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Gainax Representative Director Tomohiro Maki Arrested for Alleged Indecent Acts

Police arrested 50-year-old Gainax representative director Tomohiro Maki on Thursday on the charge of quasi-forcible indecency. The authorities allege that Maki had committed indecent acts on an aspiring voice actress.

According to the arrest report, the aspiring voice actress had signed a voice-acting contract through a production company that Maki managed. The woman, then in her late teens, had allegedly been sexually harassed a total of four times between February 6 and 23 in the company's "Production Joshi Ryō" (Production Girls' Dormitory) located in an apartment complex in Adachi ward in Tokyo. Maki reportedly took photographs of the woman naked to "prepare her for photoshoots in the entertainment industry." Maki also allegedly touched her inappropriately while claiming to "massage her because her feet were swollen."

The woman reported the incidents to the police in February. When authorities questioned Maki, Maki denied the charge, claiming that he "only took the photographs after being asked to."

Maki was appointed representative director of Gainax in October, but has been a board director of the company since 2015. (The company's previous representative director was Gainax co-founder Hiroyuki Yamaga.)

The financial newspaper Nikkei reported that Maki was the president of Gainax International, a separate company that trained voice actors and other talents, at the time of the alleged incidents, before being appointed Gainax's president in October. The Narrow.jp audition site lists Maki as a representative of Gainax International, although Gainax International's website currently lists DAIKI Fujimoto as the representative director.

Hiroyuki Yamaga, alongside Hideaki Anno, and Toshio Okada, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, Shinji Higuchi, Yasuhiro Takeda, and Takami Akai, co-founded Gainax in 1985. (The company was formerly named Daicon Film after the anime shorts they made for the Daicon III and IV sci-fi conventions.)

Video via Asahi News Network

Sources: The Yomiuri Shimbun, NHK, Nikkei via Yaraon!