April 8, 2023
About a year and a half ago, I and others started noticing there were five agencies which were growing steadily and had plenty of collaboration with each other. I decided to dub them Five English Sisters, emphasizing the sisterhood of the five agencies - PRISM Project, Tsunderia, Project Kawaii, Phase Connect, and CyberLive.
CyberLive was the first to go, but I was not surprised. They were only really included because of the close connection with the other four, and their troubles were easily visible right from the start, or at least that was what I sensed. Even now, long after the demise, the tension has continued, after one of the two talents who moved to Phase Connect, did a bad joke.
Tsunderia had a quiet death, not quite getting the push and pull, first failing to capture the success of Kamiko Kana, although she had other issues, and then success of Miori Celesta. Ultimately they failed at actual support and quietly were disbanded.
Project Kawaii had a ‘miracle’ gen and relatively good models, which led them to great success, and 2nd Gen had a lesser but still remarkable success as well. Things were riding high with the 3D campaign, but cracks were beginning to show with Neena’s departure, which was unfortunate, but then just as things were looking better with the 3rd Gen, Oceane incident was revealed and some time after, whole of 3rd Gen was unceremoniously dropped, which is astounding considering the success of people like Aletta, whose shorts got her to 100K.
PRISM Project held steady with their four generations and their inclusion to the SONY family cut them off from large success, due to the poor networking skills of the company and the general distrust after the Kaguya Luna debacle, but they have secured security in a way.
Which leaves Phase Connect as the biggest success of the group, which I would have never guessed… I wrote off Phase Connect when Sakana was posting on Reddit about him starting an agency - agency from a reddit user felt like an instant disaster, and the fact that their biggest talent was playing ropes with an even dangerous group signaled me the seal of doom.
But Pippa was one of the sly cookies in the business and the darker tone made the agency stand out, and they managed to successfully float 6 talents in their second gen, which is astounding, considering many agencies fail to float 4 or even 3 talents after their first go. Phase Connect managed to thread the line between the gremlin nature of Nijisanji EN and the outrageous and boastful nature of VShojo, as the alternative of EN Agencies.
While two of the five sisters have fully perished, idol Corp managed to nab the two empty thrones, with the surgical precision of debuting E-sekai in November, during the huge lull in both HoloEN and NijiEN, and focusing on the oft-neglected EU market. Penrose Rin was the snarky British Agency VTuber we expected to see long time ago, and her shorts, reminiscent of Pippa’s short with American autistic anger replaced by British anxiety snark, had garner enormous amount of attention vaulting her to over 250K subscribers in a month or so of the boom, with her fellow quietly but surely tracking to that 100K mark, and most already well over 50K.
But will there be that fifth member? Many had tried, like Amber Glow and AkiroAIR, but they had failed to create a good foundation for a robust fandom. The latest attempt is from Project EIEN, who had a rather nice growth, but no one from the group is a stand-out for the moment.
P.S. - Matori Kakeru’s departure continues to be a major surprise. I wonder if Kakeru is about to upgrade to a better position, because she was having relative success. Considering the Linglan Lily trade, the Taiwan scene has been quite tumultuous so anything is possible.
