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Bandai Visual Pulls IDOLiSH7 Character Fragrance Line After Alleged Breach of Contract

The Masameya company announced on Thursday that it had filed a request for arbitration with Bandai Visual to the Tokyo Summary Court on January 17 with the intent of addressing an alleged breach of contract by Bandai Visual regarding Masameya's "primaniacs" character fragrance brand.

According to Masameya, Bandai Visual had already signed a contract with primaniacs for the latter to exclusively develop, produce, and offer a line of character fragrances for Bandai Visual's IDOLiSH7 franchise on October 1 last year. However, due to scheduling difficulties, both parties decided to cancel production. Later, Masayama claimed, Bandai Visual began offering a set of 10 similar character fragrances (seen below) through its "IDOLiSH7 Nanairo Store in Marui" store without contacting Masayama.

Masayama claimed it attempted to contact Bandai Visual through a lawyer but was unable to resolve the issue. As part of its request for arbitration, Masameya seeks to have Bandai Visual make a statement to make the matter clear to its customers.

Bandai Visual announced on Friday that it sought a speedy resolution to the matter, and announced that it will cancel the product line, and offer refunds to those who had already pre-ordered.

Pre-orders opened for the fragrances on December 29 and they were slated to ship in February.

The IDOLiSH7 franchise began with a smartphone game in 2015. The main IDOLiSH7 television anime adaptation premiered in Japan on January 7. The advance screening version of the anime's first two episodes opened in 79 theaters in Japan and began streaming in Japan last November. Crunchyroll began streaming the episodes worldwide outside Asia in November as well. The first two episodes also screened early at Anime NYC in the United States in November. The anime is also inspiring a series of net anime shorts.

[Via Nijimen]