Since the last thread's blown past the 60-post barrier, time for a new one.

Nova Floresca said:

>I know that list is made by Niji fans, not anybody actually associated
>with the company (at least I hope not), but can we just take a moment
>to appreciate how bark-at-the-moon crazy they are?
>
>Not-unrelated.
>
>"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

It seems crazy until you step back and realize that the fans involved in either writing or distributing that list genuinely see themselves as fighting for their favorite vtuber(s). To give an example, if you're a devoted fan of Vox, then all the negative PR and the damage it's done to the company's finances is a very real danger to Vox. Why? Because if the company decides that NijiEN is no longer viable and pull the plug, then Vox is gone and there's no guarantee he'll either go back to being an indie or get hired at a competitor. In their minds, the problem isn't that the company is exploiting their talents and driving some to the point of mental breakage, it's that people who have a problem with such won't just shut up and let them enjoy their entertainment.

>It seems crazy until you step back and realize that the fans involved
>in either writing or distributing that list genuinely see themselves
>as fighting for their favorite vtuber(s). (...) In
>their minds, the problem isn't that the company is exploiting their
>talents and driving some to the point of mental breakage, it's that
>people who have a problem with such won't just shut up and let them
>enjoy their entertainment.

At which point... well, it still seems crazy, but sociopathic instead of demented.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>At which point... well, it still seems crazy, but sociopathic instead
>of demented.

As so many others have pointed out across social media, it's a "There's no war in Ba Sing Se" situation. Most of the talents at NijiEN went silent after the "statement" dropped and the few who've been active in the time since have explicitly avoided the topic. Elira tweeted for the first time in two weeks and her first tweet...was about Pokemon. So as far as the Niji defenders are concerned, if people would just stop talking about the company's problems, then the problems themselves would just go away.

>So as far as the Niji defenders are
>concerned, if people would just stop talking about the company's
>problems, then the problems themselves would just go away.

It seems a bit shortsighted to me. Like, there's absolutely no way them not streaming had any cause but Ninji not allowing them to, as I understood it. But beyond that... I kinda just want to wave in the general direction of everything that happened with Selen and go "See this? If they did it to Selen, they could do it to your favorite too. They might -already- be doing it to your favorite, in fact."

Even for a paperclip entertainment maximizer, getting the talents away from Niji seems like it's gonna be the obvious right move, even if Dokibird's rebound was exceptional.

-IA.

(received information not interpretable)

I get where you're coming from, and I probably should've elaborated a bit (being on Twitter doesn't help, with the need to pare down to its character count). Part of it is who they're putting on the list; some of the things on the list aren't unreasonable, like the dramatubers, maybe even the companies pulling out their sponsorships. But then we get down to a bunch of people being blocked just for saying "Niji is using those 3 livers as meatshields" (which is honestly about the kindest way to interpret that stream imo) or for liking Doki's tweets, and even a bunch of randoms added with no context at all.

But mostly, it's the idea of making a "block list" in the first place. Blocking people on Twitter is probably good for your mental health (or just abandoning it in the first place), but it's not going to affect the blocked people in any meaningful way, so circulating a list and being smug (at least that's how it came across to me) about blocking these people comes across as, well, bark-at-the-moon crazy.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

It also puts a target on those blocked people. It's both a block and a hit list. And it includes some "sensitive information" which I'm interpreting as past lives and alternate personal accounts.

I'm not a big VTube person, but I've been following Legal Mindset's videos on this due to train-wreck fascination. He did a legal analysis of the hit list and according to him, there's some possible legal liability there, particularly anything that accuses someone of a crime.

------
Authors of our fates
Orchestrate our fall from grace
Poorest players on the stage
Our defiance drives us straight to the edge

Yeah, I'm watching his video now, and it doesn't seem like just writing the list is enough to be a crime (or at least, not worth going after them). If they were to try driving business away from any of the merch creators/artists or worse, push the "revenge porn" accusation (which is kinda disgusting to trivialize a real crime that way), it sounds like it could come back on them in a legal manner.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

>It also puts a target on those blocked people. It's both a block and a
>hit list.

"Will no one relieve me of this turbulent priest?"

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

You're not wrong, and I hope I'm not jinxing it, but I really can't see these people taking any kind of significant real-life action. On the Internet front, trying to tar any of the artists/merch people with "they hate Nijisanji!" is going to be positive advertisement for those creators.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

>You're not wrong, and I hope I'm not jinxing it, but I really can't
>see these people taking any kind of significant real-life action.

Probably not, but we do live in an age that has no shortage of crazy assholes, so I reckon it's at least irresponsible.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I had forgotten about that nasty little trick, honestly. So yeah, plenty irresponsible.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

I know of at least one clipper who GAINED subscribers from being on the list, yeah.

Pretty sure I saw an artist that said they'd gotten a pretty huge (proportionally) bump after the list came out.

-IA.

(received information not interpretable)

LAST EDITED ON Mar-01-24 AT 00:41 AM (EST)
 
In this episode, Niji's PR is academically torn to pieces, the twitter intern starts insulting their remaining EN livers, and everyone dogpiles Niji for not following a boycott they probably didn't know existed.

Also, Bae's concert and merch and song releases!

>In this episode, Niji's PR
>is academically torn to pieces, the twitter intern starts insulting
>their remaining EN livers, and everyone dogpiles Niji for not
>following a boycott they probably didn't know existed.

In related news, Khyo had clips from Sayu (aka former NijiEN member Zaion) from a recent stream addressing questions about Legal Mindset's streams where he stated she and Doki have strong cases and could win against Niji.

tl;dr: The lawyer she hired to help write her official post-graduation statements told her the same thing, but also pointed out that Niji is a company with the money and resources to ensure she'd have to abandon the case long before it went to judgement. But, at the same time, said lawyer also pointed out that Niji's NDAs are legally unenforceable as she's not a Japanese citizen and they don't comply with California contract law. So really, the best option for both her and Doki is just to move on and let Niji implode on its own.

Dear Zod, it gets worse as Sayu's pretty damned salty and apparently is more willing to talk about her termination and the treatment she received pre and post than Doki is at the moment.

Basically, she got dragged in by Niji's lawyers and had a contract pushed in front of her that they told her had to be signed if she wanted her leaving the company to be presented to the public as "mutual." When she asked to run it by her own lawyer, she was told that she had 3 hours to sign and that was it. She panicked and started contacting her non-lawyer friends to ask their opinions and was told not to do it. She asked for more time and they refused to give it to her, instead continuing to push for her to sign it and saying it would be in her "best interests" to do so. When she asked what she'd receive for signing the paper, she was just told that they needed her to sign it to "protect their brand." But when three hours were up and she still refused to sign, they granted her another three hours which made it clear to her that all they cared about was getting it signed. So she finally got in contact with her lawyer who told her it was just a "silencing contract" atop her NDA and advised against signing it. When she said she wouldn't sign, they kicked her out of the office and then released the termination notice publicly later the same day.

It really feels like Sayu is further along the same curve that Doki is on, having had the better part of a year to process what happened to her. And now she's reached the "No Fucks To Give" stage where she just starts airing the dirty laundry out in the knowledge that there's nothing they can do to her.

Nijisanji is slow when it comes to everything BUT firing people and dragging their name through the mud.

They lucked out with Sayu, who was kinda a bit abrasive and not super liked to begin with. But then they did the same thing with Selen, and NOBODY doesn't like Selen. And with that, plus the niggling doubts about Sayu, Patterns Were Noticed.

Incidentally, it's seeming like when those three said that Selen 'climbed up by pulling others down', it may relate to something people are thinking of as the 'Nijisanji queue'.

The idea, still currently unconfirmed, I believe, is that Nijisanji is absolutely glacial when it comes to doing things, like releasing completely internal cover song collabs, with only a couple artists or animators only after like SIX MONTHS - One such song had graduated people singing in it SIX MONTHS after they left, so the recording had to have been close to a year old then. But there were other people ahead of them. Even graduations seem to be on a queue system, with people only being ALLOWED to leave on a set schedule.

The implication is that Selen, being such a go-getter workaholic and being completely unwilling to work within Nijisanji's schedules - like their payment schedules which seem to be somewhere between 'six months' and 'never' for outside artists - meant she was constantly 'jumping the queue', which pushed other talents back in line.

Also, there's THIS video where to the comment of

> Honestly Niji did dirty (not news in
> their case) the whole Triple T generation,
> like, they have amazing models, but they
> didnt have any promotion bro. No oficial name,
> not anything. And now with all of the Selen
> thing, they got the collateral damage.

I replied with

---------
I've heard that Niji actively discourages and refuses applicants trying to make being a nijisanji vtuber their actual job. (While also demanding full time job levels of work being put into it, one assumes.)

In other words, if that's true, they were NEVER meant to actually be a career, simply a hobby that you do between shifts of your actual job. Which would explain the asstacular amounts of money they pay, making the talents pay for everything themselves, etc. Niji treating it as a hobby their talents are indulging in, while the talents are actually trying to do something meaningful like "make a living".
---------

>Incidentally, it's seeming like when those three said that Selen
>'climbed up by pulling others down', it may relate to something people
>are thinking of as the 'Nijisanji queue'.
>
>The idea, still currently unconfirmed, I believe, is that Nijisanji is
>absolutely glacial when it comes to doing things, like releasing
>completely internal cover song collabs, with only a couple artists or
>animators only after like SIX MONTHS - One such song had graduated
>people singing in it SIX MONTHS after they left, so the recording had
>to have been close to a year old then. But there were other people
>ahead of them. Even graduations seem to be on a queue system, with
>people only being ALLOWED to leave on a set schedule.
>
>The implication is that Selen, being such a go-getter workaholic and
>being completely unwilling to work within Nijisanji's schedules - like
>their payment schedules which seem to be somewhere between 'six
>months' and 'never' for outside artists - meant she was constantly
>'jumping the queue', which pushed other talents back in line.

It seems that a general theme in the rrats that has sprung to life since Doki's termination revolve largely around the idea that NijiEN (if not Niji as a whole) has a set hierarchy imposed by corporate and that talents who do not abide by it are targeted for harassment and bullying. That instead of seeing the vtubers in their employee as assets to encourage and support, they see them simply as advertising fronts for merch sales.

>Also, there's THIS video
>where to the comment of
>
>> Honestly Niji did dirty (not news in
>> their case) the whole Triple T generation,
>> like, they have amazing models, but they
>> didnt have any promotion bro. No oficial name,
>> not anything. And now with all of the Selen
>> thing, they got the collateral damage.
>
>I replied with
>
>---------
>I've heard that Niji actively discourages and refuses applicants
>trying to make being a nijisanji vtuber their actual job. (While also
>demanding full time job levels of work being put into it, one
>assumes.)
>
>In other words, if that's true, they were NEVER meant to actually be a
>career, simply a hobby that you do between shifts of your actual job.
>Which would explain the asstacular amounts of money they pay, making
>the talents pay for everything themselves, etc. Niji treating it as a
>hobby their talents are indulging in, while the talents are actually
>trying to do something meaningful like "make a living".
>---------

I don't remember who it was, but one tweet as part of the initial rush of people talking about their own experiences with Niji included a bit that still makes me shake my head. According to the tweet, the vtuber had applied to Niji and had gotten as far as the initial interview process when one of the questions asked was (paraphrasing) "How do you plan to compete with someone like Gawr Gura?" Assuming the tweet was legit, it furthers this impression I've reached that NijiEN was not created as some attempt to tap into a new market, but as direct competition with HoloEN with little understanding of what the venture would actually require. Hence the aggressive expansion of the branch's line-up but little investment in support structure or staff to compensate. It's the sort of behavior you'd expect when you're trying to flood a market to push out the small fry and force similarly sized companies to spend more money trying to maintain their position.

The idea of "flooding the market" is just insane to me when talking about talents. Leaving aside the ethics of treating living people this way, talent isn't a product you can just manufacture, and it's definitely not a "more is better" situation (HoloEN already feels almost too full with 15 talents).

Asking how they're going to compete with Gura should've been the "run for the hills" red flag- she's such a right-place-right-time smash hit that nobody can compete with that success. Even Gura can't compete with Gura, which is why she's been on so many mental health breaks.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

Gura was a viral somebody BEFORE she was Gura, becoming Gura just helped her succeed harder than she was. Gura's previous existence was, by many indications....not good. For her, personally. She wasn't the herself she would become afterwards.

Becoming Gura helped her escape what was happening before. She was already a huge success, and she was *handicapping herself*.

Now, with that said, being perfectly fair here, that IS a valid question to ask to an extent. You should have a plan, hopes for what you want to accomplish as a creator. If you're in the same category as somebody else, you should be thinking how you can compare to them in order to gain your own foothold and audience. Why should people watch you instead of the other person? That kind of thing.

I suspect there may be a translation disconnect happening - partly because Nijisanji's job listings are for people who have *"okay enough"* japanese/english skills, which isn't nearly good enough for something like an interview process.

To elaborate on my thought, yes Gura's previous incarnation was already huge, but Gura exploded partly because of the Covid lockdowns and the excess of free time people had on their hand, plus there's the fact that Hololive JP already had a non-trivial English-speaking audience, so the novelty of Holo coming to them added a boost.

Niji is coming to EN without the fortunate timing of people having extra time to watch streamers, and also didn't have the audience conversion factor, so there's no reasonable way to catch up to Gura. As I said on Twitter when the info originally came out, the only way it's really fair to ask is if it's a trick question to weed out people who would burn themselves out in a short time trying to build an audience that big.

Lastly, there's one other aspect as to why the comparison's unfair, which is entirely on Niji's side, and that's the matchup of avatar to talent. Gura's a complete gremlin and she's got the model to match her personality. By contrast, let's look at Shiori Novella- the fans look at her model and want her to be a "step on me" yandere character, and instead they got an unhinged dork. I love watching her for how she is, but that mismatch of expectations is going to haunt her subscriber count for her career. Niji shotgunning out EN talents means there's a bigger chance of a mismatch which is going to hurt a talent.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

Nah, I think everyone knows what Shiori's about at this point, and they're all for it. She's nearly at half a million subscribers. That's hardly falling short. Yeah, she's lagging behind the other Advent girls, but not even by as much as Iofi's behind Risu or Zeta. Or Bae is behind IRyS.

No, the problem with Nijisanji is the problem they've had since before NijiEN started; they just shotgun talents out with little rhyme or reason or theming and hoping to succeed. There's no thought behind it, just volume. That's why they have over 170 talents, and nobody can name more than like, ten at any given time, and rarely will they be able to tell you what wave or group they're part of if they CAN name them.

Oof, I knew Niji had a big roster, but I didn't know it was 170.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

LAST EDITED ON Mar-04-24 AT 11:26 AM (EST)
 
It's 174, actually, as of February, counting both JP (which has the ID and KR rolled in, though not many of those remain) and EN.

>
>I replied with
>
>---------
>I've heard that Niji actively discourages and refuses applicants
>trying to make being a nijisanji vtuber their actual job. (While also
>demanding full time job levels of work being put into it, one
>assumes.)
>
>In other words, if that's true, they were NEVER meant to actually be a
>career, simply a hobby that you do between shifts of your actual job.
>Which would explain the asstacular amounts of money they pay, making
>the talents pay for everything themselves, etc. Niji treating it as a
>hobby their talents are indulging in, while the talents are actually
>trying to do something meaningful like "make a living".
>---------

Seems like that contradicts them trying to get CyYu to give up voice acting if he wanted to sign with them, which appears to be his intended 'day job' with vtubing being the side hustle.

	-={(Astynax)}=- "The left hand does not know what the right hand is doing, or that it even exists in this case."

Ah, but that would be him doing the same thing he's doing now, technically. It triggers the 'anticompete' clause. He's voice acting there, he's voice acting with us, that means he's working with competitors! They don't even appear to let you use your personal accounts - at least so's I've been able to tell.

'If you're online or creating at all, you do it for us and only us' it seems. Otherwise, they apparently want you to have a day job.

LAST EDITED ON Mar-05-24 AT 06:20 PM (EST)
 
Millie Parfait, Elira Pendora, and Reimu Endou have been dropped from appearing at Offkai Expo because the event is concerned they wouldn't be conducive to a positive convention experience for them or attendees.

Offkai is a specifically vtuber focused convention, and there's not a whole lot of big names in the space that have been able to appear, so Offkai actually rejecting announced guests due to this mess is sure interesting~

>because the event is concerned they wouldn't
>be conducive to a positive convention experience for them or
>attendees.

Translation: "Ah, Christ, the vtuber fandom is going to divvy up and throw down like it's fucking West Side Story, we don't need this tsuris."

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

"We checked, and our insurance doesn't cover acts of musical gang violence."

>Millie Parfait, Elira Pendora, and Reimu Endou have been dropped from
>appearing at Offkai Expo because the event is concerned they wouldn't
>be conducive to a positive convention experience for them or
>attendees.
>
>Offkai is a specifically vtuber focused convention, and there's not a
>whole lot of big names in the space that have been able to appear, so
>Offkai actually rejecting announced guests due to this mess is sure
>interesting~

So yeah, like most things involving Niji in past months, this was a total dumpster fire of a situation that required the non-Niji parties involved to clear up. For those not following things too closely, this whole mess started with a tweet from Falseeyed soliciting DMs in response to accusations that Offkai and other event organizers allowed Niji to pick and choose who could attend. Offkai first issued a denial of the accusations, then announced that NijiEN's livers were dropped from this year's guest list. Fans and critics alike immediately zeroed in on the part of the announcement saying it'd been made two weeks ago and accused Offkai of lying to cover their asses.

Well, Offkai cleared up the record yesterday to say that yes, the decision had been made two weeks prior in response to Selen's termination...only when they contacted Anycolor to get their permission to make the announcement, all they got back was static. So yes, Offkai's hand was forced by Falseyed's tweet, but the delay in the announcement was (once again) because Anycolor management didn't want to own up to their bad judgement.

Apparently, someone got hold of the contract Nijisanji uses for its vtubers.

To summarize, Holy Entire Shit! I can't even really process it, other than I hope it's a fake.

But hey, on the upside, if Gryph ever needs to show what a GENOM contract would look like in UF, here's a template!

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

>Apparently, someone got hold of the contract Nijisanji uses for its
>vtubers.
>
>To summarize,
>Holy Entire Shit! I can't even really process it, other than I hope it's a fake.
>
>But hey, on the upside, if Gryph ever needs to show what a GENOM
>contract would look like in UF, here's a template!
>
>"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

I haven't watched the VOD of the Legal Mindset stream (4+ hours, yegods), but glancing over at the r/Nijisanji subreddit has been pretty informative.

tl;dr: The best argument anybody can offer for signing what reads almost like indentured servitude is "You get more views as a corpo than an indie." And even the people making it understand it's incredibly thin gruel, especially when others point out that NijiEN's recruitment practices were leading to diminishing returns where more recent recruits were barely clearing five digit sub counts and that was before all the recent controversy.

I think the best argument I can offer is "Just how sure are we that this contract is real?"

-IA.

(received information not interpretable)

One assumes that the allure of Nijisanji included the thought of the possibility of collabing with the JP side, for some of the EN livers - which to my knowledge has never happened, aside from the formerly ID girls. (Meanwhile, over in Holo, the JP girls were all chomping at the bit to start talking to the EN girls and vice versa.)

Also, the fact the contract was potentially either poorly translated or NOT translated when given to the livers suggests that, even aside from the fact it doesn't comply with contract law elsewhere, it might not be legally enforceable outside of Japan - which could mean that one could make this a criminal fraud and/or theft case if they've enforced it before.

Then there's the fact they repeatedly deny people the time or ability to let ones lawyers look over the contracts they want signed means that many of them would be signed under *duress*, which makes them just as illegal.

In short, somebody needs to actually press criminal charges against Nijisanji EN specifically and possibly Anycolor as a whole for this kind of horseshit. Then it's the *government* footing the bill. Then the talents can come along after, point to the criminal findings and verdicts, and keep Anycolor from stalling until the talents run out of money.

>Also, the fact the contract was potentially either poorly translated
>or NOT translated when given to the livers suggests that, even aside
>from the fact it doesn't comply with contract law elsewhere, it might
>not be legally enforceable outside of Japan - which could mean that
>one could make this a criminal fraud and/or theft case if they've
>enforced it before.

Honestly, after watching the highlight reel of LM's review of the contract, the whole thing reads like somebody at Anycolor's legal department just ran the standard NijiJP contract through Google translate (or the legal equiv thereof) and ran it by an intern before adopting it as the new NijiEN contract. Entire sections refer to Japanese laws that are inapplicable outside Japan, others assume that legal definitions follow Japanese law, and the overall tone reads like that of a company assuming control over their employee's life which is something more acceptable in Japan than in the West. My suspicion is that if most of NijiEN signed this, they did so without first running it by a lawyer and thus had no real idea what they were signing.

>Then there's the fact they repeatedly deny people the time or ability
>to let ones lawyers look over the contracts they want signed means
>that many of them would be signed under *duress*, which makes them
>just as illegal.

So Sayu provided LM with not only a copy of the "silencing contract" but also the DMs from the member of the Anycolor law team that sent it to her. And not only did they send it to her in the middle of the night local time, but they gave her less than an hour to sign and return it to them. With the unspoken threat that if she failed to send it back, then the only difference made would be instead of treating her termination as "mutual," they'd mercilessly slag her without giving her any opportunity to respond.

>In short, somebody needs to actually press criminal charges against
>Nijisanji EN specifically and possibly Anycolor as a whole for this
>kind of horseshit. Then it's the *government* footing the bill. Then
>the talents can come along after, point to the criminal findings and
>verdicts, and keep Anycolor from stalling until the talents run out of
>money.

Realistically, my first suggestion to any still in NijiEN is to start preparing for the worst. Think of it like prepping for a major disaster: Start putting money aside, start getting important documents in order, start looking for a place to make a soft landing, and keep alert for any major updates. If you're gambling that this will all blow over and life will go on as normal, then you'll have no one but yourself to blame when the announcement comes out that NijiEN is finished and you've nothing to fall back on.

I'm only about an hour into the Legal Mindset stream so far, and already (under US law specifically, since that's his expertise) it's clear it's an employee rather than independent contractor contract, and because of that there's a -lot- of American legal protections that kick in. Some jurisdictions don't even allow employee contracts that haven't been prior vetted by the government.

I was aware of most of these laws already, but hearing him go over this contract has been educational.

------
Authors of our fates
Orchestrate our fall from grace
Poorest players on the stage
Our defiance drives us straight to the edge

The thing is, even japan has worker protections in place that these would reasonably violate, but they seem to think they can do because they're just filthy gaijin.

Indeed. As LM points out himself during the stream, companies will put unenforceable terms into contracts all the time in hopes of intimidating people into doing it, or making it expensive and aggravating to fight it.

------
Authors of our fates
Orchestrate our fall from grace
Poorest players on the stage
Our defiance drives us straight to the edge

Things VTubers Say breaks it down using Legal Mindset's clips. Man, just not defining any of the codes is a huge legal fuckup.

Party B shall implement the VTuber activities AT THE PLACE designated by Party A?? The FUCK?

Now, this may mean 'Youtube' or 'Bilibili' or 'Twitch', but because of the shoddy translation it could mean where they live. And with ONLY a 1300 dollar reimbursement for expenses, that's fucking crippling and seems designed to force one into debt by moving. Potentially to Japan, which means they'd be under a work visa which means they'd be HOSTAGES OF THE COMPANY because as soon as their employment is terminated, they'd have to LEAVE, incurring FURTHER costs moving back home.

>which means they'd be under a work visa which means they'd be HOSTAGES
>OF THE COMPANY because as soon as their employment is terminated,
>they'd have to LEAVE, incurring FURTHER costs moving back home.

Hypothetically speaking, I wonder what would happen if someone in that situation just straight-up told the Japanese equivalent of ICE, "I'm flat broke and stranded in your country because one of your corporations fucked me. Nothing would make me happier at this moment than you guys throwing me on a plane to LA."

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

THAT would be a problem; They'd end up banned from Japan, possibly for life.

>THAT would be a problem; They'd end up banned from Japan, possibly for
>life.

After ending up in that situation, who would want to go back?

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

LAST EDITED ON Mar-06-24 AT 11:35 PM (EST)
 
>After ending up in that situation, who would want to go back?

For work? Maybe not. But one makes a lot of friends as a vtuber, even without ever being in an agency, and a bunch of those vtuber friends live in Japan. Onigiri in particular seems to be a focus point for vtubers meeting in Japan.

>For work? Maybe not. But one makes a lot of friends as a vtuber, even
>without ever being in an agency, and a bunch of those vtuber friends
>live in Japan.

While this is generally true, I feel like NijiEN might be the exception to the rule, both in having opportunities to talk to other vtubers to make friends and also in them wanting to be friends with you considering the reputation of the company.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

Like I said to Kendra, you do get 3 months to find a new job, so it's not like you're thrown out immediately. The upside/downside? is you need to have your physical work visa papers on you at all times; the Japanese cops have the right to stop you and ask for your visa at any time. From what I've gathered from Calli's streams, the cops aren't impolite about asking (then again, Japanese cops probably have their impoliteness surgically removed at the academy), but if you're a white girl in a non-tourist area, you're going to get stopped on the regular. What this means is Niji can economically isolate you in Japan, but not physically, so you can at least find options to pick up the pieces if and when they screw you over.

Now, if Niji tried to take your visa papers from you, then you'd definitely want to go to Japanese ICE, only not for "just send me home", but "Hi, one of your companies just tried to force me into chattel slavery, please help?"

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

I've been looking into this a bit as a result of the various arguments from the black-screen stream*, and the good(ish) news is if you're terminated from your employment, you have 3 months to find new employment in the "same field". That's enough time to either get going as an indie streamer or set up like a GoFundMe to get the money to escape.

*tl;dr- people were saying Elira had a "gun to her head" for the stream because she was in Japan on a work visa at the time.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

Except the contract shown includes non-compete-like clauses which *survive the life of the contract* somehow, meaning you can't *get* another vtubing job that quickly, nor can you set up a gofundme that will do anything because you can't actually disclose who you are/were because of the NDAs involved.

Even worse, those clauses against disparagement mean even if you can set one up and have it do work you can't say WHY you're stranded, because it would put Nijisanji in a poor light which is both against that contract and means they can take any money you gain from it (?!?!?!), but also, they can sue you for defamation entirely outside of any contractual clauses.

Are any of those enforceable though? Obviously, if you're at the GoFundMe stage, money is tight for getting a lawyer, but at the same time if they're being that draconian to where they're essentially trapping you, they might be stepping into "this is a criminal matter" territory.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

LAST EDITED ON Mar-07-24 AT 01:24 PM (EST)
 
The defamation part definitely is, because it doesn't matter if you're employed there or not, signed anything or not, just that you've said something that provably hurts the company and are under japanese law.

Several of the others may be, but I don't know. I've not seen anything by anyone who's informed in that, but the *threat* is there, and NDAs seem to be especially protected in Japan. In North America, an NDA does NOT keep you from talking about crimes, harassment, bullying, etc, but in Japan they....SEEM to? Or at least the culture is extremely against you for it.

Well, that's dismaying.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

I honestly don't know how one can even review things in Japan with that kind of defamation law in place.

Honestly, after just having finished the stream on the drive home this afternoon, I have to seriously wonder if this is the real contract. I mean, this thing is BAD. Stupid bad. Ten-year-olds in southeast asian sweatshops bad.

Just the Amendments section alone is something that surely should not survive judicial scrutiny, no matter how corporate-favoritist Japanese law might be.

------
Authors of our fates
Orchestrate our fall from grace
Poorest players on the stage
Our defiance drives us straight to the edge

Well, it has somebody's real name on it - I don't know if LM saw the 'raw' contract or not, but he absolutely seems to believe the person who presented it is legitimate.

This is the *unsigned* contract though. Who knows how many revisions back it might be.

Also, however, we know for a fact that Nijisanji is no stranger to unrealistic deadlines for getting contracts signed, and Sayu's silencing contract definitely IS legitimate, and has similar language and horseshit smeared over it, lending credence to the other one being real.

I can only assume that the actual Japanese contract isn't nearly as bad, and the English one is either VERY poorly translated (because they hire high schoolers and college students with imperfect Japanese skills to do legal stuff) or just because they think they can get away with it because filthy stupid gaijin should be happy with what they get. Possibly both.

>Well, it has somebody's real name on it - I don't know if LM saw the
>'raw' contract or not, but he absolutely seems to believe the person
>who presented it is legitimate.

He was pretty emphatic about that, true. It just seems absurdly bad, I guess. Hopefully it's more of a reflection of the company and less of Japanese law in general.

>
>This is the *unsigned* contract though. Who knows how many revisions
>back it might be.

Indeed.

>
>Also, however, we know for a fact that Nijisanji is no stranger to
>unrealistic deadlines for getting contracts signed, and Sayu's
>silencing contract definitely IS legitimate, and has similar language
>and horseshit smeared over it, lending credence to the other one being
>real.

Very, very true. Is Sayu's actual contract language public?

>
>I can only assume that the actual Japanese contract isn't nearly as
>bad, and the English one is either VERY poorly translated (because
>they hire high schoolers and college students with imperfect Japanese
>skills to do legal stuff) or just because they think they can get away
>with it because filthy stupid gaijin should be happy with what they
>get. Possibly both.

Well, here's to hoping for naming and shaming, because I can't imagine Niji would do anything to have to make their contract public--and LM has made it rather clear that to go through western justice systems is to open the contract to scrutiny outside the courtroom.

------
Authors of our fates
Orchestrate our fall from grace
Poorest players on the stage
Our defiance drives us straight to the edge

LAST EDITED ON Mar-07-24 AT 09:43 PM (EST)
 
> Very, very true. Is Sayu's actual contract language public?

Yeah, LM went over her silencing contract, which she never signed and was only given a few hours to sign in the first place, in a second stream. False covered it in the same episode I linked earlier, Here.