Both Aqua and Ame leaving really hit hard for me this year. It's always depressing to see someone go, but I wish them and everyone leaving Hololive the best.
As sad as it is to see her go, since she stated she isn't leaving Cover and just the streaming side of thing it seems like she's moving into more of a Staff/Management role which, if it's true that Cover is going to open a US office, gives her a lot of advancement opportunities.
Edit: More details emerged, okay so if it's not a Staff/Management role and she's remaining an "Affiliate"... your guess is as good as mine.
I assume it's a case of her wanting to move back to her PL where she can have more freedom as her main content channel, similar to Magni and Vesper, though she negotiated so that she doesn't have to abandon the Amelia Watson identity altogether so if she wants to drop by for a cameo appearance she's allowed to and she'll also remain able to openly interact with her friends in Holo, unlike the usual case where graduating mean ceasing all public interactions even if they left on good terms.
As sad as it is to see her go, since she stated she isn't leaving Cover and just the streaming side of thing it seems like she's moving into more of a Staff/Management role which, if it's true that Cover is going to open a US office, gives her a lot of advancement opportunities.
Edit: More details emerged, okay so if it's not a Staff/Management role and she's remaining an "Affiliate"... your guess is as good as mine.
So she's not gonna become a second A-Chan or whatever? I saw some other folks speculate about that too.
I think she'll continue working as sort of a guest appearance type of deal. Instead of before where when the vtuber graduates and the character is essentially "dead", it's likely she'll appear in official Hololive streams when schedule allows and maybe even some promotional work, like how Kiara described it with Morning Musume, where previous members come back for events as a surprise and such.
As much as I'd love to see her in future big events like the HoloFes's and other major concerts, that type of stuff would probably require more rehearsal/practice time than her new ventures would allow. But imagine if she does make an appearance at the next HoloFes, the ovation is gonna be incredible.
I'd like to think that would open the door to other former talents returning now and then.
Those old talents have moved on. If they wanted to do anything with COVER, and there's means for them to do so, I don't think Ame is going to be the jumping off point for it to happen
The only person expressly offered the option to return whenever she wants is Coco. Everyone else, Coco included, fully and completely ended their partnership with COVER. Ame is the only one to specifically be stated to remain as a COVER affiliate after ceasing activities. It's very safe to assume this is an Ame specific thing, and it won't be opening any doors for anyone who's already left the company.
Ame presumbly still has a contract with the company, or signed a new one with different terms, which obviously isn't the case for everyone prior. At the very least, they wouldn't be making appearances as their old Hololive personalities, since those contracts were severed. I don't think Ame's situation sets a precedent for them affiliating with COVER using their indie personalities, either, since she's still Ame, just only every now and then.
It also just opens a kind of messy can of worms. Graduated talents might be okay, but for Terminated talents would not be. Rushia still has plenty of fans, despite everything, and Mel's termination was more an unfortunate obligation and no one wanted to see her go. But there's no good way to justify bringing either of them back after explicitly Terminating them. Even for Graduated talents, making that kind of "exception" for any one of them opens the door for fans to start making requests/demands towards COVER/the talents for guest collabs, despite them all having long since moved on. Which, some people were already doing, but now they're given justification to do it even more. It would just encourage a lot of annoying, "But you let that person come back, why not this one?" even though it's not entirely up to COVER if those talents even want to do that.
