Just over a week after NIJISANJI EN and its parent company ANYCOLOR announced the termination of VTuber Selen Tatsuki’s contract, the heat around the situation was finally dying down. Now, a new fire has started after NIJISANJI management seemingly doubled down on its stance and started involving its other talent.
NIJISANJI had remained mostly silent following its initial statement confirming the termination of Selen Tatsuki’s affiliation with the company on Feb. 5. But, in back-to-back hits on Feb. 12, several of the company’s biggest EN “Livers” hosted a short stream sharing their take on the situation, followed by ANYCOLOR CEO Riku Tazumi making a more buttoned-up statement. Neither video helped fix the damage that had already been done—and, in some cases, made it worse.
At 6:43pm CT on Feb. 12, Elira Pendora, one of the first NIJISANJI EN VTubers, announced she and several other Livers would be speaking live about the “recent situation.” This ended up being a 15-minute video posted directly to her YouTube channel, featuring herself and two of the other NIJI EN headliners, Vox Akuma and Ike Eveland, talking about Selen and their thoughts on the situation. It was also shared by a number of other VTubers from the agency with
The video starts with Elira saying everything in the video was approved by NIJISANJI lawyers but the majority of the statements would be words from the creators themselves. The vast majority of responses to this “collective” statement, however, feel like this video was talent being strong-armed into at least partially reading a script that makes NIJISANJI look better from the perspective of its employees. Viewers were also left in awe that the company had apparently leaked legal documents from Selen’s legal representatives to the streamers.
There are parts of the video where Vox and the others share screenshots of messages paired with comments about Selen following a “pattern of events.” These center around her failure to properly communicate or abide by management guidelines, which happened multiple times for events and, most notably, her privated cover of LilyPichu’s Last Cup of Coffee. Vox notes that several Livers approached Selen after she publicly tweeted about the cover being taken down by management, saying they were expressing how they felt it was “unnecessary and harmful.”
Vox goes on to say that Selen’s lawyers, or the documents they had provided, listed this confrontation as part of the claims she was “harassed by other affiliated Livers.” He says he and other members of NIJISANJI EN “vehemently believe these claims to be completely untrue.” There are other statements regarding disagreements with management, Selen’s early talks of graduation from NIJISANJI, and more included in the video, but the majority of the time is spent talking about her behavior and actions in an unfavorable light that felt, at least partially, manufactured by corporate hands.
Everyone involved in this statement made it clear that additional harassment would not be tolerated, and Vox outright acknowledged that Selen’s attempt at taking her own life is something that should “never be taken lightly. Those comments, however, were bookended with talk about how Selen had hurt fellow Livers in various ways through her past and present actions. The timing was also suspect since the NIJISANJI video aired almost exactly as DokiBird, Selen’s current alias, was going live with her first post-termination gameplay stream. This led to her finding out live that sensitive, potential legal documents were shared, and those statements were being made while she was about to play Neopets.
She quickly ended her stream and put out an additional post on X (formerly Twitter) saying those documents were “never supposed to be shown to anyone other than me, my lawyer and other relevant lawyers,” along with concerns about additional leaks, though that was dispelled shortly after. “It was requested that none of this info should be revealed to anyone other than legal. Thank you everyone for the support, I really wish things didn’t have to go this way, I didn’t say anything more and I was ready to move on and start a new life,” DokiBird said.
NIJISANJI EN posted another tweet, claiming the company needed to share “only necessary parts” of these legal documents with its Livers to “check the validity of Selen and her lawyer’s claim.” And as part of a “rigorous legal check,” ANYCOLOR “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”—which may or may not cause issues if this situation does escalate further.
Following these instances, ANYCOLOR CEO Riku Tazumi posted a video addressing the situation, immediately backtracking a shareholder statement that referred to Selen’s termination as a “negligible” loss of profit for the company.
“Our wording lacked consideration for the situation and caused NIJISANJI EN fans and everyone who supports the VTuber industry to feel that ANYCOLOR Inc. undervalued the impact of Selen’s contract termination, or Selen herself,” Tazumi said. “I deeply regret this outcome and will be rethinking how our communication in English is done. Without a doubt, Selen was integral to the growth of NIJISANJI EN.”
He goes on to speak about how this statement also impacted the general outlook on how NIJISANJI treats and values its Livers, which it is looking to rectify publicly and internally by making changes to ensure the talent is taken care of. “Our livers are irreplaceable, each and every one of them. Beyond being business partners, they are the most important individuals that we must protect as a company. To everyone who has and continues to support the livers, I am very sorry that situations were allowed to arise where our dedication to their well being was not clear,” Tazumi said.
This video, while heavily loaded with corporate speak, was much better received by fans who thought it addressed at least a few of the biggest issues Selen’s termination and subsequent statements had laid out regarding internal management and some of the poor wording around talent. It also has those same fans questioning why this was not the company’s first response and if the Japanese and English branches of NIJISANJI are run on different principles.
Based on Tazumi’s statement, it sounds like ANYCOLOR will be overhauling parts of NIJISANJI EN to try and save face while improving on the areas of concern highlighted by this entire saga and previous departures.
