So long, space princess: a fond farewell to Tsukumo Sana
It was always going to happen at some point, but I don’t think anyone expected it to be so soon — or for it to be one of the newer members — but Hololive English is finally seeing its first graduate. On July 12, 2022, Tsukumo Sana, one of the holoCouncil members, announced that she will be graduating on July 31, 2022.
The reasons given by both Cover Corp. and Sana herself are intentionally vague, as they always tend to be in situations like this, but fans conjecture that the decision to graduate — which was apparently taken by Sana herself, rather than her being encouraged to by Cover — is at least partially to do with the challenges and struggles she has faced in her personal life.
She has taken several hiatuses from streaming due to her own personal issues, including a back injury and the passing of a beloved family pet. Early in her career, she was also hit particularly hard by YouTube’s automated bot-identifying systems, which caused her to lose a lot of subscribers — many of whom weren’t actually bots — and was consistently playing catch-up with her genmates in terms of subscribers ever since.
This isn’t to say her subscriber figures aren’t respectable on their own merits, of course — at the time of writing, she sports 348,000 subscribers — but she has always lagged a bit behind the rest of the holoCouncil in terms of raw numbers.
It’s clear that the numbers didn’t matter to anyone, though; Sana’s fans (known colloquially as the “Sanallites”) have always had an enormous amount of love to show for her quirky sense of humour, tendency towards non-sequiturs and kind, caring, joyful nature.
Likewise, her fellow Hololive English members with whom she has collaborated have nothing but nice things to say about her — she appeared to be particularly close with Ninomae Ina’nis. Ina reportedly started crying when looking at some of Sana’s creations during a recent Minecraft stream, suggesting that she knew what was coming before it was made public.
Prior to Sana’s graduation, she will be collaborating with a lot of Hololive English members as a last hurrah before she finally says farewell for good. It’s also clear that the other Hololive English girls aren’t going to forget her in a hurry, as they have all spoken about or at least acknowledged the emotion of the situation via social media or streams.
Ouro Kronii, for example, cancelled her planned stream for the same day that Sana made her announcement, because she didn’t want her mood to rub off on others. Nanashi Mumei, meanwhile, went ahead with her stream that was just a couple of hours after Sana’s announcement, and opened with an explicit acknowledgement of the situation.
“I will try to use my words to say a few things just before I start gaming,” she began, obviously a little hesitant. “I know it’s a bit of a hard day for a lot of people, but I just want to say I love Sana, I want the absolute best for her. I want her to be happy, I think all of us really want that. I also really want to have a fun time while she’s still here. She’s still here right now! We have her for a few more weeks, and I just want to make the absolute best of that time with her — I know that’s what she wants.”
Elsewhere, her fellow Hololive English stars took to Twitter to share their well-wishes for Sana, and express their love and appreciation for the all too brief time they got to spend together.
“SANA IS ETERNAL,” declared Amelia Watson with characteristic bombast. “For real, though, such a huge space will be left. Let’s fill it up with love for Sana and everyone while we can!”
“What a bright and beautiful star Sana is, has been and always will be, no matter where she goes,” noted Calliope Mori. We love you forever no matter what!”
“Sana said she’s giving up her friends in Holo[live],” said Takanashi Kiara, “but we will always be friends even after!”
As per usual for a Hololive graduation, Sana’s channel will continue to be available after her graduation for those who wish to look back over her work and enjoy her previous videos — as well as the collabs to come over the course of the next few weeks. Channel memberships and members-only videos will continue to be available for three months after her graduation, after which memberships will close and the members-only material will no longer be accessible.
The first announced collab for Sana’s three weeks of fun ahead of her graduation is a “bread review” with Amelia Watson, where viewers can submit .png files of their favourite breads on Twitter with the hashtag #SanaPanAme, and the pair will “taste” them.
To stay up to date with Sana’s activities in the run-up to her graduation on July 31, 2022, be sure to follow her on Twitter and subscribe to her YouTube channel. Cover has also noted that fan mail and presents can be sent for Sana up until October 31, 2022 — check the official page for details.
And with that, then, let’s make Sana’s last few weeks with us a time to remember!
Join The Discussion
Rice Digital Discord
Rice Digital Twitter
Rice Digital Facebook
Or write us a letter for the Rice Digital Friday Letters Page by clicking here!
Disclosure: Some links in this article may be affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if you make a purchase after clicking on them. This is at no additional cost to you and helps support Rice Digital!
- Letter from the Editor: passing the torch - June 30, 2023
- Super Woden GP 2 is looking promising - June 30, 2023
- Inti Creates is making a 32 bit-style Love Live action platformer - June 26, 2023
