Three Years After An Explosive Controversy, Hololive returns to Bilibili. r/Hololive is not happy.

This is my first reddit post, so please excuse any problems with the formatting!

For those who don't know, Hololive is one of the titans of the vtubing industry. Vtubers, short for Virtual Youtubers, are streamers who use a specially-made anime avatar for their livestreams, as opposed to the more traditional use of face cams. Many vtubers are also associated with the Japanese Idol Industry – not only do they livestream, but they also dance, sing, and perform, selling out concert venues and occasionally appearing on the Japanese music charts.

Among its fans, Hololive is often-regarded as the Good TM Vtuber company. Fans love to dote about how kind, welcoming, and wholesome Hololive is, especially in comparison to its competitors. Clips demonstrating such values are widely popular among fans. This reputation has done much to buoy Hololive's success, but from a business perspective, it can also be a double-edged sword: any corporate decision which seems to violate said principles are viewed with immense alarm and suspicion, as fans fear losing the ‘last good' vtubing company.

About three years ago, Hololive found itself embroiled in a major controversy. To describe it most briefly, it originated from everyone's favorite geopolitical conflict: the recognition, or lack thereof, of Taiwan as an independent country. At this point in time, Hololive was streaming to the Chinese market consistently via the Chinese streaming service Bilibili. Two of their streamers, Akai Haato and Kiryu Coco, were discussing their Youtube analytics, when they mentioned that many of their fans come from Taiwan. The backlash from Chinese fans was swift and immense. And it was, in large part, implicitly supported by Bilibili - or at least, many fans think so. To put a long story short, Hololive was forced to close its Chinese branch, and many of their remaining talents faced months of harassment. Eventually, Hololive decided to close itself off to the Chinese market completely, including, most relevantly, a decision to no longer stream on Bilibili.

A few hours ago, it was confirmed on r/Hololive that one of Hololive's talents, Kobo Kanaeru, has recently streamed on Bilibili. Cue the subredditdrama:

Some fans merely express their disapproval:

Yeah... It's legit. Not a fan honestly

Others are a bit more blunt:

Fricking yikes

Some see it as a betrayal:

I still remember the harassment Fubuki faced during the whole ordeal. I think it was almost a year or maybe more of constant bots flooding her chat. No collabs could happen during that time because the bots would flood other chats as well. It almost broke Fubuki as well till some members just disregarded it and started to play games with her on stream. Constant harassment just gets to you sometimes no matter how strong you may be mentally.

Others, particularly newer fans, don't know what the big deal is:

so I'm genuinely unfamiliar with what this means. could someone explain what the significance of this is, and why people are so upset? all I know is that bilibili is a video platform.

A few even support the decision:

I know this will fall on deaf ears, but I just wanna say that not all of the people in Bilibili are bad and I'll support Cover and Kobo in this endeavor.

There's plenty more in the rest of the comments: https://old.reddit.com/r/Hololive/comments/1ddd13x/its_real_kobo_is_streaming_on_b2/

(And for clarification, you will see a lot of comments discussing Cover. Cover Corp is actually the name of the corporation behind Hololive, and Hololive is essentially their flagship branch. But since Hololive is a much more famous name to outsiders than Cover Corp, I used it).

https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1ddhve8/three_years_after_an_explosive_controversy/