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Might just be an unfortunate coincidence, but the last time I told myself that, the Nene tracing drama happened
TBH these look like basic "throne" poses I've seen tons of artwork drawn in. Though then again, as you said people thought that the Nene tracing was just a coincidence until she admitted it.
Beat me to it. I think they wanted Stars to become more like the Nijimales while the girls would fill the Idol role but then they exploded and became known a Idol company and Stars no longer fit into the publics perceived image of Hololive. I think that's why Uproar has more of a male idol design to them, I expect StarsEn to have similar designs.
Holostars owes its conception more or less due to boy idols, IMO. I don't mean in terms of design - though most of Holostars Gen 1 do look like anime boy idols - but in terms of how Cover went about launching and handling them.
IRL idol groups are segregated by gender. There are girl groups, and there are boy groups. Some companies will have both girl and boy groups, but they don't mix them. You see this in Kpop as well. There are no girls in BTS and no boys in Twice. Nobody questions this.
People can debate endlessly about the "are Hololive talents idols?" question, but it's fairly clear that Cover does take a lot of inspiration from idol industry, to the point of literally calling their girls idols in official statements. I suspect that the main reason why the guys got their own group with their own name, separate from Hololive, is simply because that's how it works for idol groups. And here's the thing - it works
really well for IRL idols. The top boy groups in both Japan and Korea are often more successful than their female counterparts. It was perfectly reasonable for Cover to think that this was the best approach, because this is what works in the industry they were emulating.
As it turns out, vtubing isn't quite the same, and Holostars remain miles behind Hololive in terms of popularity. I've talked about this here before, but I suspect that the reason for the difference is that while music - the main creative output of IRL idols - is universally popular, the vtubing fandom is a big sausage fest. It's easy to engage teenage girls with the concept of pretty boys singing songs. Hell, boy idol groups arguably predate girl ones in Japan, if one counts the original Johnnys group from 1967. The vast majority of vtuber fans back in 2019 when Holostars launched, on the other hand, were guys. So Cover's boy group didn't appeal to guys, who want to watch cute girls, and didn't appeal to many girls, as a result of them not knowing what vtubing is.
Since 2019 more female fans have made their way into the fandom. Which is why I am probably more optimistic for StarsEN's chances than the diehard Holo fans here are, ironically.
