The image was me making a joke about the idea of anyone refusing to believe the information that was shared there. Said information was exactly the kind of thing I was talking about; a clear example where Sakana could've chosen to be on a wrongful course that led to the destruction of the company, but ended up making the right decision after pressure from his talents, who held the power to simply leave and let his dreams of being an idol company owner die in the gutter.
You misunderstand my point. I am not saying that Sakana is randomly going to decide to do another 'no build-a-bear streams ever' move like he did to Pippa early on and nearly cause her to implode until people forced him to reconsider. I am saying that now, after Sakana has gained a vast amount of power and influence in this industry, he has the natural weight, presence and authority to compel people to do things and change their content to conform with his vision in a way that he starkly lacked years ago.
It does not have to be a clear case of him saying 'don't do this/you must do this or I will ruin you', it can be a simple, progressive application of pressure and allocation of resources that encourages some kinds of behaviour and discourages others. As his power and influence grow, so too does his passive leverage over the output of his talents. A good business owner knows how to steer his business in a desired direction without needing to resort to confrontation.
Remember also that the vast majority of women who become vtubers are deeply introverted and conflict-averse, while also suffering from major self-esteem issues. Pippa is a great example of this. These are employees who will instinctively go with the flow and not advocate for their own positions in order to fit in and keep what they see as a good thing going.
At the start of Phase Connect, it was an unproven company and Sakana and unproven leader. The power dynamics favoured the talents. Now they don't, and the fact that Pippa or Tenma or anyone else leaving in a big drama might destroy Phase isn't relevant to that equation. They are profoundly unlikely to do so, because that is simply not how they are likely to behave.
We have many, many examples of talents graduating from far worse companies than Phase Connect and then revealing later on they had to deal with extreme distress, misery, self-doubt and other similar things after the event, despite clearly being the injured party. Women are absolutely
amazing at blaming themselves for things that were clearly the fault of other people. I challenge
@thhrang to dispute my assertion that Pippa leaving Phase, even if it was literally prompted by Sakana taking a whip to her back and leaving her with scars, would be anything less than mentally
devastating for her and result in months to years of self-doubt, second-guessing and self-recrimination.
How do we know their actions 'displeased Sakana'? Sure, it was probably inconvenient with Hina not being contactable, but neither of them were particular standouts from their generation and never generated much hype. By the time they debuted, Phase was already powerful and influential; Sakana likely did not expend much money on them relative to his income and simply didn't need to crack the whip, especially when doing so might have impacted his extremely positive reputation. It costs him very little to be lenient with low-performing talents like Saya, Hina and the little JP channels, while also maintaining the public image that Phase Connect is somewhere anyone can succeed and find their own niche.
Most of my previous commentary in this post applies here as well. I agree with this sentiment, but I also think that it'd be wrong to assess his actions purely on the basis of how Phase Connect runs publicly. He's a businessman, and his kind don't consider things from the same perspectives that customers and viewers do. He will be looking for the profitable course of action, either in the long term or the short term. Profitable
for him, not profitable
for Phase. I hopefully don't need to pull out the roughly ten billion examples of CEO's making business decisions that ruined their companies but left them with huge personal profits.
Every businessman has their price. Every businessman will take a flamethrower to everything they've built if they can be convinced that the profits from doing so will fund a bigger, better building next time. There's a reason that professional businessmen have a roughly 50% rate of addiction to hard substances. It is a world where the incentives compel even the most moral participant to act in a ruthless, conniving and self-justifying fashion. The ones that can't hack it either kill themselves or cash out.
Yes, Sakana probably does know that he's one decision away from being a villain. What's not merely probable but absolutely
certain in my eyes is that he'd make that decision anyway without hesitation if he thought it would be more gainful than not making that decision. The public impact would simply be another statistic to be assigned a value to, either in money or opportunity cost. That doesn't make him a monster or anything, it's just the default view any high-level businessman would have.
Anyway, in conclusion; I don't think Phase is going to become a black company anytime soon. I just don't think that most people stop and give a nuanced analysis as to what the dynamics and incentives at play really are from all angles.
