You've taken something I've been feeling for a fairly long time now and worded it perfectly: VShojo is the complacency company. It's hard to say whether it's due to the talent freedom letting them overindulge in novelties so they're not novel any more, or nobody involved giving a fuck in general, but it feels like nothing exciting happens, and when they do bother making an attempt it's just to tick a box while falling short of industry standard.
I don't trust them to handle anyone who genuinely wants to be an idol, just look at their previous attempts at idol performances and you'll understand why. The one-off show Nazuna did chugged along at 8fps like it was being encoded on someone's laptop from 2004, the Candy Pop thing used what were essentially the "How to Draw Manga!" brand of 3D models, and Ironmouse's """$100,000""" concert had a visual presentation on par with those kusoges that get rushed out in a month with no QA - I literally laughed out loud seeing the "crowd" outside the palace area consisting of like ten 2D character illustrations being shown at the wrong angles.
All the company itself can really do to draw attention is to accelerate and debut new talents, but even then it's kind of hard to care when they're just poaching ex-corpos who're gonna do the exact same shit they did before while also fleshtubing on the side for some fucking reason, rather than introducing new or previously overlooked talents who might bring something interesting to the table.
While I do agree this shit breeds complacency I feel like the more goal oriented people you get in Vshojo, the more special events and things you will see coming out. I feel like Pomu has enough idol rot in her brain that she will try to push for covers, and concerts and shit. This is one of the more positive things that Niji and Holo had going for it. People wanted to one-up each other in a semi competitive way as to come off with new flashy shit (except when Niji cancelled their shit). Pretty sure that the only reason why Nina started releasing covers was because Ike and Enna pushed her into it.
Vshojo seems to be lacking that ambience but it is possible for her to finally be able to collab more with people over at Hololive. People she looks up to like Kiara, Nerissa and Fuwamoco. Crossing my fingers i am right and not just have her become another Minecract/React streamer. Either way. even if she stagnates, atleast she will have more liberty to interact with others.
Vtubers are typically suffer from ADD and can't plan shit, Geega had to tardwrangle vshojo to schedule collabs even between themselves. But their management don't do networking part.
I think this clip speaks for itself regarding Henya's ability to reach out
Every time I see a creator focusing inwards they're always stagnating something fierce. It's especially prevalent in Twitch streaming, how each stream is its own island, and how they only really live on in clips afterwards, all really comes together to encourage a streamer to only think about the stream. If you're lucky they're creative one-offs at least, and if you're not lucky then its react content and fotm gaming all the way to the bottom.
I think one the nice things about both Cover and even Anycolor is that they force the creator to always be thinking outside their own stream, whether that's something as simple as planning birthday and anniversary merch. We see extreme introverts and depressives in Hololive too, but even they end up on official programs or at least have a schedule of things they have to attend to. This might not manifest as an advantage for the creator themselves, but it sure is nice as a fan.
I'm with Azehara in that I do think the right people, interacting and telling a collective story together, and making content that pushes each other forward, could work really well for Vshojo. I'm reminded of the three times I've really appreciated Vshojo content:
The first was Nyanners back when she was putting out weird Haachama-esque multi-stream arc content.
The second was when Henya joined and her honeymoon months of collabs. She even made me laugh at Zentraya, that's how good the shenanigans were. But the story component of Henya with her triumphant return and then the pranking and revenge arcs was what made it especially good.
The third was Kson and her audition for Yakuza. Again very driven by the story of it, and the friends made along the way.
This aspect is lost entirely in a normal, inwards-facing stream. Vshojo clearly has the resources to make any type of content work, so it's particularly frustrating to see those resources put towards Lore Video #14.
Was this post about Pomu? I hope she goes somewhere nice.