Aster “separates” from NIJISANJI

Welcome to this third edition of AWiVT!
I'm back from my travels, and already I have to share updates from the last two posts.

Not graduated, not terminated, but separated from the company?

One of the big news this week has been the announcement from NIJISANJI EN on July 15th (this time at midnight but EST) that “Aster Arcadia will be separating from [them]”.

His Twitter account was then locked, the YouTube channel wiped during the next hour, and removed from Niji's site and store.

Like with Twisty's announcement, which I talked about in the first post (with a timeline of events), this was just a simple tweet with no special formatting.

But why have an announcement so short? Why use the word “separating”, while they've always used “graduated” or “terminated” in the past? Most discussions talk about how they don't want to frustrate Aster fans with the word “terminated”, but I think that it's way more complicated than that.

We still don't know what the fuck is happening with that “internal investigation”, to which they said they “will share the outcome with [their] Livers and [their] community”, but this might be the reason they're being careful here.

If they say “graduation”, we could draw the conclusion that Aster wasn't found “guilty” and that the company is fine with his actions. But what if the investigation wasn't done and we later find out that he actually was? Or if more proof goes out (if not with what we already have)? That would be a terrible outlook and could even have legal repercussions on the company. (But IANAL.)

Would they say “terminated”? Now we can think that this investigation or preliminary results indicates that there was an issue and they acted on it… but what if the investigation didn't reach a conclusion or isn't solid? This is Japan, and I wouldn't be surprised if the company were to be attacked for defamation.
Another angle that I could see is that the company could be presented as one that fostered this kind of behavior and let the possible harasser/predator stay at the company for so long despite multiple reports that have all been reportedly dismissed.

If the investigation stopped or that the result ends up never being shared publicly, we can assume that it is because of that last point.
Again, NIJISANJI is showing that they're lacking in accountability. This issue could have been dodged if they didn't announce the internal investigation and more importantly that they would share the outcome, since by default and as a company they were not required to.

But looking back a bit before the announcement, we could already see that for the past couple of weeks, he stopped being mentioned in any NIJISANJI-related content, most notably from other talents who have been doing tier lists with NIJISANJI members.
Yet, people have been tracking his League of Legends account and saw he was still playing with people from the company and other content creators.

If you are/were a fan of Aster, don't worry; it appears he hasn't given up on streaming yet. It would be interesting to still hear his opinion of the whole situation, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was forced to sign an NDA before leaving or doesn't want to speak about it (yet?).

Another staff member leaves VShojo

And that one now raised my alarm.

Panini is leaving VShojo as their “Director of Talent” after three years.

Alongside GunRun (still CEO) and MowtenDoo (who left in May), she was one of the most well-known staff members of the company (excluding the JP side), even appearing a couple of times on Ironmouse's channel during IRL streams.

It's at least good to see that Panini still wants to pursue content creation and management (at least part-time).
But, again, VShojo is losing more staff? This is starting to freak me out.

Update: Ah. Yeah. 💀

Featured chuuba of the week

I have been looking a bit into /freak/ lately, and I've come back to Cecilia Rosenkreutz!

Ceci is a cyclops demon princess; she does a lot of art streams, plays GBA games and horror games (and Umamusume lately…), and sometimes shares some unhinged comments.

(Also switching to a Kasane Teto song as soon as I write this part; gotta love her.)

You can catch her live on Twitch at /CeciHime and follow her on Twitter @CeciHime.

Closing words

And I'm going to leave you with that!

I'm still catching up a bit, but I also don't want to start commenting on stuff that I have no clear idea of what's going on or have actually nothing to say to it.

If you're lacking in news, you can still read the /news/ archives, which is a nice summary with links to sources: https://vt.rita.moe/news.xml

See ya!