One “hololive” Beyond Regional and Group Boundaries
Until now, under “hololive production,” “hololive” has operated with a brand structure centered around individual regions and groups, including hololive Indonesia, hololive English, and hololive DEV_IS.
Going forward, we will transcend regional and group boundaries and bring everything together as one “hololive.”
This renewal is designed to enable talents active around the world to interact more freely, without being limited by region, and to create new content and forms of entertainment together.
With talents and fans of hololive production now spanning the globe, including Japan, North America, and Southeast Asia, we will further expand these connections and work together with our talents to create more open and global content than ever before.
“ASOBI★MAWARI-TAI!” Set to Debut!
“Welcome to our playground!”
More information about the new talents making their debut this time, as well as what’s in store for “ASOBI★MAWARI-TAI!,” will be unveiled in further announcements throughout September 2026.
On paper, it makes sense (especially DEV_IS never made sense to me). EN and ID were pretty much always an afterthought. Not having the divide could fix that.
In reality though, I’m worried it’s just veiled budget cuts for the other branches. I’m also worried that the focus will be even more on the Japan side of things and that the needs of the other nationalities/areas will be lost in the bigger picture.
I’m not sure what to think about the merger. On one side, it sounds like it’s just a name change and nothing will be really different. On the other, the talents make it sound like it’s more than that. For example, this line in Bae’s tweet about the situation:
There’s a lot to be upset about but for me, I choose to believe that things will be okay because honestly that’s all I can do.
You did not hear such language about the change from Council/Hope to Promise for example. It sounded more positive. So I am anxious that this might affect more than just the name.
I am also not really convinced by the company line about breaking group boundaries. This has never been a problem for the EN and ID branches in the past, but the JP talents (for the most part) are bound by the language barrier. I don’t really see us English-speaking fans gaining anything from this, while every hour the bilingual EN talents are “encouraged” to stream more on the JP side is an hour that they don’t stream in a language that I speak. If this turns out the way I fear it will, it certainly is an opportunity for cover and for the talents to make the non-JP talents more popular in JP, but it could come at a cost for existing EN/Id fans.
It’s not all bad, though. I hope that the merger will help the EN and ID branches stop being treated as second-class citizens inside Cover. That burden will be carried by all the talents that keep living outside of JP. The (former) ID branch will especially be hit hard by this.
Also, after watching the whole thing, all that talk about breaking boundaries and one happy family and then showing the anime with not a single non-JP member just sits wrong with me.
Yeah, the ID members especially are pretty angry about this.
From what they said, the “repurposing” of the “former” branch channels will bring us more english/english-subbed content from non-EN members, but I don’t know if it’ll offset the potential downsides for the talents.
I hope that the merger will help the EN and ID branches stop being treated as second-class citizens inside Cover.
Calli’s thoughts on the merger seem almost threatening about this (and I mean, for good reason lmao)
Yeah, by now I’ve also seen Ollie’s tweet and, well, she’s pissed. And if Ollie is pissed, so am I.
Iofi would be one of the first to suffer from the merger. Something like that is almost always only good for the top earners, and Iofi will most likely not make the cut once they look at just the numbers in the next shareholder meeting.
Also That Fubuki post doesn’t really help my fears for the EN/ID people.
She notices that kaigai fans are concerned about JP consuming other branches, but it’s not like that. It’s a merge of all branches to break down walls, but EN, ID, and JP will still have their own projects. This is more for future projects.
Well, if JP only consumes the other branches in the future it’s a-okay, I guess… /s.
I just assume that this wasn’t what she actually said or meant and that this is a translation error.
I think that part meant “they will still have their own projects, this if for other future projects in addition to those”.
At least, I hope that’s what she meant, without a timestamp I can’t even try to verify
- Honestly I feared worse news, the merging is certainly a big event but not bad; it will help ‘discover’ new talents outside of ones’ region (but will be kinda problematic for me who more or less followed all of EN).
- It’s Japan, so of course they had to make an anime (jk): looks good, let’s hope those 5 years were well spent.
- Lastly, I’m particularly interested in the upcoming new app, could it be a way of sidestepping YT and its ever-worsening platform? The recent hits to channels and clippers makes me more and more fed up with it.
Final note: I kinda like how awkward and stiff YAGOO-san is, it instead makes him appear more genuine.
Honestly I feared worse news, the merging is certainly a big event but not bad; it will help ‘discover’ new talents outside of ones’ region (but will be kinda problematic for me who more or less followed all of EN).
Eh, reaction among non-JP talents hasn’t been great, especially ID. Of course, they don’t know either what it fully entails, but it’s not looking good so far. Hopefully it’s just them being over-cautious.
Lastly, I’m particularly interested in the upcoming new app, could it be a way of sidestepping YT and its ever-worsening platform? The recent hits to channels and clippers makes me more and more fed up with it.
From what I understood, I’m pretty sure it’s a new app to stream, not to watch streams. So unfortunately we’re still stuck with YouTube.
We will gradually undertake initiatives to refine each talent’s visual presentation, including their outfits, to better reflect their current activities and future direction.
huh, i had the impression that they commissioned stuff individually.
also, hopefully we don’t get a repeat of the vsj model guideline meetings…
huh, i had the impression that they commissioned stuff individually.
Pretty sure they sort of do in relation to the look/theme of the outfit, but it’s still Cover that decides when and who gets new outfits. Even “odd” ones like Furball Korone are commissioned autonomously, and as a result they don’t have 100% freedom in when they can use it (from what I’ve understood).
I think this is more a matter of rigging and/or character design, kinda like what Fubuki did a while ago (or, well, what they did to Sora now), and that side was almost always Cover’s decisions (2.0/3.0 updates, for example)
also, hopefully we don’t get a repeat of the vsj model guideline meetings…
Wait, what happened with models? I must’ve missed it between all the mess lol
to quote (i think) GEEGA, the original concepts got rejected and modified to be “more goonable”.
certainly explains henya and haruka.
@lime @Syrc It wasn’t Geega, it was her friend Phoebe. She has always been a mixed virtual/IRL idol but VShojo wanted to make her model “more goonable” when it’s just based on her. She never debuted with them and kept her original vision when she debuted in Densetsu.exe.
This has nothing to do with Henya and Haruka.
are you sure it wasn’t general policy? it would explain a lot, especially with haru who never liked that kind of stuff.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they had been nudging the model artists towards it but the documented case that was shared with the broader community was Phoebe’s
fair. and from what i know of her old streams she really wouldn’t have been comfortable with that kind of thing.
That… would sound in character for VShojo, but tbh Henya’s character isn’t really that “goonable”, even for short/loli vtuber standards (?)
agreed, it’s not a risqué design. but it would at least explain the
boobwindow.…lmao I completely forgot she had one. Definitely the Pekora/Ina effect, her personality makes you bypass anything lewd about her outfit lol
