I never understood why Niji is the way it is. It just doesn't make sense to me why they are so self-destructive.
Were they always like this? How did nobody really bring it up for 5 years? Was all of their success just a fluke or genuine passion and hard work?
Why did EN take so long to implode if things were so horrible? Why did anyone in their right mind sign that contract?
Is Holo like this too? Is it possible to make a vtuber agency without being terrible? Why has nobody done it if so?
Who actually caused all of the issues? The talent? Management? The people at HQ? The suits? and why did it suddenly become worse? or was it always that bad?
Ever since all of the shit started coming out I feel like there is a lot of things we still don't know. Going "they're evil, that's it" does not satisfy me as a conclusion. There is this big disconnect between early Niji and current Niji, maybe there's a lot of things I can't connect to the puzzle because their JP branch never appealed to the west.
I understand Holo's fuck ups very well, they are logical and have plausible explanations. Coco was harassed and mismanaged, Rushia was menhera, Mel broke contract. Holo was very obviously going through growing pains in 2020-2021, and that led to a lot of incompetent/negligent handling of situations, that has since gotten better and is consistent with the agency's growth and number of employees. Niji just... had the world and then imploded, I feel like the root cause of the issues has never been actually revealed to us.
I'm wondering how much of Nijisanji's issues are inherent in its specific business model that aren't in other companies like Holo or Phase.
So, to start - Nijisanji wants to have lots of talents. There's some logic to this: more livers means you have talents targeting more niches. Presumably, a new viewer will find at least one Nijisanji talent that draws them in, and once they have someone, it isn't much of an ask for them to try out other talents in the company. Oh, and more talents means more chances for Nijisanji to find a breakout star and make bank off that. The downside of this strategy is that the large number of talents you have means there's going to be some cannibalism of audience between talents, especially if you don't give the talents time or resources to establish themselves before you're shipping out the next wave.
But talents still need the same amount of support, even if they're having their audience cannibalized by other Niji members and aren't getting all the money they could be if Nijisanji went tall (fewer talents with better numbers) rather than wide (more talents, smaller individual numbers). Talents still need managers to sort out game and music permissions, approve stream ideas, sort out merch and sponsorships and all that, especially if you want to be strict in terms of presenting an image like Nijisanji wants to do. So you have three apparent solutions to this problem, if you want to keep making the same revenue: 1) cut management salary, 2) increase how many talents a manager supports, or 3) cut down on the roles of management. Nijisanji does all three. The obvious happens: you have managers that are overworked, can't support the talents properly, and any quality manager that can goes elsewhere.
Now, managers can barely do their regular jobs, never mind long-term or difficult projects like organizing Live Concerts or events, or projects that talents want, like Pomu's "opportunity of a lifetime" that management couldn't support. They don't have the manpower. Talents get frustrated due to delays and lack of support. Stuff gets missed, morale worsens. If there are issues with the talents, management doesn't have time to deal with them, and if they do, they have a million other things to do and don't have the time to put in their full effort.
It's easy to see the downward spiral from there. A pity.
