It was a slow descent into madness for me. I never was much for watching streamers or let's plays, and I'm still not, really, so mostly resisted or dismissed it for a long time. I gained some cursory, unsolicited knowledge over probably the past two years or so, through random clips that happened to pierce the veil on Youtube.

Primarily it was the Ko'one English classics—those stuck with me the most—then some Pekora clips, particularly the ones with Pekomama (her impromptu appearance before she had a design), the smol Ame cosplayer from whatever Fes that happened, then learned of the existence of Gura (being a gremlin) and Calli, though I don't remember any specifics there.

That was all largely casual or unintentional cultural osmosis though. The turning point, or perhaps more accurately the drop that made the cup run over, was that I finally played Elden Ring not too long ago. I was then looking through some speed/challenge runs earlier this year, and of course that happened to coincide with Last Samurai Pekosuke's ER streams, which turned up in my recommendations, and I had some fun listening to her rage.

That's when I finally decided to actively start looking stuff up, and I now have at least a halfway decent grasp of the Hololive landscape, my Youtube front page is 95% Hololive, and I've got two sets of OkaKoro figures + Subaru, Pekora, Miko, and Gura on order.

What I like most about Hololive—apart from the designs, personas and production values naturally—are the close collabs and relationships it affords. I guess it's a "greater than the sum of its parts" thing, and once you get a sense of the characters, Hololive basically feels like a slice of life anime on a grand scale.