Approaching spring

HOLOSTARS Survival 2024 with all 23 members

As of this writing, today is the first day of Spring. We all know what this means~????

On this date, we are now approaching the post-holoFES EXPO 2024 period, where those who went and watched all the various stages, which includes the Hololive girls’ 2-day stage live, Capture the Moment, we all know that we’ll be going through this strange withdrawal period. It would be nice if it was the expo and the live stages can be available for people overseas and for those who couldn’t come in person, but for now, all we have to do is hope and pray that we’ll make it to one of them in the future.

However, our boys didn’t disappoint us. They’ve got some special treats for all the HOLOSTARS fans around the world. If you missed the streams, you can watch them again in our own time.

DAY 1 – ANIME KARAOKE WITH DA BOYZ!

Join Izuru, Temma, Uyu, Rio, Hakka, and Octavio with some fun-filled (and sometimes chaotic) musical sesh! This is the first time that a few of our EN boys also get to join the sesh, so you can’t miss this!

DAY 2 – WALK-AROUND THE EXPO WITH DA BOYZ!

Last year’s Expo 2023, we had two sessions of walk-around streams, with Astel, Temma, and Roberu on DAY 1 and Axel, Flayon, and Hakka on DAY 2. This year, we only have one walk-around stream, but with the redhead gang, Roberu, Gamma, and Jurard!

STARS COLLECTION RETURNS! HOLOSTARS SURVIVAL: Take at least one of them seriously!

#StarsKoreSpecialRealNotClickBait

After one year since the finale of the boys’ 3D anime Stars Collection/StarsKore, the boys are back with a StarsKore special which includes all of the EN boys! Let’s see how the boys will survive the (deserted?) island life in different, integrated groups!

Let’s pray that we get a new “season” of StarsKore featuring the EN boys in the future!

Some Awesome News

Have you heard already? HoloPro’s parent company, COVER Corporation, will be opening its first subsidiary outside of Japan, COVER USA. If you’re an overseas fan, especially outside Asia, you should be excited. I’m excited, because that can mean a lot of things impossible before possible for us throughout the seven seas!

This means, worldwide expansion. This means, all of the things that are very distant to us (hololive SUPER EXPO, for example) will become closer. This means, cheaper shipping prices on official merch. This means, in the future, a 3D studio for the overseas talents to create their content and other activities on 3D. This also means, further expansion throughout other parts of the world!

To be more specific, COVER USA will be located in L.A., which to me, isn’t surprising. A lot of “fans” are against it for whatever political reasons they have, but from a logistical and business standpoint, there isn’t anywhere else (in my opinion anyway) in the country suitable as a subsidiary base than in California. Personally for me, politics of any kind shouldn’t even be in the place of business. COVER is an entertainment technology company. What do they have to do with social politics anyway?

Some of the pros that I, as a Californian, could think of why they chose California for the subsidiary homebase:

  • The state closest by distance to Japan. If we’re going by city, San Francisco is the closest city by distance to Japan, but either way, it’s still close. Contrary to general belief, Hawaii is way southwest of L.A., and that’s way further down south from Japan.
  • California has the strictest (from what I heard) employee laws. Based on my experience working in a few companies, big and small, DEI (diversity, equality, and inclusion) is heavily implied throughout the work culture. Discrimination of any kind is illegal in the place of work, which even includes the basis of personal politics.
  • Largest population in the country, meaning it’s also a very diverse population. The most common features Japan is known for, from food to media, can also be found here. Speaking of population, I’d have to admit that Asians are the majority among the vTuber fan demographics in general, and when there’s a huge diaspora of Asians in a state, the strong influence is there as well.
  • And because California has the largest Asian population, this can also mean that California has the largest Japanese community in the country. The last three remaining historic Japantowns are located here (L.A., San Francisco, San Jose).
  • Many subsidiaries of Japanese entertainment, media, and technology companies (Sony, Square Enix, Bandai Namco, Good Smile Company U.S., Sega of America, Atlus, Konami, Capcom, Koei Tecmo, XSEED Games (Marvelous subsidiary), Rakuten, Viz Media (subsidiary of Shogakukan and Shueisha – manga publishers), etc.) are located in California. There’s plenty of opportunities COVER USA can work and collaborate with without spending too much on traveling long distance. There’s also Electronic Arts and Riot Games too, who publish games such as Apex Legends, Valorant, League of Legends, etc.
  • Collaborating with celebrities of all places? Hollywood is here. Upgrading and harnessing the latest technology in AR, VR, and 3D? Silicon Valley is here. Well, you get the idea.

One con that I do have with my home state is that the cost of living is very high. Some of the people I’ve met online1 think that Californians are lucky that their jobs have higher pay than the rest of the country. Not quite. The only reason why jobs here have higher pay because of the high cost of living. You may be earning say, a three-figure salary, and you think you’re set. Not exactly. On some cities here in the Bay Area (where I currently live by the way), a small one-story ranch-style house can cost over $1 mil. Just imagine that. On the other hand, COVER Corporation is not a small business, so I’m pretty sure YAGOO, A-chan, and their management team know what they’re doing.

Honestly, I am interested in applying for a job at the subsidiary one day. I’m naturally an introvert, and I’m more behind the scenes than actually working directly with people.((in this case, the talents)) I hope that they offer remote jobs on the technology side of things,2 and if they do, I do hope I get a chance. I don’t mind traveling down to L.A. for meetings and such, since I can stay over at my sister’s and her family’s house over there.

For now, it’s still early to tell and we’ll have to wait and see. What are some of the tasks that COVER USA will be doing that would benefit us and their talents? Stay tuned.

Some Site Stuff

I haven’t blogged here for a month, so, here are a few updates regarding the site:

Fan Art Section

I admitted before that I can’t draw character art and I’m not very good at drawing or any other form of art. But regardless of that, I’m still doing art when the inspiration bug bites me hard. It finally did back in late February.

If you check out the new fan art section,((or is it fanart? Auto-Grammarly can be a biznatch, honestly…)) you can see the date of my first fan art as March 2nd. Rather than suffer and wait for who knows how long to have a chance with learning how to draw (anime/manga) characters, I decided to find ways to get into just drawing in general.

I’ve always liked kawaii-style art. I also like retro/vintage-style art too. I also like drawing urban sketches. I decided to warm up my creative juices with drawing objects, scenery, and other random stuff and get in the journey of finding my style. I think it worked well in a way. Somehow, using the boys’ signature colors, I can start off by drawing art inspired by the color themes of the boys before I start “joining the fan art bandwagon” by drawing the actual characters.

At the same time, fan art isn’t the only reason why I found myself getting into art again. I want to draw original art too. For now, just showcase and practice. Maybe in the future, I can open a side business in selling my art through different types of goods, like stickers, t-shirts, bookmarks, etc. But at the same time, I’m not a very business-oriented person, so all the financials and accounting issues, that’s where I will be struggling with.

For now, I’m still learning, still discovering new art styles, while trying to get myself into character art.

That’s all for this post. Till next time~ OTSUSTARS!

  1. not just in the vtubing community, but with other coworkers living outside the state []
  2. I’m interested in data analytics, data engineering, or even UI/UX design… []

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