This is why, no matter how much you hate your problem employee, you keep their termination notice professional and vague instead of throwing in the kitchen sink and trying to destroy their reputation. If Sayu had brought all this up unprompted there'd be no way to prove she was terminated for these incidents, and she'd look like a schizo with an axe to grind. But the termination notice essentially forced Sayu to respond, and here we have a bullet point list, in the form "X reason for Zaion's termination refers to Y incident, and X is false".
There are parts one can disagree with Zaion on, like the importance of paying for debuts. Idol does it and advertises that fact precisely because it's not standard practice. Whether it should be standard is another topic. As stated previously, other livers have done shitpost debuts. So it was Zaion's decision to invest in hers, pressure to have a high-quality debut aside.
Another point I've seen raised is about activity on roommate accounts. Livers do tweet on them and Hana streams on an alt (though Hana has been in the company much longer, in a different branch, and may have a different contract). Zaion's issue was with using her old, renamed/censored game accounts
as Zaion. It's within Niji's right to set policy on that, and to say that some property of Zaion's accounts puts them out of bounds while her senpais' old accounts are okay. But that assumes they had a consistent policy, and Zaion is clearly accusing them of not having one. Giving Zaion the run-around and suspending her for DMing her onboarders about it is inexcusable. Any company above a certain size should have a process for raising grievances outside your direct reporting line.
Edit: I missed one of the images under point 3 "with your past life Twitter account which is forbidden to use" - that's more of an overreach than I assumed above, or in my replies after this post about merchandise for that persona.
Overall the document is believable.
The only sane NijiEn member that actually speak some common senses in this incident is Ren:
Some keep their mouth shut (Luxiem), which is good, because they trying to avoid the unnecessary drama
The rest? This clip showed that the management encouraged their talent to run wild with their mouth:
(Zaion making Hex not comfortable, yeah like I will trust the man who put the dildo asset in his OBS)
That's not my point. Specifically Koto seemed to cut her loose. She also isn't a native EN speaker so I can't blame her too much but WTF?
Also Mel but again not native
I don't really fault Meloco. Meloco focused on how she felt and didn't really say anything about whether Zaion did anything wrong. I've waffled on Kotoka's response a bit. At first I thought she was justifiably frustrated that Zaion didn't take her advice. But there is a common thread in the livers' statements and in Zaion's statement that their opinion of Zaion changed after management talked to them. Maybe this is to be expected; when Yuri was terminated from Phase Connect, at least one of the talents commented that they were not previously aware of the extent of what Yuri had done. But I can see why people have more sinister rrats.
Ver had a response and then privated it a few days after streaming it. I haven't found any archives yet.
Defamation in the United States requires malicious intent and incorrect statements. Truth is protected against defamation in the United States as the true statements are not seen as defamatory by their nature. If Anycolor attempts to sue for defamation, that means discovery for both parties. Unless Sayu is completely schizoposting off her meds, discovery will be a complete nightmare for Anycolor and they'll look even worse. She was pretty wise to repeatedly state in her manifesto about her sole intent about simply giving her side of the story and she has no ill-will towards the company or the talents. As she even included the shit that made her look bad (like the rape joke), it seems she realizes she should only include stuff she knows is 100% verifiably true. If Anycolor attempts to sue for breach of NDA, they'll find out that trying to sue someone over an NDA in California isn't a great case.
Everyone saying that California doesn't accept NDAs in this thread is actually blatantly wrong, the state is just very specific about the details. It's why you don't see NDAs at major tech companies in the state being broken left and right. Considering how incompetent Anycolor has shown themselves to be, they likely made the NDA too generic and non-specific, which would cause it to be immediately thrown out of court.
I am not a lawyer or law-adjacent. These seem like the two paths to legal action that Anycolor can take, and both look dangerous for them. At the same time, Zaion's statement is
exactly what people would like to believe an NDA prevents, whether or not she actually breached an enforceable NDA. So Anycolor staying quiet may also have consequences. Unless:
Other Rrat option: this is actually part of the settlement that Sayu & Nijisanji came to.
This reads like lawyer speak after an agreement was come to. Need to keep an eye on Nijisanji's next financials to see if they paid extra in lawyer/administration fees.
Somehow I expected a statement released as part of a settlement to sound... less damning. But maybe that is actually what Zaion's statement is.
Rushia and Cover had a settlement of some sort where they released separate statements referring to each other. IIRC Rushia's (much shorter) statement was that she didn't leak
that much and that she'd asked Cover to amend her termination notice, while Cover stated that they were aware of Rushia's statement and wouldn't change anything (basically "ogey"). I suppose that settlement was to decide what they could say about each other without crying defamation on each other? Is that what you had in mind?
First of all, Jesus Christ.
Second, thanks to everyone for archiving and giving rundowns. The QRTs on the og post are cancer btw.
I have nothing to add that hasn't been said, and what haunts me the most about the whole document, aside from the unprofessional shit show management put on (also a little frustrated with how Zaion words her actions--it had to be addressed to make the statement neutral, but it just sounds like she's bowing her head to the twitter freaks that won't give a shit and take focus away from the actual important points) was their utter disregard towards Zaion being doxxed.
The LEAST they could have done for her was do something about it during that time period. The stupid back and forths and wishy washy permissions be damned--they're scumbags for at least not taking care of those doxxers or making a clear statement.
I think the lack of focus on Zaion getting doxed and the Twitter freaks was deliberate, to focus on verifiable communications between Zaion and Anycolor.
They definitely did, but she also continued to do it despite knowing that it wasn't allowed (funnily enough the thing about the Ubisoft account name was because she accidentally doxxed herself while trying to play Uno with a PL account, go figure). I guess her testimony here confirms that by the time she did her FF14 stream she just didn't care anymore. I have a feeling that if they'd correctly told her before debut that she would be expected to make new accounts for all of the gacha games she plays, she wouldn't have accepted the position in the first place.
Ultimately it seems like the same situation as Yugo, someone who's difficult to manage combined with a bad/inexperienced manager. Hopefully she will be happier now as an indie.
Hm. Sasaki Saku graduated because Nijisanji didn't have the perms for the content she wanted to make at the time, right? So there's someone else who wasn't told what they could and couldn't do before they accepted, and found the terms unacceptable. From the statement, I'm not sure if Zaion considered graduating on her own. The relevant part I could find was this (there may be others):
Demanding a 2 week break so early into me being here was way too long and detrimental. Even as an indie the longest break I had taken was maybe 1.5 weeks. So during the call in which I was told of my forced suspension, I begged my manager’s manager, and asked if we could please reduce it to 1.5 weeks. He thought for a moment and said “can you really come to a serious decision within that time? [of whether or not I wanted to stay in NIJISANJI]” and I said “yes, because even before this call, I had already been thinking about this since debut.”
After that her cat died, and when she came back she made the decision to "lie low" (FF14 stream aside). I'm not sure what she was hoping to happen.
There was a post about it on NijiReddit earlier, but seems like it was deleted. Actually didn't have that much coping, just being disappointed, but I didn't keep checking up on it or anything.
Edit:
Found the post. Doesn't look like it's removed at all actually, maybe I just don't know how to navigate Reddit.
Archive. Some of the comments are wondering how long it will last.
Rushia's implosion was self-inflicted but I think Cover were doing the malicious incompetence shit toward Coco too, I remember her allegedly being given the runaround when trying to make plans through the EN managers. I would not be surprised if they were just trying to get her to leave to get West Taiwan off their back, without having to explicitly fire her since that'd have awful optics for anyone living in a sane country.
I've mentioned before that I wonder if losing Coco was the loss of face used to sack incompetent/toxic managers who would normally be entrenched by seniority or tradition.
