I know people don't like the 1 hour stream limitation for debut week that they've had in the past, but I can certainly understand its usefulness. All four streaming last night, overlapping quite a bit, including with other EN senpais too, and most close to or over 3 hours (except the poor twin doggos with EN curse/scuff). If you didn't catch any of it or only some, you are looking at like 10hrs of VODs of just the new girls. Trying to keep up with them and figure out who I vibe with and want to invest time in to is hard at those rates. And since they are newly debuted, they are grinding and doing this basically every night this week and probably for another 1 or 2 more at least. I was hoping to have time to feel them out, but already triaging and falling back on clips and dropping some I think, when I'd hoped to give them all more of chance and at least a week of full streams.
I think my first "downsize" will be Nerissa. Watched a bit of her stream last night and some clips, but seems like she is going to be doing some things to filter me. The swearing while minimal now seems like it will probably increase since she admitted to having a "sailor mouth". Maybe not surprising that Kiara is her oshi! But I have kids around who don't need to hear that and I don't talk that way normally either, so it throws me having them drop f-bombs and such all the time. (Also was a big reason Calli and Kiara filtered me right off the bat.) I was worried about the no-pan/bra thing and now her greenlight go ahead to R34 artists is probably going to attract the type of people in chat I don't really want to deal with too. I don't think she'll go full coomerbait or anything, but the thirsty orbiters are tough to deal with. Her singing is great though, so I'll at least keep an ear out for songs/covers by her and maybe karaokes. Too bad, because being a midwesterner her Ope called to me, but can't commit to her solely on that, surely, right?
This at least is nice to see from her though:
Some days feels like the entire internet is childfree people and absolutely despises them (maybe just too much reddit and twitterX), so it is nice to actually have someone talk positively about them. We might actually have vtubers this gen who are straight and want to have normal family units. Crazy!
The others I'm still working through. Shiori seemed interesting and fun, coming off much better in this stream than her debut. But if she leans too much in to the "I'm so quirky" thing, it could get tiring. FuwaMoco are cute, but if they fall back in to the voices they had as GGN which it feels they might, then I don't think I'll be able to stick to them long-term, same as it was when they were GGN. Right now the new gen sheen is on them along with the excitement of their resurrection, so at least I'm giving them another chance. Bijou I still don't have a good read on so I'll have to keep watching some more of her streams to see. I do like the cute voice/smol vtubers, but she is leaning in to the baby voice more than I like (basically at all). Not full Shondo, but may be too much for me as well. But I also enjoy the gamer/meme-y personality, so I'm giving it time to settle in.
While I have the above personal criticisms, I don't think any of them are bad and will find audiences with ease. I think they are filling in some new niches and/or niches that have been abandoned/slowed down on the EN side. For me, they all so far at least slot in to the "not oshi, but will tune in to them if they are on and I'm looking for something to watch" type tier like Bae, IRyS, Kaela, and some others are for me. But I don't know if any will click with me enough to jump into my high/oshi tier.
[Wow did not originally plan on this long of a post...]
21k people watching shiori be ESL
they really hit a home run
This is new gen buff, especially after a 2 years drought. I don't put much credence to their CCV until they've been going for a month or so and then we can see what they maintain.