I addressed the initial statement (released March 20th, 2024) by “V&U Entertainment” only on my stream as I did not want to put further energy into this situation and I wanted to move on and focus on the future. Originally, I did not include specific information and details at that time as I wanted to preserve some semblance of privacy for myself. However, with the release of their most recent statement (released March 25th, 2024), I feel the need to address this situation one final time to refute the multiple incorrect and inaccurate statements by my previous agency about me and my graduation/termination.
I will be responding to this statement following the order of their statements before including a final paragraph with any remaining thoughts. Again, I will not be naming any names and I still ask that no slander or hate go out to the talents or the company, I just want my full story to be heard.
The first claim by “V&U Entertainment” stating that “It has not always been easy for us to work with her as we had to change and reassign her a new manager four times to meet her needs, but we believed it was all part of the process” is false. I never requested for my managers to be changed, this was done by my agency without my knowledge or consent. My agency never expressed to me during the time we worked together that I was hard to work with. If anything, I tried to accommodate their requests, demands and the way they managed things. All three times ( four total managers) my managers were changed, it was due to other reasons which I will detail below:
The first manager I had when I started working at “V&U Entertainment” will be referred to as MAN #1. MAN #1 worked with me during my debut and for a period of about a month after that. The only language I know and speak is English and I was hired specifically to bring in a Western audience, therefore, I required an English speaking manager. MAN #1 did not speak the best English and also did not have the best management skills. There were numerous cases where my questions would go unanswered which would then require me to follow up and tag him multiple times for him to see and acknowledge it or he would take my questions to a “higher up” and I would sometimes get an answer back if I was lucky. There were also a lot of miscommunications due to this language barrier regarding my needs and wants on certain assets. One example is my model. I had made a whole folder of examples showing the expression toggles I wanted for my model which was requested by MAN #1. None of those expression toggles were delivered. I brought up the fact that these expression toggles were missing but management disregarded my concerns. As I did not want to seem picky or complain, I accepted the circumstances as I thought they knew best. Some time passed after this and I was randomly informed that MAN #1 was then moved to a different department and I was assigned a new manager.
My second manager will be referred to as “MAN #2”. MAN #2 was assigned to be my manager after MAN #1 and she told me she was not the best at english or had prior management experience but that she would try her best. I was ok with this because I did not want to cause issues or seem mean as I can acknowledge that English is not everyone’s first language. MAN #2 was very nice but there were miscommunications and times where it was hard to reach her with questions and statements. However, suddenly, she was no longer my manager and I was not given a heads up. I was then assigned my next manager who also managed ten talents alone.
My third manager, as mentioned above, will be referred to as “MAN #3”. MAN #3 had no prior experience with managing and was our Marketing leader prior being made manager to ten talents. My experience with MAN #3 was negative. Initially, he seemed to really care and tried to implement changes as he knew and acknowledged how bad our management system was. However, as time progressed I slowly started to feel as if he didn’t care. There would be many times where I would ask him for guidance and help and the only responses I would receive were: “I'm really busy right now” or “ I can’t, I’m working on Gen 3” as this was during the time Gen 3 was in pre debut. I fully understood the stress of making sure a generation debuted but I felt tossed aside and made to do and learn on my own. I was also very nervous at the fact that we were getting new talents so very fast. When I confronted MAN #3 about this I told him that it wasn't a very smart thing to do as “V&U Entertainment” already had a lot of talents and was “pulling a Niji” to which he replied that was the idea because the CEO had a plan with all the talents. When I asked him if the plan was a good plan he only told me “I mean, it's a plan.”
Regarding “V&U Entertainment” statements about respecting my time off requests, my agency was not completely supportive and pressured me multiple times. Specifically, during my move into my Grandmother's house that she had willed to me, my personal items and streaming setup was delayed in transit and was not going to arrive for, at minimum, another week despite being promised next day delivery. I had nothing except for a blow up mattress and a couple of clothes. All of my work stuff was packed up in a pod that I was not able to reach due to it being in transit. I let MAN #3 know this as these issues were not due to my negligence and updated him at every possible opportunity. Over time, MAN #3 was not receptive to these issues and demanded that I make content regardless. I told him that wouldn't be possible as I had nothing except for my phone and the only thing I could do was make a couple of tweets to update my community. He then gave me a deadline to get back to streaming, disregarding the circumstances and everything I had said prior. That stressed me out immensely as I was afraid I would be fired, let go and I would lose the only thing I had at the time to make ends meet. Once my streaming setup arrived, I returned to streaming immediately and tried to forget about these interactions.
After that, I started making TikToks and Youtube Shorts featuring my singing. A couple of my TikToks blew up, received a lot of views and that got MAN #3's attention. I was praised and finally received assistance, for the first and one of only three times, on how to continue gaining numbers on both YouTube and TikTok. After continuously singing and streaming, my voice began to give out and I had to reduce the number of singing shorts/Tiktoks. I went to an otolaryngologist (ENT specialist) and after examination was told my vocal chords were inflamed and I was to go on vocal rest immediately to prevent further damage. I told MAN #3 this and he said he understood. After that acknowledgement from management, I streamed for shorter durations and reduced the amount of streams. I only posted TikToks and Shorts when I could. Due to this, my social media growth slowed down. During one of my regular meetings at this time, MAN #3 told me “If any of the other talents were in your position [with having so many views on Tiktok] they wouldn't waste this opportunity [and stop working].” After hearing this I cried because I felt as if I wasn't doing enough for my company and my community. The next day I confronted MAN #3 and he told me it wasn't what he meant to say and that he was sorry. I forgave him but I still carry those words with me and they still affect me to this day.
After having enough with my agency’s mismanagement, which was causing my mental health to decline, I expressed my intentions to graduate for the first time in August 2023. They wanted to compromise with me and asked what they could do to keep me with them. All I asked for from them was for change. I told them that I knew it would take time but I wanted them to at least try. This never happened.
After these meetings, some time passed and Gen 2 was finally given their own manager who will be referred to as “MAN #4”. MAN #4 also did not have prior management knowledge but he did speak English and expressed that he would do his best and was willing to learn for us. I finally was happy and trusted MAN #4 with everything. He made me feel worthy of asking for help and tried his best every day, but of course, this did not last long. My birthday was coming up and after all the talents begged for months for “Birthday Merchandise” after being told no, we finally got permission for it. I decided to do a “Birthday Donothon (Subathon)” for my birthday celebration and MAN #4 helped me plan it. I made Milestones infographics so that with every milestone I reached, a new reward would be unlocked; one of the milestones being an original song. I asked MAN #4 twice to look over the milestones to make sure I would have permission from higher up to deliver these milestones. He said they were all fine to do. During my Birthday stream I was exhausted after planning and working on this event for countless nights and ended my stream early. I made about $3,000 USD (before my agency would take their portion of the revenue). After my birthday stream, I took a break for about a week due to my mental health declining as I felt I had let everyone down and my birthday celebration was a failure. During my break, MAN #4 messaged me and asked if I could have a quick meeting with him. This is when I found out I wouldn't have been allowed to make an original song even if I used my own money to do so. I confronted MAN #4 and told him we talked about this milestone reward twice to which his response was “I guess there was some miscommunication.”. During this same meeting, my agency also confronted me about my streams of the games: South Park: The Stick of Truth and Class of ‘09. Originally, they had applauded me for these VODs as they were exceeding expectations. They liked these VODs so much that they told me to change the thumbnail to further increase the views and analytics. During this meeting, they stated that I promoted Hate Speech and promotion of eating disorders. I denied this and they wouldn't listen and did not explain further. However, they did not remove said VODs despite accusing me of the above reasons. They placed me on “Disciplinary Action" immediately following this and without warning. They then announced this action as a “Hiatus” (posted February 8th, 2024) on their “V&U Entertainment” Twitter account as they did not want to make the disciplinary action situation public. All my access to my social media (Twitter, Youtube, Discord) was taken away and I was given a temporary Discord account so that they could keep in contact with me. By this point in time, I reached my breaking point and decided I could no longer work with “V&U Entertainment''. I then informed them of my decision to graduate as of the first week of February 2024. I did not ask them for compensation as I just wanted to leave.
I knew that I would be terminating my contract early, which was 3 years long as stated by “V&U Entertainment”, so this resulted in multiple meetings. Before these meetings, I already acknowledged in my mind that I would have to pay back some costs such as the costs of my model and assets (e.g. overlay, emotes) for leaving early. However, during these meetings they told me I would have to pay for damages and losses totaling up to ₩605,000,000 (South Korean Won) which according to conversion rates, totals up to $450,000 USD. This was the amount of money that they demanded I pay back so that I could graduate/terminate my contract, and if I did not do so they would press charges against me which they acknowledged in their statement on March 21st 2024. I told them that before I promised to pay anything, I would need to see an itemized list with proof and receipts of these costs and payments; this took them over a week to compile and deliver as the initial meeting was on February 6th 2024. When they gave me the “Itemized List”, I immediately saw that a lot of the costs/damages/losses listed were factitious as they tried to charge me with things such as Direct Labor Costs, projects that included other talents, assets and materials that I was not allowed to use or had access to and more. When I asked them questions regarding the amounts of money listed and if this was legal they muted multiple times for three to five minute intervals during the meeting to talk amongst themselves. I also asked them if I would still be receiving the money earned from my “Birthday Subathon” (approx. $3,000 USD) and for the month of December I worked (approx. $1,000 USD) to which they said they would be “withholding it” as a punishment due to my disciplinary action for the time being.
I decided to get a lawyer to look into everything as I felt I was being taken advantage of. After sending my lawyer all of the documents, he told me that the “Itemized List” was in fact illegal in the United States and not actionable. He also reviewed my contact and said that the contract did not make sense and could be considered null due to the way it was written. Therefore, he told me to tell them that I would not be paying the $450,000 USD amount and to lose all contact with “V&U Entertainment” as they would not be able press charges against me since I lived in the U.S and was therefore protected by U.S law. Additionally, they could not force me to go to Korea to pay either. I did as my Lawyer said and told “V&U Entertainment” that I would not be paying and that I would be losing all contact with them as of February 27th, 2024. I did not say once that further communication should be through legal procedure. At that point, I was done communicating with them and told them and clarified that fact twice. They acknowledged me cutting contact and my refusal to pay and told me that they understood the circumstances and that they would take action as needed.
I then waited two weeks (since February 27th, 2024) for V&U to make an announcement about my departure, which they knew of since the first week of February 2024 but it never happened. I debated saying something myself but I did not want to escalate the situation at that time or make things worse. I lurked in the “V&U Discord Server” and saw so many of my fans wishing for my return and to come back healthy and happy. I also saw that they did not close my memberships and were still receiving money from that as well as releasing merchandise while acting like I was still a part of the company as they were posting videos of me, celebrating the MV release & Anniversary. This broke me as no one knew I would not be returning, so I decided to ask my Youtube moderator to put an announcement of my departure in my section of the Discord server to let my fans know, as V&U neglected to do so. After much consideration I decided to keep streaming and went back to my old account AlienMixture.
I wanted to let my fans know what happened and why I was gone for so long as you all deserved to have an answer that wasn't provided otherwise. I do not wish to continue focusing my energy into this matter anymore. I instead wish to focus my energy into rebuilding my community as well as to rebuild myself and move on. They can say what they want to say. I know what happened to me and what I went through and I will not let them gaslight me into thinking otherwise. I do not wish to keep being reminded about this which is causing me to relive the past over and over again. To my fans and the VTuber community as a whole, I want to thank you for supporting me and I hope that all of you will continue to do so in the future.
Thank you, AlienMixture (Amano Serafi)
