NIJISANJI’s Nina Kosaka opens up on being Ethyria’s ‘black sheep’ at debut

NIJISANJI’s EN VTuber group Ethyria is celebrating their first anniversary, and the four of them have been reflecting on the last year. This included Nina Kosaka opening up about being the ‘black sheep’ at debut, but growing into her role as Ethyria’s ‘mom’ and bonding with her genmates.

VTubers, especially in an agency, may identify more broadly with who they’re signed to, but there’s a closer personal connection within groups. Often new talents debut in waves, and each unique group bonds closely with each other as they debut and collaborate together.

However, at debut it wasn’t perfectly unified for NIJISANJI EN’s Ethyria. While Reimu Endou, Millie Parfait, Enna Alouette, and Nina Kosaka had their debuts together, there was a little division at the start, especially for the latter.

Talking to Alban Knox from NIJISANJI’s hyper-popular Noctyx group, Nina couldn’t help but feel a pang of jealousy hearing their pre-debut stories, leading her onto a tangent about her experience being the ‘black sheep’ of Ethyria.

“I tried to get Ethyria into a group call twice a week. I was like ‘hey we should talk and get to know each other,’” she said on stream. “They kept telling me they were busy and they couldn’t make the call.

“Months down the line I found out the three of them would voice call each other. When I found that out, I’ll be honest, I felt like ‘man, I’m just being a cool coworker’ and I kind of took it personally. I just started doing my own thing. But it really wasn’t personal ⁠— they have a lot more things in common than I did with them, and I guess to them they were like ‘we don’t need to do a voice call, we already voice called’ but they didn’t think I’d also like to.”

However, it’s far from being a division within the group. Across the last year, Nina has gotten to know her genmates incredibly well, and calls them dear friends.

She did joke she’s too “normie” for the rest of her rather outrageous group, but they also knew each other before debuting for NIJISANJI which put up somewhat of a barrier.

“With Ethyria, because Enna and Millie know each other, and they both had each other as a crutch, they really were okay with not interacting with other people. They bonded with Reimu over similar stuff and I didn’t. It’s fine, things are good now, it’s been a year, we can talk about it.

“Sometimes it’s funny because Ethyria will be like ‘yeah why didn’t we talk much before.’ I’m always like ‘it wasn’t for lack of trying!’ I remember after our first collab the girls were like ‘it would have been better if we had a conversation before this’ and I was looking into the camera, The Office-style. I guess it would have been nice if we had rehearsed,” she laughed.

“I’m a little jealous but it’s okay because we talk and hang out. Now it’s gotten to the point where like whenever they’re doing stuff it’s the three of them arguing and I’m sipping my wine like ‘this is nice’.

Nina didn’t absolve herself of all responsibility either. She knew she didn’t share the exact same interests as the rest of her genmates, and she maybe got the wrong read on the room: “Yeah I was upset when that happened, but it’s normal and natural.

“To be honest, I misunderstood the situation as well. They would just call sometimes to chat about stuff, but I took it as ‘wow you don’t want to talk to me.’”

It’s “fun to look back” now for Ethyria, and there’s no bad blood between any of the NIJISANJI VTubers. In fact it’s a great story to bring up with other generations as they come through the ranks ⁠— and maybe serves as a lesson for some.