Cupid: a character made up of pure love who brought so much hate

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Pop Culture/Fandom

A new Hololive EN VTuber quits after six months since debut

The newly introduced male Holomyth known as "Cupid," a character made up of pure love who brought so much hate

Notowa NotowaNewsNetwork editor

Tues 15 Dec 2020 02:02 MST

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On June 15, 2020, the company Hololive English (Hololive EN) debuted a new character added to their English speaking group named "Cupid." Cupid was introduced as the first male Holomyth.

Within six months of his debut, the voice behind Cupid, Washi Kemuri, had quit.

A few days after his departure from Hololive EN, he was interviewed by an obscure podcaster known as ImAnIdiotTryingToBeDeep. The interview can be viewed on both YouTube and Soundcloud on their official page.

In the beginning of his debut, audience members and viewers of the VTuber community had a small reaction toward their first male Holomyth. Defining him as "the single male protagonist," playing off the trope that is most common in harem anime. However, the reality of the matter was far from it.

Executive members of Hololive recently discussed in the news about their first male character as some sort of "experiment." To see the initial reaction toward the first male introduced in Hololive EN. If the results were proven to be successful, then they planned for a more diverse cast of members of all genders.

"The results were... quite interesting." One of the executive members said.

Being the only male within a cast of women, it was already going to be a rather interesting take. Though the majority of the audience members and viewers of the Vtuber community, in a case study and of YouTube stats, are male-dominated ranging from 15-30 years. They likely conducted the experiment to see if their character Cupid could appeal to more women within the community.

Unfortunately, being the only male VTuber and in a male-dominated community, the viewership and analytics of Cupid are revealed to be substantially stagnant. Since his debut, the growth of subscribers and viewers ranked the lowest out of all Hololive EN members. Donations accumulated from audience members were the lowest than any of the members of Hololive EN and even independent content creators combined.

The first actual evidence within the database showed a small spike in viewership after a few collaborations with other VTubers members. They were mainly the source of his way of getting promoted and showed more engagement within the community. It was still not enough to get him over only 100 views per video.

"We did ask some of the members to help him get through the door..." Another executive said.

As they analyzed the data, they had found many of the more reasons Cupid had not grown within the first month. Their reaction toward the character and the voice behind the character was shown to have much criticism in the comments sections of the videos uploaded. Most were quite negative as they expressed that Cupid was "boring," and the voice was "too monotone." Viewers explained that they would get bored and want to click off the video. The voice of the character shared his thoughts in a recent video about how his audience is not entertained. He claimed himself to be "not as funny" as his female colleagues in Hololive EN while still carrying on his regularly scheduled program.

Other members of Hololive had shared their own thoughts on the matter but didn't go into specifics about their engagement with the new male character. One mentioned that he was "awkward and annoying," while a couple of others thought of him as "just normal." It was their initial belief that their new member of Hololive EN was still adapting into a new environment.

There were some that refused to collaborate with the new member, showing behavior of hostility in belief that their viewership would dwindle as a result. Within the Hololive EN, VTubers Mori Calliope and Takanashi Kiara had treated him "fairly well," and their engagement remained the same throughout since his debut.

"Collaborations were scarce..." An executive said. "Even the audience turned away toward other members also streaming within the same time frame..."

On social media, many of the followers on Twitter had deemed Cupid as "beta-male energy," while some have tried to berate his involvement in many other VTuber streams. While there are some that viewed the comments as normal and good feedback, the ones that attracted the most attention and engagement were the ones claiming wanting to cancel the character from the rest of the group.

Even YouTube commentary channels have noticed the growing hate around the new character but have withheld commenting on it as it was not in their particular demographic. As well as claiming that they don't know enough about the community to engage with it. Until there were threats of doxxing Cupid's voice actor, in which many had come out to say it was "not right." However, any help from the community has been redacted when the voice of Cupid was announcing his departure from Hololive EN.

Within six months since his debut, the voice actor quit.

"...it's not my thing..." Washi Kemuri said, on ImAnIdiotTryingToBeDeep podcast. "...they were okay to like pull the plug that early..."

"The character Cupid is under our licensing..." One of the executives said. "As of now, the character is discontinued... we have no plans of re-debuting the character... even thinking of changing the gender of the character might be a bit risky..."

Cupid being under license, the voice actor was unable to keep the character as his own in starting independently. During the interview, "...I'll just go independently..." he mentioned that he would be starting his own VTubing channel with his very own character. Still willing to stay in the community to hopefully grow and collaborate with those who initially enjoyed his content.