Board 8 > vtubers

(+) Yeah! (+)

agesboy posted...

The fact that they tweeted from her account "Hey guys im in the hospital" back in December was already a HUGELY sus moment.

Another thing that wasn't publicly confirmed until they just tweeted it out

edit: Yes I am aware of the apostrophe conspiracy that turned out to not be a conspiracy

https://twitter.com/NIJISANJI_World/status/1757257329945497672

Riku actually got off the yacht

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7zaTpwP8DQ

Oh no

A system that abuses people for money is caught out abusing people for money

After a rigorous legal check, ANYCOLOR Inc. hereby declares that it has not made any confidentiality violations while checking the validity of claims made by Selen and her lawyer with its affiliated Livers.

Any jokes I could make wouldn't be better than the text presented without comment.

That's a lot of words he said that basically just amounted to "I'm sorry we were caught doing anything wrong and promise we won't be caught doing it again".

I mean its certainly better than their last attempt at PR, but it just rings extremely hollow until they actually do something about it that ISN'T pouring more oil on the fire.

...Okay I might take that back reading up on some people dissecting it a bit more.
If they're actually trying to loophole abuse with their talents alleging things not 'technically being illegal' like some people are saying, it actually makes them look far scummier than even before.

Gonna wait til I'm not practically falling asleep to try to make more sense of this latest bit. I really wasn't expecting them to throw even more shit at the wall so soon.

the fact that the whole vtuber thing is dominated by large companies with stables of streamers has always been so fucking weird to me. i feel like that kind of set up is always going to be fundamentally prone to abusive/exploitative behavior, especially with all the weird legal shit involved. hope that vtuber is okay.

Hololive shows the benefits of being part of a well run agency, with the most popular talents often having partnerships with popular brands or the ability to pursue their passions. A few of the music oriented talents are signed with labels, the sonic fan had many collaborations with Sega etc.

It's not uncommon to see their appearance in convenience stores since they've got so many campaigns with various brands kinda like any celebrity.
That promotion does seem to pay off though, one thing with Hololive is apparently the talents have to pay for the production of their own stuff such as music videos and merchandise. But as a result they get a far larger cut than the 2% figure thrown out for Nijisanji.

That said even Hololive will have its fair share of drama, like what happened with Rushia.

voltch posted...

That said even Hololive will have its fair share of drama, like what happened with Rushia.

The difference being that what happened with Rushia was entirely self-inflicted. They even defended her publicly before digging deeper into what she'd done and finding all the NDA breaches.

You can also take a look at them recently firing Mel due to NDA breaches. They publicly said there was no ill will, let her say goodbyes to her fans, and Mel herself admitted she screwed up.

Hololive drama vs. Nijisanji drama is like night and day. Hololive isn't a perfect company but by all accounts it consistently supports its employees. Nijisanji is the opposite. In fact, its entire business philosophy is based on not supporting employees. That's why they hire a million vtubers. As long as a couple break out, they'll rake in the profits, because Nijisanji spends almost nothing to support the ones who flounder.

Yeah, in general Cover's not really screwed over talent during terminations.
China branch shutting down was more or less a business decision to support their domestic talents.

The only termination that seemed off at the time was Kaoru.

They've also vastly improved support for their EN branch. Right now a lot of the Nijisanji drama is surrounding the EN side. Hololive's EN talents did note that 2022 was difficult, but 2023 morale appeared to be much higher.

pyresword posted...

Man I keep trying to write a post trying to provide context but I don't even know where to start. Even if Nijisanji is in the right regarding the original disputes (which I seriously doubt) it is just mind-boggling how much they've needlessly made things worse from a PR standpoint.

Pretty much my take on this.
Even if they have valid reasons to fire them, why would you bother starting a war over it. They did the same to Zaion last year, but no one really cared coz Zaion was still new.

Even at the time it seemed like they were trying to make an example of Zaion, given how her termination notice amounted to an absolute character assassination, and they got away with it despite many of the same hallmarks existing between that case and this. The backlash against management was virtually nonexistent because she simply didn't have a large enough fan base yet or goodwill/credit in the bank to win over Niji fans. You'd think the same trick wouldn't work on their largest female EN streamer, and by and large it hasn't with outside observers, but it must say a lot of the internal culture that's there's been barely any sign of public dissent from their other streamers over this.

I see the statement where Anycolor hereby declares that they have not illegally broken confidentiality now has a community note on it. Always a good sign.

For all I know they might be right but I am still reasonably confident that openly using your streamers like this to a exploit a loophole is a PR failure if not a legal one.

At least in the English communities anyways--my gut feeling is that a large reason why things have gotten to this point is that Anycolor is a Japanese company and a lot of this stuff actually might pass in a traditional Japanese business environment. (Note: I am mainly going on reputation here--I have no firsthand knowledge of what Japanese business is like)

Secondhand so take with a grain of salt, but I'm under the impression the Japanese fans are generally on the corp's side.

Yeah also remember the people that are going to cross cultural boundaries to weigh in on something like this are going to mostly be the terminally online superfans, too.

Situation looks pretty fucked up from what I'm reading in this topic. I can see why there's an uproar about it. Japan also has cultural differences when it comes to mental health and especially when it comes to someone taking their own life (Thankfully this attempt failed). I'm not really qualified to say anything besides "Seems bad", in so many words.

Japanese fans likely don't know or care all that much about this situation until maybe very recently.

Though eesh, 200k subs lost across the board on the NijiEN side.

Normally around this time of year, the drama comes from those freaking out that their oshi isn't streaming on valentine's day.

yeah maybe I just didn't see it since I didn't pay much attention to Niji to begin with, but it seems like crossover between the regional branches is much less than Hololive. And I've never seen like, memes or clips or any kind of English-speaking online cultural penetration from their Japanese talents except for Salome. I can only even name like five or six of them

WazzupGenius00 posted...

yeah maybe I just didn't see it since I didn't pay much attention to Niji to begin with, but it seems like crossover between the regional branches is much less than Hololive. And I've never seen like, memes or clips or any kind of English-speaking online cultural penetration from their Japanese talents except for Salome. I can only even name like five or six of them

Yeah, there definitely seems to be more global unity (is that the right word?) between the Hololive branches

I haven't seen much in the way of EN-JP collabs for Nijisanji, it's all separate

oh i didn't notice this topic till now

i'm gonna just post misc other agency news since obviously nobody will know otherwise lol

the vtuber group in e-elements' esports program, Happy Hunters Haven, is being terminated at the end of the month https://twitter.com/HHH0414_info/status/1754414557907341408/
Some of the members have decided to continue as indies

Sony Music's VEE group, which had its own weekly variety program on Tokyo MX until recently, is having a pretty major live event on the 28th. Pretty cool group, I'm a fan of a decent number of its members. https://vee-official.jp/merge/

The group EMOVE, run by artist Harui, composer ALNEAR and original member NEQRE, is finally getting a 2nd wave of members on the 25th. NEQRE herself is going to be celebrating her 3rd anniversary soon, so this has been a long time coming (technically even longer than 3 years, since the group is just a renamed form of the music label neqre had well before her debut) https://twitter.com/Harui9000/status/1750836122870300746/
All three new members already have channels and have been posting teasers but they haven't been seeing much exposure yet, so go give them a sub if you can!
https://www.youtube.com/@cotenpau
https://www.youtube.com/@SHISSHO_CHOBO
https://www.youtube.com/@Hayamaru_chun

also actually might as well just dump some misc schedule pages so i don't get tempted to post stream links as much

https://schedule.hololive.tv
https://www.nijisanji.jp/en/streams (yeah i know it's a bad look to include this currently lol)
https://774schedule.com
https://schedule.v-react.com
https://varium.jp/schedule/#today
https://i-stream.jp/schedule/
https://haconect.com/#schedule
https://all-secrets-keepers.com/#schedule

I've been watching a lot of Varium streams lately personally, and still reasonably regularly watch at least a few members in most of the others listed, especially ASK (which only has 5 people so duh, but still. still a great group). Also outside of the ones with schedules, still frequently watching most of EMOVE's streams obv (https://vtuber.official.jp/neqre.html) one member of mche proche (https://mecheproche.com), occasionally watching several from the aforementioned VEE (there's some fantastic members in the more recent generations especially, but every gen has at least one person i still like to watch), some from a couple of members of VBOX (https://vbox-pro.jp), a few from Konami's my dear group (https://nest.mydear.anystyle.jp), one of the members in COSMONOAH (https://cosmonoah.jp), and still one of the members of Bestia Gakuen/BEESProject (https://bestia-escuela.com), as well as most of the members of the indie group PalePalette too (https://twitter.com/MiyaoTiyu/status/1590693897650733056). I'd also mention that I'm also watching misc ex-indies like Ringring (https://www.youtube.com/@ringring_room) who is in V-WaVE nowadays but I honestly have no idea if V-WaVE still even exists now so lol

extra news that technically is relevant for several groups

Hayanagi Chigusa, who is in LiveCartoon's Charact group (https://www.charact.info), Project Little Lindo (https://littlelindo.org), and Re:fAce Music Production's Starry Wink unit (https://reface-music.com), has announced a one-man live

https://twitter.com/hayanagi_tigusa/status/1756816137319550989

also since this helped jog my memory on a few more groups to talk about, i figured I'd mention another one that I'm still regularly watching a couple of members from that i forgot about, that being the idol group Palette Project (https://paletteproject.jp)

FL81 posted...

Yeah, there definitely seems to be more global unity (is that the right word?) between the Hololive branches

I haven't seen much in the way of EN-JP collabs for Nijisanji, it's all separate

It depends on the liver but En collabs with all of the jp, id, cn and kr regularly. From JP, Nagao did an entire series of short half hour streams introducing EN livers to JP audiences. Oliver is considered an unofficial member of EN. Chigusa and Lain have loads of collabs, Alban/Toko/Furen/Seffyna, Ren & Debi. Kotoka and Meloco probs collab with JP more than they do EN. All Lazulight 3D streams had JP members appear.
The original poster is right, EN fans care much less about the other branches than HoloEN fans do but there's always been plenty of interactivity between EN and the other branches.

New statement from Dokibird:
https://twitter.com/dokibird/status/1757763627413631383

Kinda sad that the Nijisanji civil war erupting is the most significant vtuber event this year.

Hololive for their part growing because they've got so much coverage in the ways they try to appeal to their audience.
Mori today just had a fundraiser clear 80k

Also the Hololive community at large while it has downside, has produced some cool stuff too. Loads of great free fangames, like HoloCure.

voltch posted...

Kinda sad that the Nijisanji civil war erupting is the most significant vtuber event this year.

it's pretty wild that this has completely shelved the mel and rushia stuff in the public eye tbh, the whole thing with the new round of rushia allegations last month especially was wild

anyway since it's only relevant to the english vtuber fandom and like, niji already killed off their EN branch once but nobody even cared then, i do think it is going to probably not have huge lasting effects once it's all over, like... how many people actually watch niji en nowadays in the first place compared to any of the other major western agencies. yeah it's clear they're running a total shitshow operation and it is clearly imploding on a level close to what holo cn experienced so it'll probably be forced to shut down sooner or later this way, but even then. the termination of the old niji en in 2021, or niji kr in 2022, or almost the entirety of their JP branch feeder program (VTA) last year, all didn't come close to making the biggest news for the scene in their respective years and i feel like this would ultimately be the same at the end of the day. even hololive fully exiting china's scene at a time they accounted for an overwhelming majority of all revenue in the scene and giving anycolor's other, china-based agency a monopoly there (amusingly, i think that one has flat out been doing better than niji even before the drama) just isn't something anyone cares about now

but yeah tldr i think it's not good but also niji losing branches is never a big deal because niji themselves just aren't now

and since it's only affecting the english scene at the end of the day i also just don't particularly care since i don't watch any of it lol

anyway yeah that's my view on the matter

on a separate note i came back in here to report that Link Studio, a relatively new agency, is debuting its first member in two days time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBCfloC6tB4

I dont think that its accurate to say niji and holo are intentionally western gaming focused as a business model, but rather Japanese gaming companies continue to be weird about internet stuff and just dont give them streaming permissions. We already know the consequences of the big organizations not getting permissions so theyre never gonna risk that again

uf8 me
random small vtubers nobody else in these topics knows

now if we could just watch the same ones >_>

UF8 posted...

anyway since it's only relevant to the english vtuber fandom and like, niji already killed off their EN branch once but nobody even cared then, i do think it is going to probably not have huge lasting effects once it's all over, like... how many people actually watch niji en nowadays in the first place compared to any of the other major western agencies.

The old NijiEN was just a poor rebrand of Niji-India as a last ditch attempt to salvage that small branch. The current NijiEN is a fairly big deal and is second only to HoloEN and maybe Vshojo in terms of English Vtuber agencies/branches.

I feel like Vshojo beats them in my circles at least, but then that was before both of em started having Troubles >_>

Looks like Nazuna is back to streaming.

https://twitter.com/AmemiyaNazuna/status/1758084895094850026

https://twitter.com/AmemiyaNazuna/status/1758128571112108294

I guess after all the mess that's happened with Mikeneko she needs funds for lawyer fees.
But looks like she actually did a stream a week ago on her Nazuna account.

Its definitely kind of crazy how differently the Mel and Selen things went when, by broad strokes, they did very similar things wrong that led to their firing (I mean what they did is different technically, yeah, but both basically ignored the rules and got fired for it). Mel got amicably let go and had multiple talents and the CEO wish her well. Selen got harassed, unpersoned for a month, and drug through the mud by management and multiple talents.

Hell even Rushia got treated better by Cover than Selen did by Niji and Rushia was absolutely the 'bad guy' in that scenario.

It just speaks volumes about Niji's corporate culture.

If you want to take a cynical view of things, Cover owed Mel a favour after the stalker incident.

I think with Hololive the talents can also sorta see the benefits of staying vs leaving if your intention is to remain in the Vtuber sphere.

Rushia went from the global top superchatted channel to only having a fraction of her old fanbase.
You can stay successful outside of Hololive, it's just hard to be bigger.

One thing I never bothered to ever check to see if it was real or not. Is Niji merch really more standardised?
Hololive merch due to the talents fronting the costs comes off looking pretty personalised.

Niji merch is usually just badges and keychains. Doesn't cost them anything, they see very little of the profits from it, and they don't get any say in when its released/what it is.

WhiteLens posted...

Looks like Nazuna is back to streaming.

I did wonder if she'd start using this account again. Every news article mentioned Rushia and Mikeneko, but I didn't see Nazuna mentioned once, so I guess it's a bit more under the radar.

Whats the Rushia drama, soz. Completely out of the loop.

malyg posted...

Whats the Rushia drama, soz. Completely out of the loop.

Remember how people thought she was in a relationship with the singer Mafumafu

turns out they were married but have since divorced and are now taking each other to court

Yeah also she like, was allegedly paying people to slander him online and a few other things that are straight up abusive.

man :\

And they both (IIRC) accuse each other of wrongdoings, especially emotional abuse.

Oh also she was trying to sue some random online commenters for slander but a judge shot that case down

WazzupGenius00 posted...

Oh also she was trying to sue some random online commenters for slander but a judge shot that case down

My favourite part of this is that the judge agreed with the posters calling her creepy.

Probably my last post on the Nijisanji debacle, but there's a theory on Reddit that seems to make sense, which basically says that Nijisanji mistakenly believed that Selen's private diary-like list of grievances was actually the statement she intended to publish publicly, due to a legal mistranslation. I doubt it'll ever be confirmed but it would explain some of the seemingly odd PR moves and specific points brought up in the Elira stream.

Yeah, it's fun to stick it to the big corporation and trust the underdog, but realistically the truth is likely a little more in the middle. But we'll never know the full truth, which makes NijiEN's weird oversharing over this all the more awkward.

OrangeCrush980 posted...

Yeah, it's fun to stick it to the big corporation and trust the underdog, but realistically the truth is likely a little more in the middle. But we'll never know the full truth, which makes NijiEN's weird oversharing over this all the more awkward.

I'm expecting Niji to have had "fair" reasons to terminate Selen. One thing right in Vox's comments was her constantly publically throwing management under the bus and she did confirm she was recording colleagues without them knowing which isn't legal even without bad intentions. .
The defamation against her is absolutely unacceptable regardless of that though, just don't fucking do it unprovoked. Not that interested in any statement Niji makes on the situation until they address how stupid and unfair that was.

https://clearwaylaw.com/record-a-conversation-in-canada
https://assets.ctfassets.net/xj0skx6m69u2/1XKBkfGW0KG5E1BeFHQhvK/706b5b4fefffd8dfdcf2906dbcecbf05/whitepaper-us-call-recording-laws.pdf
https://www.justanswer.com/employment-law/7wqn9-possible-voice-record-conversations-co-workers.html
https://www.dma-law.co.uk/is-it-illegal-to-record-conversations/
https://www.courts.go.jp/app/hanrei_en/detail?id=494

From the resources I could get (though sometimes they are a bit vague):
Selen is based in Canada which allows for one-party consent. Vox is probably based in the UK, which allows for the recording but not the sharing of the resulting recording. And Nijisanji is a Japanese company, which also can also allow non-consentual recording to be submitted as evidence.

So it's not necessary illegal in some jurisdictions/cases.

This Nijisanji drama is reaching the point where it's topping the Hogwarts Legacy drama from last year.
Pikamee retiring the character off the announcement had set off so many.
Henya announcing her debut so soon probably helped cool heads though.

Yeah recording people without their consent isn't even illegal in a lot of US states. In fact its good practice if you ever get in a confrontation with bosses or coworkers because it can potentially help your case in employment issues (as long as you make sure its legal in your state, first).

And according to Selen, she didn't even do that. It was leftover test recordings she didn't even realize she still had. I mean, sure that might be a lie I suppose, but I'm inclined to believe her version of events so far because Niji has both provably told several lies but also changed their story several times. Selen hasn't.

That said, Selen absolutely went around management and they probably had good reason to fire her. Them firing her isn't the issue, it's everything about HOW they did it. Hell, it could probably even be said to be expected for an employee to break the rules if the rules are stupid and abusive, which seems to be the case here.