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NIJISANJI VTuber Agency Releases Details Regarding Termination of Kingyozaka Meiro's Contract

posted on by Kim Morrissy
VTuber requested to retire on two separate occasions, leaked confidential information twice

Virtual YouTuber agency NIJISANJI released an official statement on Wednesday detailing the circumstances behind the termination of Virtual YouTuber Kingyozaka Meiro's contract.

According to the statement, Kingyozaka Meiro requested to retire and the company has complied with that request. Since then, the VTuber breached her contract and disclosed confidential information.

The situation originated from a disagreement about the character's speaking quirk, which was similar to Yuzuki Roa, another NIJISANJI VTuber. Roa requested that she change the quirk to avoid overlap in their characters. Meiro disagreed about the need to change her speaking patterns. She argued that, rather than a deliberate character quirk, it was due to nervousness about speaking on stream and how she was raised to speak. She requested NIJISANJI to make a statement about this. However, NIJISANJI deemed it unnecessary to make a public statement out of a desire not to give preferential treatment to either party.

As a result of the disagreement, Meiro requested to retire as a VTuber. She sent in the formal request in early September, and NIJISANJI went through the steps to terminate her contract. Midway through the proceedings, Meiro changed her mind, and NIJISANJI agreed to cancel the contract termination.

Soon after her retirement was rescinded, Meiro leaked information about the situation on a livestream. She claimed to be a subject of antagonism from a fellow NIJISANJI VTuber, and that she had been in talks with the company about terminating her contract. Although she claimed to have permission from the company to share this information, this was not in fact the case.

When NIJISANJI made the decision to suspend Meiro's activities due to the breach, she made her second request to retire as a VTuber. NIJISANJI had been searching for a way to allow Meiro to continue her activities, but after taking into account the above situation and the difficulty in resolving the matter peacefully, decided to go ahead with the contract termination process once again.

Meiro's second request to retire was made in late September. Two weeks later, she once again changed her mind about retiring. She asked for permissions to post on her YouTube and social media accounts. NIJISANJI rejected this request due to the aforementioned breach of information, the fact that Meiro had changed her mind multiple times over this issue, and the difficulty in rebuilding trust.

While the official statement of Meiro's retirement was still being prepared, information about the situation was leaked to a third party and posted on YouTube. Due to the fact that this stream included information and screenshots that only Meiro could have had access to, the company deemed her to be the source of the leak.

After the second breach of contract, the company reached the decision to terminate her contract. This decision was first publicly communicated on Monday.

The statement also addresses the nature of the conversations between Meiro and Roa. The company claimed that it had received screenshots of conversations between the two parties dating from August, and deemed that the exchanges were not bullying or antagonist in nature. Both parties agreed to discuss the matter, but Meiro did not respond to Roa's request to arrange a time for discussion. Roa sent multiple requests to organize a time. NIJISANJI has confirmed that the two had no correspondence outside of this conversation. On Wednesday, Roa publicly released screenshots of the conversation logs.

NIJISANJI apologized for the situation and asked fans not to harass or contact anyone involved.

Kingyozaka Meiro first debuted in June. The NIJISANJI project launched in 2018 and is run by Ichikara Inc. It is one of Japan's largest Virtual YouTuber projects, hosting over a hundred VTubers. The official English YouTube channel launched in June.

Thanks to dark_ogamiya for the news tip.

Source: NIJISANJI official Twitter account


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