2024 Nijisanji X YAB Incident

The article is currently work in progress. Need many sources and other stuff for this one, cuz Jesus Christ, this couldn't get any worse for Nijisanji once again…

About

The 2024 Nijisanji X YAB Incident refers to the controversy surrounding the internal staff at the Vtubing agency Nijisanji leaking photos of their Japanese talents onto the messaging service without knowledge or consent inside their offices, and that the perpetrator of this incident is a music producer of an external studio working with the company for 4 years, who admited of using an illegal drug to put it on the Vtubers' drinks. After it was find out, it went viral across Japanese social media, who many users considered this action as taboo to the Vtubing industry, and it could also lead to a negative effect on said industry as a whole.

History

On August 30th, 2024, Twitter / X user @korekore19 made a tweet revealing that some perpetrator was secretly taking photos of various Japanese VTubers working for Nijisanji and sending these photos and text messages on LINE (the Japanese equivalent to WhatsApp) to his friends so they can make fun of their real life appearances without the girls' knowledge or consent.

The tweet gathered 25.9 Million views, gaining viral status across the Japanese internet. In Japan, leaking private information or real life photos of a Vtuber is considered a taboo subject for people of that country, as it would break the concept of a Vtubers.

Livestream

On September 1st, the day after the tweet, @korekore19 uploaded a 3-hour livestreaming video on their YouTube channel, which goes into more detail and information about the incident, which were provided by an anonymous whistleblower who worked for Nijisanji.

In it, they reveal that the perpetrator behind the photos is a music producer under the name of Toshiki “YAB” Yabunaka, who worked for the company from 2020 to 2024, and before that, he worked on various Animes and Idol groups over the years. Aside from more photos (some are explictly suggestive) and harsh text messages, @korekore19 also revealed that YAB has been putting Vtubers' drinks wih Benigumo (or Red Spider as it was translated), a highly illegal, aphrodisiac drug that uses Clozapine, which increases blood flow to their genitals, thus increases their sexual arousal, with side effects including fever, nausea, constipation and many more. Some of the leaked photos even included Benigumo on it in his recording studio, YAB Entertainment

Nijisanji's response

After this was find out, Nijisanji responded by privating almost all of the music videos associated with YAB and made a long tweet to the @ANYCOLOR_ X account, publicly apologizing the viewers for finding out about the producer's actions and fired him for violating privacy of the VTubers and drugging them for malicious intents. The tweet received positive response from Japanese users, while western users received mixed response.

YAB's response

24 hours after @korekore19's livestream, YAB himself posted a tweet on his X account that he apologized for what he had done to the talents. The tweet received backlash from users.

Disscussion

News of the incident went viral across Japanese social media, who were shocked, appaled and disgusted by YAB's actions online. In the western world, users codemned Nijisanji once again for their incompetence since the Selen Tatsuki (now Dokibird) incident. There is a discussion online that YAB's involvement with Nijisanji and other companies could potentially led to a massive scandal in Japan and will had a negative effect on the Vtubing industry as a whole, some wanted YAB to be blacklisted from the entertainment industry as a whole, due to the country's taboo nature with drugs, similar to what happened with music artist Pierre Taki.