Now that I slept on that, my thoughts on the latest HoloEN gen....
Basically, out of all the debuts, Bijou nailed it out of the freaking park. In fact, I daresay it's the best HoloEN debut outside of Gura's, which is saying something as there probably won't ever be a debut that is as internet shaking as Gura's. And in true monkey paw fashion, Bijou's stream choices are not exactly things that draw in big numbers (as Kiara demonstrates where she hits her floor playing RPGs), so I guess you can't win everything. That said, Gura really needs a 'successor' as she barely streams nowadays, and I'd say Bijou has shown that if there's anyone who can inherit Gura's timeslot to attract shrimps, it will be her.
That said, Shiorin in the latest collab sounds so good... the 'dead inside' voice with that model fits perfectly (which I find interesting as she was more upbeat as Natsumi). It was obvious in the debut she was hella nervous, and this nervousness really clashed with the character she was trying to play . But with the collab... man, she's making me feel things I don't want to have feelings for. It's so good that I have to avoid it (like Zeta and Mee-maw before), as I can already feel the parasocial tugging. She has by far the best schedule of the bunch, but I will only be consuming her content in moderation as I like my vtubers to be entertaining rather than GFE (and I'm already falling into the latter with her this early in the game - and no, I don't really care if she collabs with males or not).
Nerissa... her game and anime tastes does not fit someone of her RM's age. I mean, 80's music I get as Gura pretty much made it synonymous with vtubers, but FF7/Ocarina of Time would have been released while she was in diapers, while Higurashi/Peach Girl/Clannad would be released before she even became a teenager. And that's not including Macross, which is my all-time anime favourite, and I'm at least a decade older than her. Out of all the girls, Nerissa has the most in common with my tastes... I'm not familiar with Mom0ki, but I have this nagging feeling she is playing up her tastes as a 'boomer' to better suit her character. As such, she is the one I am most wary of in terms of actual streaming content - I'm subscribed to a bunch of good vtuber singers (Athena, Prism Project, etc.) but I wouldn't say these girls are entertaining outside of their karaoke streams, and if Nerissa is faking her likes, who knows where her content is going. Don't get me wrong, Nerissa is a top tier singer, but as an entertainer outside of that is what gives me the most ???.
As for the twins, I personally find Fuwa's voice grating, as she is trying to do the more feminine 'yamato nadeshiko' voice, which sounds natural when she speaks JP but IMO just doesn't work in EN. Moco's more tomboy works well in ENG, so I hope Fuwa transitions more into a natural sounding voice a month or two down the line. On the plus side, their schedule is packed, but I guess it's to be expected as they basically have to work twice as hard, considering they share one channel.
Is this the first time an entire gen (at least on the EN side) was predicted correctly before their debut? I remember for Tempus HQ, Axel was only identified after debut, and for Tempus VG, the same happened with Hakka, not sure about Council and Myth though (I doubt people even paid enough attention to sachi).
Council was 5/5 IIRC, but confidence on Bae being Marica wasn't high, but was the lead deduction (IIRC from Miori being one of her first few friends in twitter). Fauna got Shondo'd, Sana did a PON and replied with the wrong twit account, Mumei's artsyle was very similar, while Kronii had her friend twit a very detailed fanart only minutes into her twitter debut.
Wasn't there with Myth debuts as I only started watching them a month in after a friend pulled me into the rabbit hole. Old-timers may correct me or fill in the specifics, but from I remember of the farms thread (yes I read the entire thing from the beginning when it was only sub 1k posts), all of them were already guessed before their debut but confidence wasn't high until after.
One thing I do remember was that Gura wasn't even a 100% confidence even after her debut, as that was the origin of the meme of "It's HER" or "It's not HER" started. Basically Senzawa had a much more 'dead' and low voice, while debut Gura pitched up her voice and was much more genki. Some were saying Sen was rebranding like Filthy Frank, while others claim it's not the same girl. Only after GurAme minecraft stream where Ame had a 'dream' of Gura and the plural of moose, in which Ame basically linked Gura to one of the few surviving Senzawa YT archive stream, was when the HER/not HER meme started to die down hard. Even funnier was that Gura retaliated some time after in the same stream, where she asked Ame if she had a nickname and 'randomly' suggests Becca out of nowhere. Man, if that happened nowadays, I bet Gura would have been suspended from intentionally doxxing the RM instead of the PL. XD