Tokyo, JAPAN — COVER Corporation (Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan, CEO: Motoaki Tanigo) announced today the new unit “hololive English -Promise-“. Five talents from hololive English, IRyS, Ceres Fauna, Ouro Kronii, Nanashi Mumei, and Hakos Baelz, will join together and begin their activites as members of the new unit.
Once mere observers of humanity from a distance, the members of hololive English -Promise- now set upon a “life-sized adventure” on this world’s stage, seeking answers to their own “promises”.
Accordingly, VSinger project “Project:HOPE” has been closed, and IRyS will now officially belong to “hololive English -Promise-” starting from October 8th, 2023 (PDT).
There will be no major changes to the activities of the 5 members of hololive English -Promise-. They will continue to create and provide content in their unique styles, and we would appreciate your continued support for the talents.
Official Hashtag: #holoPromise
I do find it interesting that HopeRyS’s branch is closing for this, but they didn’t say that Council’s was. So it’s not technically a merge I guess, since Council is still a distinct entity?
I think it’s more in the trend of a single idol unit instead of group names. Hope and council still exist, but when performing it’s under the promise name.
The announcement seems pretty unambiguous about Project: HOPE un-descending though:
Not sure that we can still consider Hope as existing in that context, unless you’re just saying that now “Hope = IRyS” instead of before where “Hope = Project:HOPE (in which IRyS is (was) the sole member)”. This is becoming deeply semantic though haha!
I think this is just some weird semantics on Cover’s part since Project:HOPE technically wasn’t part of the regular HoloEN branches whereas Council was.
Also can Cover please stop trying to make Solo talents work? It is very obviously not a viable tactic (Azki, Suisei, Irys), I really hope (inaff) they learned their lesson (seems to be the case given that ReGloss exists as a group)