Five Idol members are graduating from the VTuber agency following Brave Group’s acquisition, with all of them opting to become independent.
As announced by Idol Corp on their official X/Twitter account, five members are graduating in November 2024: Fuyo Cloverfield, Juna Unagi, Kattarina Qutie, Meica05, and Rin Penrose. Rin’s exit is an especially big blow for Idol, being the agency’s most popular VTuber with nearly 750,000 subscribers.
The post confirmed, “We are sad to see them go, but we deeply respect the decision of Kattarina Qutie, Fuyo Cloverfield, Juna Unagi, Rin Penrose, and Meica05 to pursue their paths independently,” before revealing that a “dedicated farewell stream” will be hosted before they leave.
Rather than expecting those graduating to buy back their IP and model, Idol will instead take an unspecified percentage of each talent’s revenue for one year, with the intellectual property being transferred to the graduated members once this period ends.
Idol claims that this strategy has been implemented to ensure talents can “continue to grow their careers,” regardless of their financial situation when they depart. While exact figures are hard to come by and vary between companies, buying back an IP would likely cost each talent thousands of dollars.
These five graduations follow Brave Group’s acquisition of Idol on August 1. Brave Group is a big player in the VTuber space, owning the likes of V4Mirai, VSPO!, and globie, as well as being affiliated with legendary duo HimeHina.
After the takeover was announced, Idol allowed existing members to walk away from the company and become independent. While most talents turned down this opportunity, the aforementioned five will be moving on.
Once these five VTubers graduate in November 2024, only eight of Idol EN’s existing members will remain. However, four Idol ES members are also staying, and a further four EN members are set to debut later this year in Generation 3.
While Generation 3 was originally set to debut anytime now, their first streams have been pushed back to October to “ensure the highest quality debuts,” so fans will have to wait a little longer to learn more about Idol’s next wave.