Well, just be careful and aware of what you're getting into here. Not that I fault or judge anyone here for it- in fact I think the level of deduction and in the know expertise is quite impressive- but there is a lot of behind the scenes information about vtubers, including face reveals and other such personal information that they would never want you to know and could be considered dangerous to their perception, floating around here.
Allow me to regale you as briefly as possible with my own story. Being pretty thoroughly entrenched in everything weeb for the past 5 or so years after being light to mildly weeb for most of my life before that, I was well aware of the new "vtuber" phenomenon when probably the first contemporary pin talent got the ball rolling on the trend, Kizuna Ai. I watched a couple of her videos but never really thought too much of it or anything. Probably the first time I heard about Hololive was when Azur Lane did a collab event last year with some of the early Hololive girls as event ships. I enjoyed a lot of Fubuki's silly one off meme videos like "I'm Scatman" and the super meme edits and remixes of it by hamburgaga. Then 2020 rolled around and my interest level in it still remained quite lukewarm. I watched some of Miko's popular GTA V clips like the "stay home" rooftop sniper scene and the infamous n word scene. I went on like this the same pretty much right up to the announcement of the first generation of Hololive EN- aware of it, but not super interested.
I was honestly very skeptical of the idea and figured the English vtubers would be about as cringe as the average bad anime dub. I had very low expectations and didn't actually catch any of the girls' debut streams. The day after her debut though, I kept seeing Gura blowing up all over the internet. I saw the classic "a" video, and decided to tune into her second stream that night, where she played maneater I believe. That was probably the moment that got me hooked into the rabbit hole.
From there on out, I was watching Gura's streams every single night, until the first day came that she took a day off. I didn't know what else to watch, but saw that Amelia Watson was streaming that night so I decided to tune into that instead. That pattern of mainly watching Gura and then Watson whenever Gura had an off day continued for about a week or so, and I can't remember when exactly the moment was, but something about her got me into Amelia way more than Gura or anyone else. I became completely enthralled. I started developing what would turn into a huge crush on Amelia. It eventually got out of hand and became pretty unhealthy- I was spending way too much time watching her or thinking about her, it had even started noticeably distracting me from work, and I knew fully well that this was becoming a problem, but I just let myself keep going because there was also a part of me that just enjoyed the opportunity to feel something like this again because it's been over 5 years since I've had any sort of crush such as this on anyone.
I was aware that at least some of the EN girls had been around as figures in the community or streamers. It didn't take long for me to recognize Gura's previous guise. I didn't really know about anyone else's previous lives until very recently- I didn't even know they did anything at all. Being as, frankly, obsessed as I was, I started watching all of the stream archives I could find of Gura and mainly Amelia's previous twitch streams, saved from the wipes that they did. I just found it really endearing and nostalgic, to think how (well, Gura was already pretty popular) they went from such humble careers so recently to exploding into what they are now. And there was an element of satisfaction to it- "I know they'll never admit that this is them, but I know them well enough to see that this is obviously them, and they're just as cute back then as they are now." All that was fine, until I came across a short clip of Ame using an actual facecam and not a 2D model. The face was blacked out, but the rest of her upper body was visible and definitely not what I was expecting, but oh well, you just never know what a person will look like based on their voice alone. What really got me was the voice. It sounded absolutely nothing like Amelia at all. I honestly thought for a while "there's no way that could be her, right?" It was a voice not nearly as cute or bubbly as the Amelia Watson I know. It was just deep and apathetic. And that was what got me searching for confirmation on whether or not that was really her, which largely brought me here. For better or worse, I had committed myself to breaking the anonymity and finding out as much about her as possible. I honestly still can't say I'm 100% sure, but I am fairly convinced that it was indeed her, and that the voice we hear in her streams as Amelia Watson is nothing like what her actual everyday voice sounds like. That, and the other information I learned about the real person behind Amelia just got me completely disenchanted.
I have since found out just about everything there is to know about the other 4 EN girls, and it hasn't really had any negative effect on my perception of them. It's just a bit sad that my absolute favorite vtuber and really one of my favorite overall streamers ever went from my favorite hololive EN to my least favorite. You can call me weak or hypocritical, but it just feels like with Ame, kind of unlike anyone else, I was being deceived. Maybe I was placing unfair or unrealistic expectations on her, but it is what it is. I'm well aware that there are other hololive members out there who are not as young as me, but the way they carry themselves still doesn't feel like they're actively deceiving me the way I felt with Ame. I'm sure a lot what I just described is something that would draw immense ridicule and cringe from people all over the internet, possibly even here. I guess you could say I'm in a stage of recovery from my unhealthy obsession and figuring out how to move forward. This is not to say that such issues are widespread. I do not accuse other fans of hololive or vtubers in general of being like me. In fact I would be quite confident that the vast majority are nothing like me. As with anything, it has its morons, but overall I think the vtuber community is a pretty good one. I'll still be watching, just maybe not very much Watson in the near future. Well that ended up not being very brief at all but yeah, just be aware of what you're getting yourself into here lol.