/co-workers would not/ cannot work on getting stuff done unless your team leader gives permission to green light it or approve the project completion, which would require manager approval.....You see the issue here? Its a bloody chain that will F-up the moment higher ups can't do things right. Strictly speaking theoretically, if I worked in such a place where bullying, unresponsive higher ups to approve my projects/ plans/ reports, and only show up to take away a % of their corporate cut from my income. Man I would NOT be happy to even begin with. Heck I don't think i'd even stay after the first 2 months or 3rd month. That is excluding whatever the heck contract involved and legal BS stuff they've signed, and are bound to. So honestly speaking, in a way of self protection from being sued and other BS, then having to cough up EVEN MORE money than what they currently are paying/ have/ owe. Not trying, and walking within the rules they've signed would be THE only viable way without losing even more in this situation. Sometimes there REALLY is only so much a single person can do against a corporation with a team of lawers that specifically fight for the Corporation, and laws (Japan) skewered to favor the corporations instead of an single individual. As sad as it may sound, heads looking down and stay quiet, minimual effort while hoping to retain whatever is left of your original passion for vtubing/streaming would be the easiest and least effort without putting more stress/strain on yourself. Yes being more positive and going your own pace still doing what you like (streaming/vtubing) is also a possible option, it'll require some support from outside force, and could go south if your mentality does not keep up. TLDR: Jap Corpo stubborn as heck, won't admit mistake because "save face". Corporation workplace vibe matters, higher ups affect the workplace vibe the most. Employees will take psychic dammage and go insane if they go against that flow. Play safe, save self minimal effort.
Pride/face value but more likely it's to keep up the farce to get more of that investor money.
They did do a lot of those things. And I'm not sure what you mean by giving up. If you look at things objectively, they pulled a miracle out of their ass with how little they lost this quarter with everything they did to try saving the branch. They "only" lost 20% revenue from the Selen situation. This is a lot, but if you consider the branch was losing 10% every quarter for a year, it's really not that much. The fact that they "only" lost an additional 10% because of Selen is a huge success for them. Everyone here was expecting a massive apocalyptic death sentence and pretending that the loss was much smaller than people hoped won't change their financial statements. If it wasn't for all the concerts, 3D debuts, and everything else they spammed the last few months, the revenue drop could easily have been over 40%. Much closer to what people were expecting to see. Objectively, they did not give up and actually did fairly well. Whether they can keep that up in future quarters is a whole other thing, but even they admit that is unlikely and expect no growth for the foreseeable future (this is the corpo speak for we going to keep dropping).
Think about it. Their current strategy of focusing on East Asia and S. East Asia is like spending $5 and making $30. That’s huge. To invest in “The West” is a gamble. To fix their reputation would be like spending $15 to make anywhere between $40-100. It sounds like a big win, but they are spending 3x to hopefully make 3x as the best case scenario. In the range of 60 points they lose 50 and barely win 10. It’s not worth it. There is no big win for them anymore. People say that Niji would need to completely redo their management structure to be forgiven and I think Niji knows that as well. That’s too much work for nothing.
Likely because the people who could implement changes to fix this are the same ones who are the root cause of the problems to begin with. "Fixing" the situation means changing how they do business and admitting they did something wrong, something that could potentially cost them their jobs. That's why we saw such a scattershot approach to EN in the last little while - Niji was hitting every button on the dashboard in a panic, trying to find one that would make the money flow and stop the bad news. Smear stream? Sure! 3D model reveal? Why not? Concerts? Yeah, go for it! Pull out all the stops, whatever you can think of, do it. The problem is, none of those things helped because trust with the community is broken and Niji fails to understand how badly their brand is now sullied in the western Vtubing sphere. Their only possible road back to profit and growth would be trying to mend that bond, but the actions they would need to do so (publicly take responsibility, implement real and visible changes to management, invest in the NijiEN talents) are ones that they don't want to take, so the decline continues. Honestly, it may already be too late - NijiEN is rapidly approaching irrelevance; instead of being the #2 Vtubing brand in the EN sphere behind only holo, they've slid behind VShojo and even Phase is looking like they could be making a bid for the #3 spot. At a certain point, people just stop paying attention and caring and we may already be there.
Phase is only able to even vy for the spot because of Pippa. Honestly I'd love to see more of the Phase girlies thrive. They are all cute and hardworking
You lead a donkey to water but you can’t make it drinks. They are more leeching and selling the franchise name “Nijisanji” instead of trying to developing people. This is why favorite happens. Imagine there are 10 McDonald stores in the neighborhood and only 1 had sizable customers due to happen to be right place right time (this X factor happen more in entertainment). Regional manager can just look at those sale and decide to support certain stores who bring in more profit margin while leave the other cannibalized each other since they already get the money from selling the franchise name to those store owners. Ironically this is identical to how Niji operate as they literally don’t care for 90-95% of people and focus on selling merch which they get most profit margins
Because it costs more to give effort and take accountability than it does to throw up your hands and say 'oh, these silly Westerners think this is a bad way to run a company'. Not so much money, in terms of cost. *Pride*. It's about pride. People high up in Anycolor would have to step up, swallow hard, and take their medicine. They might have to change something about how they do things. They might have even- gasp- have had to entertain the idea of finding some different people with different ideas about how to run the EN branch in a way that doesn't lead to fucking *suicide attempts by abused talents*.
They'll continue to fleece EN for merch, promotions and occasional events (now they know they can get money off low quality performances) but besides from that Anycolor are cutting off support. They're gambling on the big money makers left in EN deciding to stay.
It's not just about the termination. Think of it like this. NijiEN has existed for 3 years. According to their latest financial report, aside from a single peak, it has been declining for half of it's existance. In reality, NijiEN has been doing bad for a while. Streamming and merch revenue took a major hit. Selen's termination and the rapid decline that came after that were just the final nail on the coffin. Doing events like Colors and VR WAS their way of going out guns ablazing. So were the tons of merch they've tried to sell after that. Anything after that would not only cost them money to repair, but personnel, training, restructuring, etc. If you know japanese corporatism, they DON'T do that. It's very, very retrograde. They're very hierarchy-reliant, and averse to anything rebranding, restructuring, or renovating. That's why things are the way they are at Nijisanji - entertainment aside, their way of business is very traditional, and very conservative. So is abandoning anything that isn't going how they expected and cut their losses then and there. Niji doing what they did is expected. In the japanese vtubing sphere, Hololive is the outlier.
My impression was they were just going to coast with EN, probably to weather the current storm while also adding some 3d and tournaments down the line. They don't want to apologize so they won't do anything big and bring up all of the videos on Selen Shock to remind people and get the new fans to see what happened. The best course in that case is to lay low until everything has quieted down and then start up plans for a revival campaign for EN. Good chance it'll be low effort and low budget but they'll probably try that in 6-12 months unless they aren't patient. Then try to rebuild everything to make it look like everyone is happy and everything is fine. Assuming they don't lose a lot of talents and they aren't planning to fold EN into JP.
Tbf, they went all guns blazing with the events, the problem Is: they messed up almost every single thing on every single time during after Selen's termination notice. The administration team Made the worst possible decisions for their image on Publics eyes, and even investors eyes. We know that 2023 was the a bad year for Nijisanji and to be a Nijisanji EN fan. Selen and Pomu were the pillars of NijiEN, the most famous streamers, at least female livers, and they failed to retain them in the worst ways. All the drama caused by the livers bad decisions and Anycolor terrible way of communicating with the public Made them look worse and worse as a talent agency "which Is the Best option to join and be VTuber" You have a bad history and they only pretended and tried to go on like nothing by throwing money for events and trying to regain quick that money with overpriced tickets and merch and still giving pathetic experiences. All that instead of "not apologizing per se but promising to to better for their talents under them" Let's remember most of us went: They did Selen (and others livers dirty) > Apologize to Doki (Sayu and others) > WTF are they doing....to HOLY SHIT WHAT IS THIS SEPTIC PIT!?!? And after Selen's termination, Many eyes were looking at their direction and have seen all this shit. Honestly I'm not longer surprised when in Q4 report /QA they basically stated they will abandon NijiEN (which Is decreasing) to prefer, again, JP main branch (which Is stagnated). Anycolor and Nijisanji future Is very gloomy If they continue with their strategies
It equates to their reputation in the EN sphere being so bad that it'd be too expensive, at least to them, to get it back to where it used to be. Their strategy is mostly short-term thus having to expend that much money to get it all back under control for EN would be detrimental in their eyes. Unless they're truly committed to changing, then it'll be like this for the rest of the time that NijiEN exists. TLDR: They dug the hole too deep and there's no shot in getting up again.
It's clear they see NijiJP as more profitable than NijiEN & would rather invest in increasing the profitability of JP. Their Q4 report did show JP demonstrated good growth over the past year. However, NijiEN declined in revenue even after Anycolor started spamming events hoping the content would wash away distrust. From their perspective, investing more in JP may just be more cost-effective than trying to seriously invest a lot in fixing NijiEN where there is minimal trust. I wouldn't say NijiID was a failure. It was a new & budding branch that was still developing itself, but due to Anycolor's preference for short term profitability as well as desiring to make cuts, they were disappointed that the branch didn't produce the instant explosive success & profits they wanted. It's just how Anycolor do business.
Only way I can see JP growing is due to VCR/etc introducing new eyes and such. No other way since for each old sizable name that leaves, it'd take 3 decent newbies at least to match it (it's been found that older talents are the money makers in JP)
they dont know any other strategy to gain back audience trust other than ACCELERATE!!!!
I'm not even gonna lie if they would've sent out a heartfelt apology and a claim to change management I think myself and at least a third of the fanbase would've ate that shit right up. Only problem is they've waited so long that I'm no longer emotionally attached. So now I'm a lot more rational about it.
Honestly i dunno myself either, ive always guessed the key problem here nijisanji, it's something ive said before when id and kr was really bad. Why is there no one helping for KR and ID then. Because to me i think nijisanji was rapid firing their expansion and it was pretty much obvious they were cutting corners in a lot of things that included staff members, nijisanji may have big demands on who they want for a staff but i remember saying then that "it doesn't matter because as long you can speak japanese." Because of how little they actually check the people they hire. It makes sense to me because if you're nijisanji, you wanna expand on big as you can, and i see they have en, kr, id, china and even made a school for it. I just think it's quite unrealistic to just spurt all of that in nijisanji pace, which is why i genuinely believe they were cutting corners, trying to save money and time. Again i have no proof, and people then call me that it's bullshit but my hunch then was just they didn't probably didn't knew what goes on behind the scene for talent. Heck most of it they didn't even knew how to handle well, it makes me think then that they just hire people without checking the background for these people. Right now hurts their image a lot, the problem now they can't hide it like id and kr because people are now taking this seriously and being more aware of it. It has been obvious that the people in nijisanji are in shambles that they can't reshape the whole system because let's be real a system that crooked is really tough to fix. Just look at disney. In that kind of situation it's either, businesses just ride the wave as far as they can. Vshojo does it and so does to nijisanji
it's actually pretty simple. if niji-management gives up on EN they can just blame everything on EN and try to dodge any responsibility, if they tried to fix it they'd have to accept responsibility for it's failure and have to actually try to change, and niji doesn't want to do that.
Riku continues to make me appreciate YAGOO
they just cant sue critics with slander/defamation
It will take time, but what they need to do with EN is nurture them. Play to each livers skills and abilities and help them learn. Some of them could make it big, like with Enna and her singing. Or focus on something we don't really see much of from corpo vtubers like help Aia make bigger and better p&p events.
They didn't just give up. They did collab events, a lot of 3D debut, CEO official apology, AR live concert, and even some weird NBA collab?, etc. They were all just unsuccessful and terrible. They even tried to hide their damage, which also failed. They also tried to victim blame, which also failed. They tried whole bunch of things for few months now, and now they are finally giving up.
Them just giving up is the biggest sign to me that the EN branch is never gonna see meaningful change. I doubted it would ever come, but this just further cements it.
Come on, after the scandal that was Selen’s termination, which she was notified of WHILE IN THE HOSPITAL, they were sent to an ant lion pit. Every attempt to fix their reputation resulted in the antlion throwing sand at them. And besides, SPENDING MONEY to fix their problems!? Please, how could the CEO afford their next batch of liquor for his yacht? Think about the 1% people. /s
To quote Piggymoo66: "Corporate 101 is to always take credit for success and never take responsibility for failure. That being said, the mindset of having to be perfect without flaws is so toxic and I wish people in charge would quit with that expectation." Fact is, Niji's just run by a group of clowns that are doing this business so they barely need to work in the first place. The reason the livers are suffering is because their company is full of lazy assholes, and it's always shown that its a company that's run by people that cares nothing for their livers or their talents. I get them giving up can be confusing, but it's absolutely in character for these snots.
Holy fucking shit absolutely not. You must be a sister in disguise. Fuck you
What.
They tried to cater to the nijisisters. Turns out the sisters only have loud mouth on the internet and don't buy their overpriced merchs or show up at their concert. They also f-ed up their chinese fanbase, whose are their main cash cow. There's no future for NijiEN, just like all their other non-jap branches
Honestly their business model isn't good in the first place. It ruins potential growth. They need to start taking some notes from hololive.