Relevant in the eyes of people who believe bigger numbers = better quality, mind. Deron isn't exactly one of Nijisanji's giants but she has at least alluded to the fact that she makes really good money. If she is any indication of Niji's middle tier then I'm sure they're happy to sacrifice some /vt/ clout in favour of sitting pretty.
Ibrahim's not in the top 20% for subs and he made like $126,000 for his 3d debut, so yeah, you can be "non-relevant" Niji and still do well.
Quality isn't even the issue here. The issue is that Nijisanji launches talents like a gattling gun without giving any of their talents or fanbase any breathing room to grow. The fanbase gets stretched out to a point where the bottom line actually suffers from the lack of views and don't get the attention they should have gotten if only Nijisanji lets them and their fans 'breathe'. The reason why even Nijisanji fans complain about the constant launches is that people actually feel exhausted because they'd have the feel to want to keep up. "tRue nIJiSanJI FanS wIll oNlY sTicK To ThOSe WhO tHEy LikE, TrYiNG to sIMp the EntIRe cOmPanY IS NoT HoW peoPle sHoUlD cOnSume ThEM".
While I agree with that sentiment, that's not the point. The main idea of what I'm trying to say is that Nijisanji gives fuck all about the quality of their roster and just wants to flood their member pool with as many talents as possible without giving a fuck about the talents or the audience. Nijisanji is literally more Corpo than Cover Corp in this regard.
Edit: grammar
There are Niji fans who complain about Niji policies, and there are Holo fans who complain about Holo policies. I have little interest in going down the whole "quantity vs quality" discussion again other than to say that personally I don't mind the numbers of members because it leads to greater variety imo. I personally find Hololive kinda same-y and boring and am glad that not every other company just copies them. Others prefer Hololive - clearly the majority here do, which is fine. If everyone had to like the most successful thing, we'd all be MCU fans.
Them not giving a fuck about talents is pretty patently false, as it's pretty obvious that they are putting
more resources into new waves, with debut songs (sometimes by high profile - aka not cheap - composers) and merchandise upon launch becoming the norm. You don't hire MONACA to write a song for people you don't give a fuck about. They also spend quite a lot on 3d and AR. It's just that joining Nijisanji is not a guarantee of getting a full-time salary off of streaming. Nijis who treat it as a full-time gig typically earn enough to do so, and those who don't typically don't.
Ultimately I think the issue is people see the end numbers (typically just subscriber count) and work backwards. Niji has lower subscriber counts so clearly they don't care about their vtubers. Using that logic though, one could look at CCV and say that Cover doesn't care about Holostars - something which (as has been discussed here many times) is patently false given the resources they put behind Holostars.
Anycolor and Cover are both corporations so the whole who is "more corpo" thing is pretty pointless. Neither of them care about you, they both exist to make money. Which is why I also think that who treats Yagoo/Riku as a "lol friendly meme man" is just falling for obvious marketing.
