LAST EDITED ON Aug-30-24 AT 11:18 PM (EDT)
 
(New thread because the other is getting up there and this promises to be the start of a biggun.)

Sooooooo, it looks like in a couple of days concrete information will come out about Nijisanji, or some of their staff or associates taking real life video of their livers without their knowledge or consent, at home, and making fun of them.

Covered by FalseEyeD here. This is very, very bad. Not only for talent faces getting shared around, but also extremely bad for Nijisanji in general, because Japan has some very strict privacy laws.

Pretty much everything else they've done is merely 'shady' by Japanese criminal standards. This would be outight illegal. (Ironically? Over here nobody could care, legally, while everything else big they've done would be illegal here. It's a funny old world.)

>Sooooooo, it looks like in a couple of days concrete information will
>come out about Nijisanji, or some of their staff or associates taking
>real life video of their livers without their knowledge or consent, at
>home, and making fun of them.
>
>Covered by FalseEyeD here.
>This is very, very bad. Not only for talent faces getting shared
>around, but also extremely bad for Nijisanji in general, because Japan
>has some very strict privacy laws.

I think I agree with one sentiment I saw over at r/Kurosanji, that unless the person(s) involved are revealed to be either high up in the pecking order or there's evidence that management was aware this was going on, then it's possible that the company might actually get good press for booting them out the airlock and pressing charges.

Anycolor has basically reached the level of Blizzard at this point: People know that they're all a bunch of money-hungry scumbags with the morals of drunken frat bros, but their core audience either doesn't care or secretly approves.

So Korekore dropped the identity of the perp (as reported by Khyo) and it's an indie sound engineer named "Mr. Yab" who's worked with talents at NijiJP as well as other agencies. Along with allegations of taking pics and video without permission, the skeezeball is also accused of spiking the drinks of talents with an "aphrodisiac" in order to get them in compromising positions.

Niji's announced that they've canceled their contracts with him, are suing him, and they're planning to press criminal charges. So yeah, good on them for not even hesitating to rain hellfire on this bastard.

>the skeezeball is also accused of spiking the drinks of talents with an >"aphrodisiac" in order to get them in compromising positions.

What, and I must emphasize this, the actual FUCK!?

>Niji's announced that they've canceled their contracts with him, are
>suing him, and they're planning to press criminal charges. So
>yeah, good on them for not even hesitating to rain hellfire on this
>bastard.

Seconded. I'd also suggest breaking his arms and legs and throwing him in the river.

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

Holy fucking shit!

Well, as horrific as Nijisanji has been, apparently there are actual limits. Time to make an example of this guy.

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

>>the skeezeball is also accused of spiking the drinks of talents with an
>>"aphrodisiac" in order to get them in compromising positions.
>
>What, and I must emphasize this, the actual FUCK!?

Fortunately, this particular plan is unlikely to have worked, on account of there's no such actual thing.

--G.
which makes attempting it simultaneously sketchy as fuck and head-slappingly dumb. dude evidently thought he was in an ero-doujin
-><-
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.

There's a (now deleted) tweet out there that people found that had one of the livers saying they started continuously vomiting at the studio after eating stuff. The accused has a tweet after the fact commenting on it and saying they found it funny. Well, the liver thanks them for taking care of them, but...

>There's a (now deleted) tweet out there that people found that had one
>of the livers saying they started continuously vomiting at the studio
>after eating stuff.

Yeah, see, that's the problem with your folkloric aphrodisiacs. They don't cause ero-doujin hijinks to ensue (which would be its own problem, ethics-wise, but stay with me); at best they do nothing, at worst they straight-up poison people. Yikes, man. Just... yikes all around.

>The accused has a tweet after the fact commenting
>on it and saying they found it funny.

Classy.

Well, the liver thanks them for
>taking care of them, but...

Presumably that last part was not said in the knowledge that the person being addressed caused the problem in the first place. Jeez.

--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 suppose that's (relatively) better than the alternative conclusion that I and (judging by comments on the Khyo video) others reached when we heard that the scumbag spiked the drinks of his victims.

LAST EDITED ON Sep-03-24 AT 02:22 AM (EDT)
 
I'm slightly torn. I don't want to give Anycolor any props, but throwing this guy into the wood chipper like this is somewhat commendable.

I'm still forced to wonder what they'd have done if it wasn't such an open and shut case though. Or if it had been an actual staffer rather than a subcontractor. Sometimes I really wish we could peek into adjacent timelines.

>I'm slightly torn. I don't want to give Anycolor any props, but
>throwing this guy into the wood chipper like this is somewhat
>commendable.

I consider it an indictment of the company that we can't even give them credit for this without lingering questions or feeling like the credit is still unearned. Their actions in the last year have left the bar for "good behavior" sitting on the floor of Satan's wine cellar.

>I'm still forced to wonder what they'd have done if it wasn't such an
>open and shut case though. Or if it had been an actual staffer rather
>than a subcontractor. Sometimes I really wish we could peek into
>adjacent timelines.

Bonus food for thought: Would they act as swiftly or as thoroughly if this had been happening to their EN talents rather than their (more lucrative) JP ones?

LAST EDITED ON Sep-04-24 AT 00:44 AM (EDT)
 
>I consider it an indictment of the company that we can't even give
>them credit for this without lingering questions or feeling like the
>credit is still unearned. Their actions in the last year have left
>the bar for "good behavior" sitting on the floor of Satan's wine
>cellar.

In modern-historical circles, we sometimes call this the "Hitler loved dogs" problem.

--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 Sep-04-24 AT 01:05 AM (EDT)
 
In other Niji news:

NijiEN Kunai Nakasato, from TTT, is graduating 9/21. With this, it makes it so that every EN gen is down at least one member.

Kunai: "Im sorry my time was so short, but so grateful for the memories you all gave me. lets enjoy a few more weeks together ☺️"

Peeling back the curtain, she's been checked out for weeks at this point and has wanted out. Her PL is already/still more successful than herself as Kunai and her gen, TTT, was more or less just sent out to die with no support. (I feel so bad for Vivi, her genmate.)

Her PL: "I have so many mixed feelings but there's definitely a weight off my shoulders rn. I dont know whats next right now. just need to figure things out" (account linked so avoid if you don't want to know)

She hasn't posted on her own channel, alone, since *may*. She's only done collabs.

I feel extra sorry for Victoria Brightshield because Doki/Selen was her oshi, and they're now in the Sajam fighting game thing, but (as it's HEAVILY believed to be mandated by Anycolor) she can't interact with her in any way.

I bet she joined Niji *specifically* to do something with Doki, then couldn't manage to get anything before that all went down, seeing as they only debuted in October. Now almost a year later and she's forbidden from talking to her.

Man, TTT don't even have a damn WAVE NAME. They were just *shat out*, the poor things.

In what seems to be the mandatory snark post, Kunai's PL tweeting about receiving a Youtube silver Play button.

The irony in this case is actually that as Kunai she -didn't- get to the 100k button to not receive her button from Anycolor anyway, unlike all the other recent graduates.

Anycolor Q1 Financial Report (in english)

NijiEN is gutshot, down 50% YoY from Q1 2023.

>NijiEN is gutshot, down 50% YoY from Q1 2023.

Strange. That's not at all the effect you would expect driving a bunch of the talent out of the company and engaging in a lot of random fuckery with the rest to have!

--G.
NARRATOR: It is exactly the effect you would expect that to have.
-><-
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.

r/Kurosanji has a thread with the OP being a summary of the Q1R by Randon The Orc that paints a fairly bleak picture:

- NijiEN is circling the drain, making too much money to kill outright but not enough to justify further investment. Odds are it continues to wither on the vine until either everybody's quit or Anycolor folds the remaining talents into NijiJP.

- Speaking of NijiJP, it's starting to fall victim to the law of diminishing returns. Their oldest livers (pre-2022) account for roughly 50% of the branch's total revenues, with each new generation performing more poorly than the one prior. Whatever Riku's plan was in introducing so many talents in such a short timeframe, it's backfired badly and left the branch struggling even before all the mess with the EN branch.

- Despite seriously undershooting their predictions for Q1 (to the tune of ¥680 million yen), they're not only predicting they'll recover but actually surpass their previous high water mark...which was Q1 2024. Despite the economic downturn in Japan and EN imploding, they're not making any changes to their predicted profits for the full year.

- For the first time in Anycolor's history, they're also paying out dividends to the tune of ¥65 per share. While Randon says this is most likely to soften the blown of the Q1 report, a poster in the Kurosanji thread points out that this also serves as a way for Riku to extract more money out of the company without selling his shares and thus his controlling interest.

tl;dr: NijiEN is on borrowed time, NijiJP needs to seriously reconsider its hiring practices, and Anycolor management are delusional.

For clarity's sake, that 4channer is like 99% not Randon himself, his avatar is just funny and appropriate to use for that style of posting.

The other graduation everyone has 100% been expecting and waiting for:
Victoria Brightshield is graduating November 9, 2024 JST

Her stream talking about it right now

For those who wish to keep following her, her PL, where she's continued to be active making occasional tweets as well as cheering on ex-Kunai. (And, revealingly, continuing to remark on how poor she is.)

Maybe she’ll finally be able to collab with Doki.

FalseEyeD is back from a secret trip to Japan, where he talked to a LOT of people, and said that there's a lot of talent waiting to leave, suggesting that the 'graduation queue' is real.

Could they not all just.... quit? Like stage a mass walkout?

They're under contract, which for the big corpos typically includes something like a "you can't stream as another vtuber while working for us" clause. They can opt to stop working at all if they really want to and can afford to not make any more money for awhile (see: Kunai), but as a practical matter they can't go back to their old identities without running out their contract.

>They're under contract, which for the big corpos typically includes
>something like a "you can't stream as another vtuber while working for
>us" clause. They can opt to stop working at all if they really want to
>and can afford to not make any more money for awhile (see: Kunai), but
>as a practical matter they can't go back to their old identities
>without running out their contract.

Non-compete clauses are a big barrier, another is the fees associated with breach of contract. If vtuber contracts are anything like idol contracts, then you're signed to the company for X number of years unless you negotiate a departure (graduation) or you get shit-canned (termination). If you just decide to quit and the company doesn't agree to it, then you get slapped with eye-watering penalties for failure to fulfill your contractual obligations. Given the company's reputation for nickel and diminig its talents, odds are most would be financially crippled by such fees.

There's also immigration matters to consider for EN members who either commute or have moved to Japan on work visas. I believe we've commented in the past on some like Elira who are in the latter group are basically being held hostage by the reality that quitting Kurosanji would mean being booted out of Japan almost immediately.

With a little quick math Sunny, who was once Kunai of NijiEN's TTT wave, figured out that twelve bundles of merchandise as Sunny, would equal her ENTIRE earnings with Nijisanji.

She made under a thousand dollars after a year as somebody with a big company.

This isn't normal.

It got worse.

-IA.

(received information not interpretable)

Well, I guess I got my answer to whether or not the company would take it more seriously if the talents being sexually harassed were EN rather than JP. The answer is (of course) a resounding "NOPE!" So yeah, the kudos they earned back in September are now no more, they've ceased to be, they are ex-kudos. What remains to be seen is how they deal with this sexpest and what excuse they make for trying to sweep it all under the rug.

So Kurosanji has announced that a "third party investigation" has been started and will look into the allegations against Aster...and "unauthorized leaks."

Yeah, three guesses where this ends up going and the first two don't count.

With all this even worse stuff coming out of NijiEN, I forgot about this part;

first, that Niji still owes Matarakan money for a merch restock and drop they did against her wishes before her graduation, and also for the phone she sent back to them.

and second, that Sunny was told on her debut with them to pretend that she had a father when she doesn't.