What is a PR statement, in terms of connotation? It is a companies statement in attempt to continue to build the relationship between it and the public. A good PR statement should be informative and answer the public's questions, but it should also protect the company and essentially control the narrative. It would not make sense for a company to chronicle into history something worse than rumors can generate....
If "Notification of Contract Termination with Selen Tatsuki" was written with the goal of being informative, it is a success. If it was written with the goal of painting Selen as bad however it is a failure. And if was written with the goal of protecting Nijisanji, it is a major failure. The issues with this PR statement are numerous and catastrophic on multiple levels which make it shocking that whoever wrote it is not fired. And yet, every single mistake here must be analyzed.
Firstly, the assumption of truth. For the sake of sanity, everything stated in this PR statement will be assumed to be true. The reason for this is because nothing in this paints Nijisanji in a good light. It would not make any sense for Nijisanji to lie in order to make itself look worse. Furthermore, theory crafting about lies in attempt to make Nijisanji look better that backfire into making it look bad would make this post longer than your average super smash fanfic.
The first paragraph is simple and important. It states the 2 reasons that Selen is being terminated.
1) Multiple breaches of contract
2) Misleading statement on social media
It is stated that goal of this PR statement is to “provide a detailed explanation of the circumstances and reasons” leading up to this. Assuming that this is the only goal, then this letter makes sense but it is important to keep in mind the author. Nijisanji themselves surely would not want to paint themselves as in the wrong, correct? Especially if they did nothing wrong and see no reason to apologize. In order to properly communicate with the public in this situation Nijisanji must pick it’s words and tone very carefully to provide an explanation while also understanding the audience. If a writer does not understand their audience then every attempt at communication will always fail.
The audience of any graduation letters are fans of the member graduating, in this case Selen. Selen fans obviously support Selen and do not wish to see her bad mouthed or harmed. For this reason, any statement that is meant to describe a negative action of Selen must be phrased so that a fan of Selen does not lash back against the speaker and instead understands that Selen did something wrong. With that, the next section describes “Activity Rules for Affiliated Livers”.
It is a bunch of meaningless bullshit. Literally just says “our company has rules people have to follow and here is our stupid jargon term for it called "ACTIVITY RULES”. Ok thanks, I thought Nijisanji didn’t have any rules, glad that was explained.
Next section “Violations by Selen Tatsuki of the Activity Rules”. Stating that Selen has been breaking the ACTIVITY RULES ever since joining in July 2021 and finally giving an actual rule that Selen broke. That rule is “non-compliance with rights confirmation and authorization flows”. This rule is a huge cultural friction issue. What Nijisanji means by the rule is that the laws of copyright in Japan work in such a way that Vtubers have to get explicit permission from original creators(such as those of videogames or songs) before the Vtuber can actually play or sing them. This flies in the face of the entire system of creating Youtube videos in the West. No one does this because the laws in the West do not work in this archaic method. Video game publishers have realized that people playing their game and showing off their game to other people will nearly always result in a positve result for all parties involved as long as the game is good. Thus no one wants to deal with menial paperwork just to get these “permissions”. Everyone in the West things these rules that apply to English-speaking Vtubers that are part of Japanese companies are stupid and detestable because they just hurt everyone for nothing. For this reason, Nijisanji should known that while they have to follow the law, the fans of this English-speaking Vtuber hate this law and will react very negatively to any attempt to use it to paint Selen as bad. Any attempt to paint Selen in a negative light with these will fail. However this section does just that. It states that Selen has broken these rules many times in order to provide the explanation that Selen is a rule breaker. This is important setup because it is ascribing character to Selen in order to justify the breakup.
Nijisanji ultimately performs a bunch of glancing blows in this section without providing many details, so I will follow suit and not describe details. It is just important to know that the PR statement has not done anything wrong yet and would have been fine if it simply followed the direction of saying that Selen had not gotten perms one too many times and had to be fired over it. Alas, it is not so under the next section.
“Events Leading to Suspension of Selen Tatsuki’s Activities” is where details begin. The infamous “Cup of Coffee” video created by Selen Tatsuki is described as the last straw that forced Selen to be terminated. Management saw the music video’s components on December 24th (JST). On the 25th Nijisanji stated that “some elements still lacked authorization” and “permission needed to be obtained from relevant parties”. On the 26th Selen posted the video, regardless of what Nijisanji wanted. At face value this series of events follows with the PR statement’s description of Selen’s character and looks bad for her.
Or does it?
Nijisanji takes issue with the “Cup of Coffee” video due to permissions. Which ones? The song itself was created by lilypichu and stated in a tweet that it is free for anyone to do whatever they want to it. The vocal of the song are by Selen herself. The art was all commissioned by Selen herself. The only way permissions could not be confirmed is if Nijisanji wanted to manually contact and get permission from every single affiliated party themselves or if appearances of other Nijisanji EN members themselves require permissions from those members. If the latter is true, then it is absolutely insane that the company somehow treats itself like an outside party, requiring permissions for every single mention of a different member. If it is the primer then Nijisanji once again is showing the limits of the archaic permissions based system. Either answer is unsatisfying to the reader, but the truly infuriating part is the lack of this crucial detail.
Ultimately, this is only half a story. It describes rule and Selens actions to break those rules. It does not describe the mens rea. Why does Selen break the rules? The simplest reason is that she is just like the fans, a hater of the perms system. Unfortunately this does make her incompatible with Nijisanji and rationalizes a termination HOWEVER it is important to note that it does not mean that Selen is a bad person. Breaking the rules does NOT make someone bad when those rules are seen as poor rules in the eyes of the court of public opinion. It is VITALLY important that nothing has been stated to make Selen look bad to a Selen fan.
Following the video’s removal Selen stated on Twitter that “management has taken down the video” without the context of “because of permissions”. Nijisanji sees this as a misleading statement due to that exclusion, however they have no reason to suffer consequences. They have no reason to let Selen’s statements to reupload the video, regardless of what Nijisanji says, to fester and cause conflict. Nijisanji is the company that manages Selen and thus can post on their own account with an addendum to Selen’s statement or just have Selen make the addendum herself. Nijisanji states these two options themselves.
However Nijisanji decided to do nothing instead. After failed reconcilliation with Selen over the take down of the video, Nijisanji did NOT make their own public statement about it. This is a truly baffling occurance. Nijisanji has their own platform, as a matter of fact this very PR statement was posted on it! Why could they not post themselves? Why did Selen have to do it? It is important to note that the statement begins to use the language “being mindful of Selen’s mental and physical health” and that they were in talks with her “emergency contact” because at this point Selen had been hospitalized due to attempts to take her own life.
Nijisanji wanted her to provide comment on this while she was in the hospital. Nijisanji has full access to Selen’s twitter and youtube, demonstrated by the fact that they blocked her out from them. Why could they not post the text they wanted her to then? No one would be able to tell the difference. Unless they could.
The statement does not include a date for which they blocked Selen from her account. This is clever of them because the Selen Tatsuki account on twitter has had posts in the timeframe of Nijisanji conversing with Selen’s emergency contact. Because of this, the only logical conclusion to be made is that any post on Selen’s account after the 26th may not have been written by her. This brings again the question of why Nijisanji did not just write whatever they want on her twitter and put whatever words they want in her mouth?
The simple answer is they wanted her voice. They wanted Selen to verbally say their words. Through such a trying time in her life, Nijisanji wanted her to read words she obviously did not agree with in order to protect Nijisanji’s image.
This PR statement is starting to look bad for Nijisanji.
“Termination of Affiliation Contract” is the final, terrifying, awful, and truly cataclysmic section. It introduces Selen’s legal counsel to the story and Nijisanji’s demands. 1) Selen informs the public about about the why the video was taken down (a stupid demand that would be truly painful as described previously) and 2) a request for Selen to pretty please follow the ACTIVITY RULES.
The next paragraph is dire and can only be read in its entirety, verbatim.
Thus the reason for this PR statement’s long explanation of recent events becomes clear with one extra detail. This PR statement is the first public and official disclosure of almost all of these details. It was posted on February 5th, 2024 at 7:57 pm (JST). The most recent public statement from Selen about any of it occurred on February 5th, 2024 at 8:00 pm (JST).
This means that all of Selen’s claims were first posted by Nijisanji. Nijisanji pre-empted her response and thusly has initial control of the narrative. They were free to not state any of Selen’s claims. Considering that Selen’s threat was to post the claims in the first place WHY WOULD NIJISANJI POST THEM FIRST?
Because they think they can overcome them. Nijisanji wanted to post the claims in their own language and refute them before Selen could make the company look however bad she wanted. Nijisanji wanted to remove the power of the claims. After all, claims are just that: assertions to fact and not fact itself. They can only become fact if Nijisanji confirmed that they were true. Being “harassed by affiliated Livers” is truly a harsh claim. It can ruin a Nijisanji member’s reputation to the public. Even if not stated who in particular, it paints a nasty seed of doubt in the viewers mind. Anyone they watch could have been a part of the harassment that led to a suicide attempt. Thankfully for Nijisanji, Selen’s response did not mention that the harassment came from other livers, just “from within.” Management from a company is usually formed out of leaders and it is any leader’s duty to watch out for those below them and truly excellent leaders will even take the brunt of the blow for one of their subordinate’s mishaps. So all Nijisanji needs to do is refute this claim. To say that she was not harassed.
OH NO WHY WOULD THEY SAY THIS THIS IS A CRITICAL FAIL IN EVERY CHECK WHY WOULD THEY DO THIS.
“have not engaged in unjust practices”. So Nijisanji and its front-facing VTubers have engaged in the “practices”? The practices of causing harassment so intense that someone attempted to harm themselves? And those practices were just?
Nijisanji has performed an irrecoverable mistake. Words can barely describe the damage the eternal damage done to the entire branch by this one statement and yet here those words are, attempting to grasp at the barely fathomable.
1) Nijisanji did not need to say this. Selen did not say she was harassed by Nijisanji EN Vtubers. Nijisanji EN said that. They shot themselves in the face.
2) Nijisanji just threw it’s Vtubers under the bus. Management just confirmed that harassment occurred by it’s own Vtubers. There is a negative percent chance that anything any company can possibly ever say could somehow rationalize harassment to the point of self harm.
2.5) They did not give specific Vtuber names. Now every single Nijisanji EN Vtuber could have potentially done it. This is a witch hunt. A witch hunt has been incited against Nijisanji EN Vtubers by Nijisanji EN management.
3) Selen attempted to damage Nijisanji EN’s image? SELEN ATTEMPTED DO DAMAGE NIJISANJI EN’S IMAGE?!?!?!?!?! THIS ENTIRE PARAGRAPH DID MORE DAMAGE TO THE ENTIRE BRANCH THAN ANYTHING SELEN EVER COULD HAVE SAID AND IT WAS ENTIRELY SIDESTEPPABLE BY THE COMPANY. SILENCE WAS OPTION. THEY DID NOT TAKE IT
This puts Nijisanji EN Vtubers in an unwinnable situation of the following options
1) Stay silent and just let this evil act come to light with no response and possibly be harassed by fans yourself for POTENTIALLY having harassed Selen.
2) Come to the defense of your truly evil boss. Bootlick so hard in hopes that your wont get run over by the next bus management drives over the entire branch.
3) Come out against your vile company. Essentially destroy your job and get terminated.
All the while there is an actual witch in existence that management themselves confirmed.
Nijisanji has failed the fans for posting this.
Nijisanji has failed it’s own EN Vtubers by substantiating rumors that did not need to be confirmed.
And most importantly, Nijisanji has failed Selen, by attempting to slander her and justify her harassment.
It is reprehensible that two years after making a joint statement with Hololive about standing up against the kind of harassment that led to one of their own members attempting to take their own life and ultimately graduating from Hololive would now turn around and perform that very own harassment against their own.
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