AkioAIR: Hiring a minor was only the tip of the mismanagement iceberg. How to destroy an agency in under 1 month.

[Tubedude]

KiviVT seems to have deleted her account entirely.

Searching @kivivt on twitter brings up KibiVT, with the kivivt @, but clicking on the account brings you to @kibivt. Might be a rebrand?

Edit: Just did a search for the tweet from this post. Appears under @KibiVT so just seems like a rebrand and twitter is being weird.

 

[Ｍｕｒｒａｙしないで]

Quoting this post from the other thread here for the benefit of those using this thread as a historical archive of this particular event.

The girl behind Nophilia, who started AkioAir shitshow for being a minor is graduating from Vtubing due to IRL responsibilities. Hope she deals with better people in her life.

Tweet archive

 

[Bronze]

Nonoah and Kion Dojima announced their return and rebranding. They announced at the same time, which makes me think something has been resolved

Spoiler: Images

 

[Ｍｕｒｒａｙしないで]

Nonoah and Kion Dojima announced their return and rebranding. They announced at the same time, which makes me think something has been resolved

Interesting. The timestamp on those two posts are exactly the same.

I bothered Megu on Twitter to see if there's something she can tell us. She might not be able to (or want to) but I hope she can.

 

[hara돌]

Wawa (Nophi) and Kibi (Azuri) have both rebranded as well - to Poyo and Zuri, so something definitely happened behind the scenes. Hopefully, AKIO is straight up dead now.


a

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What I have that shows who they used to be (sometimes clicking eepywawa's @ redirects to this account with her old @ showing, sometimes it doesn't. X is a functioning website)- interesting that Wawa had already returned at the beginning of February under the name "genkigyenki" as a cat, but has rebranded to a frog once again.

 

[Ｍｕｒｒａｙしないで]

Midori reported on Discord that Poyo/Nophilia/"the minor" and Zuri/Azuri/KiviVT/KibiVT have started up a group called V-Tomo with two others, Cheri Adoette and Cora Velorum. Those last two are apparently also AkioAIR alumni (edit: I might have misinterpreted what Midori said and I no longer believe this to be the case), but I couldn't figure out who after briefly looking. Anyone know?

So much for the minor "graduating" I guess. At least there's less of a chance of a manager forcing her to do perverted shit in a group rather than an agency.

https://x.com/vtomopro

 

[Bronze]

Midori reported on Discord that Poyo/Nophilia/"the minor" and Zuri/Azuri/KiviVT/KibiVT have started up a group called V-Tomo with two others, Cheri Adoette and Cora Velorum. Those last two are apparently also AkioAIR alumni, but I couldn't figure out who after briefly looking. Anyone know?

So much for the minor "graduating" I guess. At least there's less of a chance of a manager forcing her to do perverted shit in a group rather than an agency.

https://x.com/vtomopro

The only ones we, or at least I, don't know the reincarnated identities of are Roa Fen of gen 1 and the In:Serenity girls apart from Vix and Megu(I assume she was one of them). If they are close enough to form a group I would guess it's the latter.

 

[Ｍｕｒｒａｙしないで]

I saw that Metorial (formerly MEW Horizon) had done a recent Twitch stream titled "update." I gave it a listen at 2x see if she announced anything new - her current pinned tweet seems to be of a new model/outfit and has the tag #VtuberDebut so I was wondering if she was planning on redebuting somewhere soon. It sounds like she's been through some tough things recently with the death of a family member. But around 48:10, she starts talking about her debut, and of those of Megu and Paichi. It turns out she's a member of the DropOuts group as well, but her model is not ready yet. The way she spoke about it makes me think she talked about this with her audience before, but since I'm not a regular watcher of her I missed it, and I couldn't find where she mentioned this on her Twitter feed either - though that same Twitter feed has a lot of retweeted content about DropOuts, so her being a member of it all along isn't too much of a surprise.

 

[Bronze]

Putting here since V-Tomo members so far all AkioAir related. They have a 5th member. The account is new so might end up unrelated E: "Connected to Akio girls" might be better wording

 

[Ｍｕｒｒａｙしないで]

Putting here since V-Tomo members so far all AkioAir related.

I don't think they are but I might be mistaken. Chieri has links to a streamer who's been around at least a month and went by Dear Chieri on some profiles. If she was someone else in AkioAIR, I couldn't find a link. I can't find anything on Cora. If anyone can for sure link those two to AkioAIR or anywhere else, let me know.

They have a 5th member. The account is new so might end up unrelated

Interesting. I was looking at their web site earlier today and I was certain they only had four members then so that's definitely a new one.

The Twitter account linked from their site seems to be unrelated to vtubing - it dates from 2011 and the profile pic is a butt in a bikini. I'm guessing they linked to the wrong handle.

 

[Aquatic Novellite]

So much for the minor "graduating" I guess. At least there's less of a chance of a manager forcing her to do perverted shit in a group rather than an agency.

Considering the ASMR she did with that fired EIEN chick, I think the only force required would be a manager keeping her away from that kind of content.

 

[gftty]

I saw that Metorial (formerly MEW Horizon) had done a recent Twitch stream titled "update." I gave it a listen at 2x see if she announced anything new - her current pinned tweet seems to be of a new model/outfit and has the tag #VtuberDebut so I was wondering if she was planning on redebuting somewhere soon. It sounds like she's been through some tough things recently with the death of a family member. But around 48:10, she starts talking about her debut, and of those of Megu and Paichi. It turns out she's a member of the DropOuts group as well, but her model is not ready yet. The way she spoke about it makes me think she talked about this with her audience before, but since I'm not a regular watcher of her I missed it, and I couldn't find where she mentioned this on her Twitter feed either - though that same Twitter feed has a lot of retweeted content about DropOuts, so her being a member of it all along isn't too much of a surprise.

I've watched Metorial since she left akio, she definitely hinted having projects with friends (I don't remember if she mentioned Megu) so I was expecting her debuting in Megu's project. Unfortunately life hasn't been too good for her recently and she's lost all motivation to do anything, I hope the stream she made cheered her up. She doesn't want to make her debut in her current mindset.
At the end of this "update" (

Spoiler

) stream, at 1:36:10, she started giving her thoughts about the niji/dokibird drama, especially the bullying part (take a shot everytime she says "animosity"), and her experience with one of the streamer at akio (probably not athy as they collabed together after akio), talking about the animosity the other streamer had toward her. I found her point of view interesting.

Concerning Chieri, I found her from Poyo (eepywawa) after she left akio, but I don't remember her appearing in other member's timeline, so I would assume she's just a personal friend to Poyo. She did a few streams on twitch (I think she streamed on mondays) and made a lot of shorts and some covers on youtube. Too bad she privated the covers I quite liked them.

The only ones we, or at least I, don't know the reincarnated identities of are Roa Fen of gen 1 and the In:Serenity girls apart from Vix and Megu(I assume she was one of them). If they are close enough to form a group I would guess it's the latter.

I read somewhere that RoaFen reincarnated as Dee the sphinx https://www.youtube.com/@DeetheSphinx (don't know if it's 100% accurate). Dee teased a new model

Spoiler

, the shadow doesn't match the ones from Digital Dropouts so she's probably not in it.

Edit: this is my first post and I don't know how to stop the links from showing the entire thing (the video and the tweet) lmao, thx bronze

 

[Bronze]

I read somewhere that RoaFen reincarnated as Dee the sphinx https://www.youtube.com/@DeetheSphinx (don't know if it's 100% accurate). Dee teased a new model , the shadow doesn't match the ones from Digital Dropouts so she's probably not in it.

Edit: this is my first post and I don't know how to stop the links from showing the entire thing (the video and the tweet) lmao

It should be her, I forgot Dee when i wrote the post. She even sang a song for the girls when they quit.

Three dots on the right, eye icon creates a spoiler tag, you can put the link inside it. You can leave the name empty

 

[Ｍｕｒｒａｙしないで]

Legal Mindset, the YouTube channel of a lawyer named Andrew who has come to prominence in the fandom by covering a lot of vtuber-related stories recently (starting with Nijisanji and the Selen Tatsuki/Dokibird situation), did a stream covering AkioAIR on the evening of March 17. As a co-host he had on a streamer who goes by JJuniesmoothie (Junie) who appears to be a general streamer who sometimes copies news topics in the fandom.

The stream was mostly accurate but had a number of issues:

• For no apparent reason, the information is not presented in chronological order. The first thing Junie presented was Nophi/Wawa's departure notice which was released October 1, and the last thing was AkioAIR's wall of text Twitter post from September 5 that announced Nophi was a minor and kicked this whole debacle off in the first place. I think newbies to this story would find a complete chronological telling of events to be useful.
• 17:22: Junie says "I'm pretty sure generation 2 did debut." Only two of the six members of generation 2 debuted (one of whom was Princess Nophi/Wawa); the other four quit between the announcement that Nophi was a minor and the generation 2 debut date of September 30 (most likely around September 6-7, when their Twitter accounts for their Akio personas went silent).
• 24:28: Andrew: "The issues started to crop up, from what I see, around October-ish of 2023?" Junie: "That's when all the stuff came out. That's when everything came out. Though, in the written statement, it was going on before then. October was more so the breaking point." Actually, most of the events in this story happened in September 2023, and I would say the breaking point was the September 5 announcement. However, October 1 was the day when all of the remaining talents, both of "Season 2" and "Season 1," quit.
• 45:22: Junie: "Athy posted this [her second and final retirement notice] while Wawa [Princess Nophi] was debuting." Actually, Athy posted that notice about twelve hours before Nophi's debut stream. The claim that Athy posted it at the same time as Nophi's stream is somewhat serious as it implies Athy was selfishly trying to distract attention away from Nophi's stream.
• Megumi Kuragiri/Teyra Fenthera was present in the chat during the stream and raised concerns with some of the issues in the stream, but eventually would be banned from the chat by Andrew or one of his mods. In response to a superchat bringing to his attention that Megu was in chat (1:10:55), he says that people who has concerns with his content should email him so they can have an off-stream discussion. "I'm not getting in a back-and-forth with people in the chat. I know that chat kind of likes to try to derail things, or people want to derail things. I don't do that on my channel." I guess I'm coming at it from a different perspective but if I were covering a news story and I had a primary source in my chat and wanting to give their piece on the story, I'd be glad to hear them out and not dismiss it as "derailing."

In the interest of full disclosure, before going on hiatus from my regular news/drama streams due to time constraints, I also reached out to Andrew about the AkioAIR story, hoping to hitch my clout-wagon to him as others have since he started covering stories in this space, but never got a reply. Feel free to consider that I might be a bit jealous that he picked this Junie chick to cover this story with him rather than me despite my well-demonstrated autism on this topic.

I'll finally get around to giving the OP a well-overdue update in light of this and of other things that have come to pass since the last update, though since I no longer have access to an edit link for the post, I'll have to bother mods to update the post for me.

 

[Azehara]

In the interest of full disclosure, before going on hiatus from my regular news/drama streams due to time constraints, I also reached out to Andrew about the AkioAIR story, hoping to hitch my clout-wagon to him as others have since he started covering stories in this space, but never got a reply. Feel free to consider that I might be a bit jealous that he picked this Junie chick to cover this story with him rather than me despite my well-demonstrated autism on this topic.

I'll finally get around to giving the OP a well-overdue update in light of this and of other things that have come to pass since the last update, though since I no longer have access to an edit link for the post, I'll have to bother mods to update the post for me.

Guess that happens because:
- A male but dont have a large sub count
- Not a female

 

[Bronze]

Poyo also states her discontent about the stream

https://archive.is/3P6sv

https://archive.is/3633L

Talking about it all the time makes us feel like we are chained to that identity? can't anyone see that?

 

[RestlessRain]

Guess that happens because:
- A male but dont have a large sub count
- Not a female

I don't know if that's true - he's collabed with Kirsche and Rima, who had 20K and 30K subs to his 130K subs, and he's collabed with males like Depressed Nousagi and FalseEye.

I'm quite happy to critique the lawyer when he deserves it, and he has been deserving it lately for leaning towards dramafaggotry, but I prefer to critique him for things he's actually done.

 

[Nenélove]

• Megumi Kuragiri/Teyra Fenthera was present in the chat during the stream and raised concerns with some of the issues in the stream, but eventually would be banned from the chat by Andrew or one of his mods. In response to a superchat bringing to his attention that Megu was in chat (1:10:55), he says that people who has concerns with his content should email him so they can have an off-stream discussion. "I'm not getting in a back-and-forth with people in the chat. I know that chat kind of likes to try to derail things, or people want to derail things. I don't do that on my channel." I guess I'm coming at it from a different perspective but if I were covering a news story and I had a primary source in my chat and wanting to give their piece on the story, I'd be glad to hear them out and not dismiss it as "derailing."

This is the most egregious bit in my opinion, having a person who could tell you things exactly as they went down but refusing to give a shit and instead poorly discussing a topic with someone who is clearly not that well versed in it. I wonder if he will actually try to solve it cordially, ignore it completely or double down and say something retarded that pisses people off. Option 3 would be the funniest.

Sorry my dude but this isn't Niji anymore, you can't keep saying whatever the fuck you want and still expect everyone to eat it up.

 

[Ｍｕｒｒａｙしないで]

Poyo also states her discontent about the stream

https://archive.is/3P6sv

https://archive.is/3633L

I think these arguments are unfair.

"This is an old story!" Okay, sure, but a lot of people don't know about it, and everyone should know about it, especially people considering joining an agency. There's no unringing this bell.

"It's traumatic to me to see people talking about this!" Okay, but the entire rest of the fandom aren't going to change what they do to protect your feefees. If it bothers you, block and ignore the people talking about it. You don't have to engage.

"He made money talking about it!" People deserve to make money for their work. Even though this seemed to be a somewhat low-effort stream on Andrew's part (Junie did most of the work and he just hosted her and asked questions), he still put in a lot of work to get to the position he's in now, where he has the reach to cover a story like this and have people care about it.

"He didn't reach out to anyone involved with the story!" Well, maybe he did, but nobody can/wants to talk about it in detail yet. Nobody smart wants to reach out to you about the story because you're still a minor, and at any rate even if they did, would you say anything else besides "you're traumatizing me uwu?"

 

[Kourai]

As a co-host he had on a streamer who goes by JJuniesmoothie (Junie) who appears to be a general streamer who sometimes copies news topics in the fandom.

If you've seen a text version of the Nijisanji talent contract annotated with pretty colours and links to potentially relevant Japanese laws, that was hers. That may be how she got LM's attention, assuming they hadn't talked before. In that document she claimed to be an "international relations nerd" but explicitly not a lawyer.

"He didn't reach out to anyone involved with the story!" Well, maybe he did, but nobody can/wants to talk about it in detail yet. Nobody smart wants to reach out to you about the story because you're still a minor, and at any rate even if they did, would you say anything else besides "you're traumatizing me uwu?"

I agree with everything else, but judging by how he treated Megu when she went to him, he definitely didn't reach out to anyone.