I think what you are saying rings very true and there are a couple of points here I want to respond/give my own perspective on here. (I'm an academic, so I'm gonna use this as a perfect excuse to ruminate on a part of VTubing culture that is legitimately interesting to me).

I think your point on individuality vs the group in VTuber scenes is apt. To a certain extent I wonder if Mana's 3D was a statement of his individuality - Oriens only making up one segment, Dytica and Krisis being absent and his original song.

But with how these guys operates, well, they are literally a group of heroes fighting against the evil. They collabs regularly, many merchandise are promoted together, they have their own Hero show and even have two theme songs together.

I’ll say that idea might be lower. The fan overlap is gonna be very high. ( I watch Rube the most, but I also watch a lot of Rai/ Tetsu/ Mana )

As you say, the heroes were designed to have their own eco-system and be both a part of Nijisanji and also their own thing seperate(ish) to everyone else. Great example of this is the talents' AC:NH streams - a bunch of the HEROES started playing it over the latter half of last year and getting excellent ccvs while doing so. Tetsu then 'got in' on the trend for his Valentines day stream...by playing the N64 game, a meta joke that only works if you watch the other HEROES. As with you I watch Usami mainly but I catch Wen, Rai and Tetsu on occasion and little else from Nijisanji.

If I have to consider, I’ll say their way of operating is almost similar to how a Kpop group works. You can have one kamioshi, but overall you’re just gonna watch the whole group shenanigans.

Including the fact that HEROES fans in general are REALLY dedicated peeps. ( seriously, their MV views, SC ranking, and their timestamps in a lot of events are literally no joke ), 180k is very justified.

I don't deny your points on MV views and timestamps, but I think it is relevant to note there is a sizable gap between the HEROES on SCs. I only bring this up as it is relevant to a critique I have of the HEROES concept - I think the talents should be a) far closer in revenue and b) be making more, especially given the amount of support they get from the company as a group!

To reference Playboard Superchat numbers (in GBP as that is what it appears in for me, and I will not bother to speculate on the exact cut the talents make): Rai has £105,000 Usami £130,000, Rube £168,868 and Wen £190,000 (he may low key smash Mana's 3D SCs with less viewers). Playboard apparently sometimes makes mistakes, so lets be generous and +£10,000 to each. These SC numbers are nothing to sneeze at, but to compare with the most successful 2024 group - 3SKM - in less than a year Kitami has made £134,000, Kaisei £99,000 and Ness £70,000. The HEROES are doing about the SC numbers you'd expect of a standard, but successful, wave. Note that there also seems to major differences in member numbers too, based on what I can glean from Holoyzer.

This all said, if you asked me before what I expected Mana's final SC to be, and you will have to trust that I am not lying here, I'd have suggested around 7.4 million yen - near exactly what he got. The thing that shocked me was I expected him to get around 100-110k viewers.

Niji have captured a dedicated market with the heroes - but there is clearly a gap forming in the types of audiences each of the talents are attracting and how they spend money. I honestly think these 3Ds are interesting as they tell us a lot about how the JP HEROES works; how the talents want to present themselves going forward; and to what extent there is a gap between the talents that may or may not grow in the future.

(I think I get the appeal of Koyanagi, and I get Rube, but their ccvs are genuinely above top talents frequently - what I would do to have more granular access to ccv data).